Building the perfect beast

The transformation of MCA Records into the Vivendi-owned UMG powerhouse of today, and the remarkable legacy of Edgar Bronfman in the music industry — Hits Daily Double

Federal Court hands Access Copyright Fair Dealing victory

At the heart of the fair dealing discussion is the validity of York’s fair dealing guidelines — Michael Geist

A deal to acquire concert tracker Pollstar is raising eyebrows

Music moguls Tim Leiweke and Irving Azoff are acquiring concert data company Pollstar in a deal that is attracting scrutiny from industry insiders — New York Post

SoundCloud’s fate hangs in the balance

The fate of the world’s biggest collection of bedroom remixes, garage recordings, living room podcasts, basement DJ sets and all other manner of home-made sound is at stake. The death of SoundCloud would be a sad blow to the independent musicians who are scraping by as it is — Josh Constine, TechCrunch

Kid Rock’s Senate run is a terrifying new normal

Born Robert Ritchie, the 47-year-old rapping rock star is a strident supporter of Donald Trump. He performed a seventy-five-minute set in Cleveland immediately following Trump’s acceptance of the nomination at the Republican National Convention, last July, and, in April, visited the White House alongside Nugent and Sarah Palin. He sells a T-shirt bearing the phrase “God, Guns, and Trump,” another featuring an electoral map of the country in which Republican states are identified as “The United States of America” and Democratic states are identified as “Dumbfuckistan.” Yet another says, “_onald Trump,” with a footnote explaining, “The ‘D’ is missing because it’s in every hater’s mouth” — Amanda Petrusich, The New Yorker

A so-called 'fake Spotify artist' breaks his silence

Put me on a playlist, and that’s all I need. That's music in its purest form. I never even considered putting my music online anywhere, but these Spotify curators are just relentless in their pursuit of creating the best playlists. I was so stupid I didn’t even know you could “curate” music – I thought that was like an art thing. But when they told me my four songs could exist in a free-floating, context-less, non-corporeal environment for the benefit of people falling asleep with their earbuds in, I couldn’t say no. I told them, “This is what I’ve been waiting for. This is my moment. Sign me up — Enno Aare, CityPages

Pemberton Music Festival promoter alleges local investors misused funds

The producer behind the cancelled Pemberton Music Festival is slamming a bankruptcy trustee’s report released early last month — Vancouver Sun

As EMI Music Publishing Comes Up for Sale (Again), Investors Welcome ‘a Big Check

With a sale also enters the question of what it may mean for the current leadership at Sony/ATV — Martin Bandier has run the company since 2007, when he came over from EMI Music Publishing — as well as its structure within the Sony Music ecosystem — Variety

Insights: In The Digital Future, What Do Studios Look Like (If Anything At All)?

AT&T’s $85 billion acquisition of Time Warner seems likely to be approved by regulators... It’s hard to see how the studio will get more creative and adventurous under the ownership of a phone company — David Bloom, Tubefilter

Fair use, or free use? Behind the interests and alliances that stand to gain from changes to Australia's copyright law

Lobby groups behind a high profile campaign on Wikipedia urging a switch to US-style copyright law in Australia have links to interests, including multinationals such as Google, which will gain substantially from any change to a so-called “fair use” system — Chris Pash, Business Insider

Hit rewind: Cassettes are making a comeback

Google’s ‘torrent apocalypse’ motivated by outside revenues

Stiff penalties from the EU are motivators in cleaning up its search engine, but a coalition of advertisers could be the real reason the search giant is feeling motivated — Digital Music News

How Spotify is gaining leverage over record labels

Spotify has been pushing five different paths to putting pressure on the labels to cut it a better royalties deal. They all hinge around the idea of making the labels need Spotify as much as it’s historically needed them — Josh Constine, TechCrunch

Gorillaz take a while to get going

Sound stayed muddy but pacing picked up for cartoon band with a large cast of players led by Blur’s Damon Albarn — Ben Rayner, Toronto Star

50 Cent says JAY-Z's supposedly platinum-selling 4:44 is 'golf course music'

The rapper went on to explain just why JAY-Z may be trying to cling to success he hasn't seen in years — National Post

Dany Laj and the Looks sink their hooks into power pop

They find themselves forever trying to define what that term means — Brendan Kelly, Montreal Gazette

Where the streets have no statues: why do the Irish hate U2?

They’re bigger than Guinness and George Bernard Shaw. So why are Bono and co so unloved in their home country? —  Dean Van Nguyen, The Guardian

I started writing songs to block out the news – now I’m accidentally recording an album

"There’s darkness all around, but music feels like light," says Everything But The Girl singer — Tracey Thorn, newstatesman.com