Donald Passman’s seventh edition of his book “All You Need to Know About the Music Business” is available in bookstores today.

Along with the material from the previous editions – the music industry structure, building a team, understanding copyright and publishing, and literally everything else you need to know about the music business – this new edition adds the latest developments from the rapidly changing music business, including:

* The new 360 model of record deals, wherein record companies share in nonrecord revenue

* The Copyright Royalty Board’s latest decisions regarding online transmissions

* The developing customs on new technologies such as streaming on demand, ringtones, and digital downloads

* Updates on recording and publishing deals, as well as film music

I don’t know what else to say about this book that hasn’t already been said. If you’re even thinking about pursuing music as more than just a hobby, you need this book. If you only get one book about the music business, this is the book to get.

Rather than writing a review, I think it suffices to list the thesaurus entries for “definitive.” This book is: absolute, authoritative, clear-cut, complete, conclusive, exhaustive, precise, and reliable.

Despite the lack of success music subscription services have had, entrepreneurs seem to be lining up to have shot at it. We’re hearing about new subscription services every week, and none of them have a USP. They all seem to have the same business model – pay a high monthly fee for a very limited access to music.

The latest company to try their hand at it is satellite television company Sky. Sky’s plan is to charge £7.99 a month for unlimited streaming and 1 album download (or 10 songs) – downloading more songs will cost extra.

Details on the new service are sketchy, some sources say they have partnered with Universal, while others say they have struck deals with all the majors and a number of indie labels.

The problem with subscription services such as this is that consumers don’t like being restricted. £7.99 a month for one album makes little sense to me, why would one choose to be restricted to one album a month when they can go to iTunes or Amazon for the same price. And the unlimited streaming doesn’t really add any value since there are services like Spotify and we7 out there that offer that for free.

The fact that over 9 million UK households have Sky as their digital TV provider will certainly work in its favour, but in reality I think Sky’s business model is flimsy and won’t attract much attention from music lovers.

On September 8th, Apple unveiled its latest ‘innovation’ to help prop up the recorded music industry – the iTunes LP. For only seven bucks more than a regular digital album, you can get some pretty pictures and liner notes. Facepalm!

But the story doesn’t end there.

Last week, Brian McKinney of Chocolate Lab Records told Gizmodo that Apple was charging record labels $10,000 in production costs to release an album in the iTunes LP format – and indie record labels need not apply. Apple later denied that allegation and said it is working on releasing the specs for the LP format and making them available to all, indie and major labels alike.

Regardless of the outcome of this “he said she said” tempest, it amplifies the silliness of the iTunes LP format itself.

Several web developers have dissected the format to find that it is essentially HTML, Javascript, CSS, and multimedia content – a website. For a little more than the cost of an actual physical CD, you get to save files to your hard drive that largely mirror content you can find online, from the artist’s website itself to Wikipedia, YouTube, and others.

I’ve been unable to find sales figures for albums released as iTunes LPs, but I’m curious to see how successful (or unsuccessful) it has been to date. Until then, the question remains whether Apple’s initiative – jacking up prices to include nicely designed text and album art with digital music files – can connect with fans, especially as consumers are shifting away from the album as a default container for music.

Until Apple opens up the specs to the iTunes LP format, indie artists who wish to bundle additional content with their albums can stick with a tried and true format: the zip archive. For years, netlabels and some independent artists have simply added media and documents to zip files of album tracks and offered the complete package to fans.

Bandcamp (one of the best music hosting/distribution sites out there IMHO) recently began offering this feature to artists on their site. Types of content you can include are limited only by your imagination and file-size concerns – videos, images, pdfs, etc. And with a little web development skill, artists can replicate a centralized user interface for interacting with the album’s content just like the iTunes LP.

On October 10, 2009 Mariah Carey will make “history”. Well, “history” according to Def Jam and Global Digital Entertainment.

Here’s the details, Mariah Carey recently linked up with Global Digital Entertainment which is, you guessed it, a digital entertainment company. This Saturday GDE will be launching iviago.com, which is, well, let me get to the point.

On October 10, 2009 a concert simply titled “Mariah Carey: Live in Las Vegas” will be the first concert simulcasted to a great number of digital and mobile devices. The only way to see this concert is by texting Mariah @ 313131 for a virtual concert ticket which cost 9.99. (7.99 if you pre-order).

“Fans from all over the world can now share the excitement of a live concert, wherever, whenever, and on whatever digital device they chose,”  - Steve Bartels President and COO of Island Def Jam Music Group.

During the simulcast, viewers may pause the stream, but for some reason, won’t be able to replay, rewind, or even keep the concert once it has been played . So don’t blink, you might miss something.

On October 20, downloadable video clips of the concert will be made available to different phone carriers in North America, South America, and Europe. On October 24, the concert will also be made available in HD in over 200 countries and over 235 digital partners including iTunes.

The concert, which was previously recorded on September 11 and 12, will only be 60 minutes in length featuring tracks from her latest album and her top selling billboard hits.

Radio station to offer web streaming is not news. Web site to offer radio programming is.

CBS Interactive Music Group recently announced that it will begin offering music programming from Last.fm on HD radio stations in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and San Francisco beginning October 5th. The stations will effectively hand the broadcasting reins over to the crowd-sourced, music discovery site – bringing listeners “an eclectic mix of music aggregated and influenced by the service’s user-generated weekly charts, combined with live performances and interviews from the Last.fm studios in New York, and event updates.”

