The Chemical Brothers

Further

[EMI / Virgin / Freestyle Dust; 2010]

Links: The Chemical Brothers | Freestyle Dust | Purchase on Insound

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Slash

Slash

[EMI / Dik Hayd; 2010]

Links: Slash | EMI | Purchase on Insound

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Following on from their reunion shows last summer, renowned British band Blur are to release their first new song in seven years.

The song, which has no title as yet, will be released as a special 7″ in the UK for Record Store Day. The single is being released by EMI, but there will only be 1000 copies made, making it extremely rare. Any Brits wanting to buy this wil l have to get down to their local participating record store (list here) early to have a chance.

Just a few weeks ago, OK Go frontman Damian Kulash contributed a brave op-ed to The New York Times which criticized EMI for stopping video embedding on other websites. Now, it seems as though that column was OK Go’s parting shot: the band very recently announced their departure from the label via a YouTube video.

EMI released a sufficiently polite statement that read, “We’ve really enjoyed our relationship with OK Go. They’ve always pushed creative boundaries and have broken new ground, particularly with their videos. We wish them the greatest success for the future.” Likewise, Kulash said in the video, “We’d like to thank the people at EMI Music who have worked so hard on our behalf.” Way to stay amicable about it. Props.

We’re certain the band will reveal more plans in the coming months or year, but so far, their main priority seems to be re-releasing Of the Blue Colour of the Sky on their own new label this April, oddly named Paracadute Recordings.

Despite their latest LP selling only approximately 20,000 copies thus far, their latest video for “This Too Shall Pass” has enjoyed 7,590,101 views at the time of this story’s publication. Now that embedding restrictions don’t apply to them anymore, will their album sales also increase? It’s difficult to say, but perhaps OK Go know what they’re doing.

(Digital Spy)

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Danger Mouse (nee Brian Burton) teamed up last year with Sparklehorse (Mark Linkous) and film director David Lynch to collaborate on an interesting project which brought together tons of big names, such as Julian Casablancas of The Strokes, The Flaming Lips, and James Mercer of The Shins (and now Broken Bells, Mercer’s new band with Burton). That giant collaborative effort came to be known as Dark Night of the Soul.

Although the details were pretty ambiguous at the time, EMI couldn’t release the album, but accompanying books were sold. Each book came with a blank CD-R, indirectly instructing the buyer to download the album from file sharing sites.

If there was a dispute between Burton and EMI, it has since cleared up, because EMI has agreed to officially release Dark Night of the Soul this year, “hopefully [...] in June or something like that,” according to Burton.

The uberpowerful major label recently released this official statement: “We can confirm that EMI are working with Brian Burton AKA Danger Mouse again, and are delighted to be doing so.” –EMI

I suppose this is good news, especially for people who still love physical formats. Look out for Dark Night of the Soul this summer on EMI.

(BBC 6Music News)

Hot Chip fans will be glad to know that the band’s upcoming release One Life Stand is being streamed in its entirety on their MySpace page. The full album stream comes a little more than a week before the official release date (February 8 via EMI), which has long been customary for MySpace album streams.

The play counts are a little low thus far–go and show Hot Chip some love!

In a world where album sales are not what they used to be, corporate music giants such as Universal Music Group and Virgin Media are working to at least mitigate any losses. Their solution? Offer music fans the opportunity for unlimited downloads and streaming at a flat monthly rate (Very doubtful that they would take a Radiohead approach on this one).

Universal was hoping to already offer the service, but due to some conflicting opinions with partners EMI and Sony, the launch date for the service has been postponed. There are those pesky legal debates getting in the way, such as, “What exactly does ‘unlimited’ mean, anyway?” and “That rate is far too low. Can’t we charge more?”

The Guardian has reported that this current arrangement (ten pounds per month for unlimited downloads) seems unlikely, and it’s more likely that these corporations would cap the number of downloads to a few albums per month at the ten-pound price level. (Note: The debate over this has primarily taken place in the UK, hence the presence of “pounds” in this article)

These large music corporations seem to maintain the fear that people will subscribe and download as much as they can during their month of subscription, which, they believe, will keep the customers from buying more music in the future. But as The Guardian reports, other companies who offer a similar service have claimed that few customers download huge amounts from their service. It seems as though Sony and EMI have little to worry about.

If this service ever comes to fruition, it will be interesting to see how such a service will shape the future of the music industry.

Pink Floyd

The Final Cut

[EMI/Harvest; 1983]

Links: Pink Floyd | Harvest | Purchase on Insound

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Lily Allen says she will not be releasing another album, and has turned down a new recording contract from label EMI, reports NME. The announcement was reportedly posted on her blog, which has since been removed. Allen’s previous two records both reached the top spot in several countries.

She is said to be considering a career in acting. The decision is partly down to financial issues, with Allen admitting ‘the days of me making money releasing music have gone’. The singer supposedly made just £50,000 from first album Alright Still, despite it selling over 2.6 Million copies.

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