SUMMER means music. It’s the season of the beach blanket jam, the prom song, the blockbuster movie soundtrack, the open-air amphitheater show.

For the music industry, however, summer has always been something of a paradox. It’s a crucial time for singles — there’s no better exposure for a pop song than to have it pumping out of Jeeps and boomboxes — but when it comes to albums, summer tends to be Tumbleweed City. To maximize sales around the year-end holidays, record companies often withhold big releases until the fall, leaving few major titles for July and August.

Luckily for fans, though, that pattern is changing. In a sign that record labels are relying less on the fourth quarter, the docket of releases this summer is one of the strongest in years.

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If you are a serious guitar-master wannabe and you want to focus on the tune of Brian May’s guitar and don’t want to hear Freddie Mercury’s voice and Roger Tailor drumming in Queen songs, then this may be what you have been looking for.

Korean computer engineers are introducing a new digital music format that has separate controls on the sound volume for each musical instrument, such as guitar, drum, base and voice — an ideal tool for music lovers of different tastes as well as karaoke fans.

The new format, which has a file extension format of MT9 and a commercial title of Music 2.0, is poised to replace the popular MP3 file format as the de facto standard of the digital music source, its inventors say.

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Brian O’Connell of Live Nation was named Promoter of the Year, and Connecticut’s Mohegan Sun Arena was named the Casino of the Year, at the 43rd annual Academy of Country Music Awards this past weekend in Las Vegas. The awards are voted by the membership and honors country music’s best in the category.

Other industry winners included the Nissan Pavilion in Bristow, VA, for Venue of the Year, and Billy Bob’s in Ft. Worth, TX, for Nightclub of the Year.

Kenny Chesney was named the Entertainer of the Year for the fourth consecutive year. This was the first year that fans chose the winner of that category and more than a half-million people voted online. Chesney is one of only four artists to win this honor three or more consecutive times, joining Alabama (five consecutively), Garth Brooks (four consecutively) and Hank Williams Jr. (three consecutively).

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This morning, I read a fascinating blog post at the Lefsetz Letter that explored reasons why artists should start giving their free music to those people who attend their concerts.

“As it is, you’re announcing your tour almost a year before it happens, getting all that revenue up front, before anybody else does,” he writes to the artists. “If you give away the music with the ticket, the audience has a long time to become familiar with it! Hell, the dropping of the album and the on sale date happen simultaneously!”

Throughout the entire post, he outlines exactly why artists should offer free music — maybe as little as four or five tracks — and why he believes that it’s not only good for all parties involved, but a worthwhile idea if they want to make it big in the business.

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n the BBC 1 show, hosted by Anne Robinson, John, 36, of Mossbay Road, Workington, was the strongest link once and banked £1,230 for the team, which made up 55 per cent of the final winnings.

After a faultless first round, Anne asked John what he did when he was not working on Derwent Howe as an administration officer for the Rural Payments Agency.

John said that he loved the Eurovision Song Contest. He told her: “We all have our guilty pleasures. I love the razzmatazz and the excitement of it.”

Love Shine a Light by Katrina and the Waves, the 1997 winner of Eurovision, is John’s favourite all time performance at the singing competition, and Anne made John sing a line.

He said: “I was prepared. I said I was a Eurovision fan and she made me sing. I am a karaoke fan so I didn’t mind.”

John said of Anne Robinson’s character on the show: “It’s an act. We were told when we were getting ready that it’s a pantomime and there is a villain.”

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The first time most people heard Johansson stretch her vocal cords was in her Bafta-winning performance in Lost in Translation, singing karaoke to The Pretenders song Brass in Pocket.

Her vocals led to a track on the album Unexpected Dreams: Songs from the Stars, which featured tunes performed by an array of film and TV actors.

So impressed were Warner Bros that they approached the 23-year-old to record her own album – and Anywhere I Lay My Head, a compilation of Tom Waits covers, is the result.

Even David Bowie has added his talents as a backing singer on two tracks.

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May 12, 2008 – It seems like it was decades ago that Phil Harrison sauntered onto the stage at the 2007 Game Developers Conference and announced the game that seemed to answer the silent prayers of closet karaoke fans: SingStar on the PlayStation 3.

The title would pack the ability to save performances to your hard drive, create an online profile, rate the videos of friends and more. Of course, it was too good to be true. After the announcement, the game drifted into obscurity and — eventually — word of a delay surfaced.

But that’s the past. Next week, Sony’s unabashed party game will land on PS3s across America and allow players to rock out to the likes of Franz Ferdinand, The Killers, and Pixies. Like a bunch of grade schoolers just before the holidays, we at IGN can barely focus on anything other than dreaming about downloading Weezer songs and uploading ridiculous videos.

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It’s Not Just a Newspaper Problem; It’s a Media Problem

This past week, the National Association of Music Retailers landed in San Francisco to hold their 50th annual convention. Never heard of them? Neither had I, until I responded to a random email pitch and decided to attend for a few hours. Essentially, NARM is a trade group that includes every piece of the music ecosystem, from artists and songwriters to retailers to record labels.

While the organization was unfamiliar to me, the main topic of conversation at the convention was all too familiar: How do we find a new business model in a digital world?

The music world has this legacy product, the compact disk, which is declining in sales each year but still generates huge amounts of cash. On the other hand, the industry’s new digital businesses (online and mobile) are exploding, but aren’t generating enough money to offset the decline in compact disk sales.

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In The City claims It’s All About The Music

Organisers say that the programme for the event, which this year takes place at the Midland Hotel in Manchester on October 5-7, will appeal to the legal profession, associated new media industries, telecommunications companies and other sectors not normally associated with In The City.

In the City 2008 is also adopting a more consumer-facing profile with its live music programme and has plans to develop this side of its activities into a Manchester-based festival of music that will be aimed as much at the general public as industry professionals.

In The City Director Yvette Livesey, who co-founded the event with her late partner Anthony Wilson, says, “It’s a pretty blunt statement, but we want people to get back to focusing on the core issues affecting the industry and everything, everything starts with the music.

“Somewhere along the way, amidst all the gloom and panic that has gripped the global music industry in recent times, we’ve somehow forgotten the fact that great artists keep coming along and that great music continues to be made.”

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