According to CBS, this is the “first time a music website has been transformed into its own broadcast entity.”

How to tune in?

Listeners will be able to access the station through multiple outlets including Last.fm and select CBS RADIO station websites; CBS RADIO’s streaming platform including its partnerships with AOL Radio and Yahoo! Music Radio, as well as mobile applications on the iPhone, iPod Touch and select Blackberry devices.  Music fans with HD Radio receivers in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and San Francisco will also be able to interact with the multicast station broadcast on CBS RADIO’s WWFS-FM (102.7 HD2), KCBS-FM (93.1 HD2), WXRT-FM (93.1 HD3) and KITS-FM (105.3 HD3), respectively.

While this is an exciting and innovative development, the question remains whether HD radio itself can still catch on. Awareness of the format itself is very low; meanwhile, less than 10% of new automobiles come equipped with factory-installed HD receivers. CBS hopes this announcement – along with Microsoft’s soon-to-be-released Zune HD devices – will spur interest in the broadcast format.

The Apple event took place yesterday after weeks of anticipation and among the big announcements; a new and improved iTunes 9 (surprise surprise), a new, cheaper iPod Touch line, a new iPod Nano equipped with a video camera and microphone (don’t look at me), increased storage and price cut for iPod classics and a “genius” function for the iPhone and iPod touch that creates playlists based on your history.

But what you all really want to know about is the not-so-top-secret “Cocktail” project. Well, I can reveal that Apple has launched a new digital album format called iTunes LP.

The iTunes LP is pretty much as we expected. It’s a digital album with extra features such as music videos, artwork, liner notes, lyrics, photo albums, bonus tracks etc.

Sounds good? I agree.

One thing we always talk about is artists giving fans a reason to buy, this indeed does. All these bonus goodies are likely to make albums more attractive to fans.

However; there is no such thing as a flawless idea in the music business, and this is no exception.

Apple is charging $16.99 for these LPs. That’s $7 more than a normal digital album. It’s not a reason to buy because fans are paying for the additional features, most of which they can download for free anyway. And one person is not going to want all of the extras, probably just one or two. So they’re going to be paying for stuff they don’t want.

The point is people don’t want to buy albums, so offering them the same thing at a higher price is not a smart move. Artists need to be offering fans this kind of stuff in the first place, not at extra cost. It will be interesting to see what kind of sales these LPs see over the next 6 months. My prediction is not many.

Forrester Research recently released a report that lays out a “radical vision” to “save the music industry from the current Media Meltdown it finds itself in.”

While the actual report is only available to Forrester customers, the company’s blog reveals that the plan involves broad “music release windows,” similar to the chart on the right. “Premium” content is released first, followed by a “mainstream” release at a later time, and eventually wide dissemination to free and “feels like free” services.

Judging by comments on the Forrester blog and elsewhere, many scoff at the idea of regaining content scarcity through this staggered release approach. “What about pre-release leaks?” they ask. True, the industry has increasingly bumped up release dates of albums – Jay-Z’s latest came out three days early today – in part to combat the problem of early copies leaking onto the internet. But it’s important to keep in mind that large swaths of music listeners are not running around downloading leaked copies of albums off torrent sites.

It is also counter-intuitive when one looks at the movie industry and how the release cycle of a typical movie – which has been staggered between theatrical release, dvd release, and television release – has shrunk over the last decade or so.

I’m guessing, though, that the example illustrated in the graphic above is just that – an example. Rather than a one-size-fits-all solution, Forrester is suggesting an approach to music that doesn’t revolve around the traditional album release cycle (release an album – tour – repeat next year). They propose shaking off the “strait-jacket” of the album and thinking of all content generated by musicians and bands as product (backstage footage, mobile apps, merchandise) in order to create a “continual artist-fan relationship with artists delivering a steady stream of creative output.”

Sound familiar?

It sounds a lot like what the major labels had been talking about earlier this year at a 2009 NARM panel. And that discussion sounded a lot like what we here at GrindEFX have been saying.

Ditching the album format as the default container for music and releasing smaller blocks of music more often – that’s the 3P concept.

Building a continual artist-fan relationship to make money outside of selling non-scarce recorded music – none other than CwF + RtB = $$$.

So, while not exactly radical, Forrester’s report does indicate the direction the big players in the industry are heading toward, as well as validate what many of us on the sidelines have been saying.

In March YouTube banned thousands of music videos in the U.K. after a dispute over licensing fees with PRS for Music. It took 6 months but it looks like PRS have given in and music videos will return to YouTube in the next couple of days.

Instead of a per-stream fee, YouTube will pay PRS for Music a lump sum backdated to January and lasting until 2010. The sum of money has not been disclosed.

PRS seem to be happy with the new deal. A spokeswoman for the Performing Rights Society told BBC News; “it is a lump sum deal which seems to work for YouTube’s business model and offers recompense for our 60,000 members. We can be friends again.”

YouTube’s director of video partnerships, Patrick Walker, said “Both sides feel comfortable the arrangement reached will benefit those involved.

“The music videos are an extremely popular part of YouTube and this deal doesn’t only cover the music videos but also music included in TV programmes like The X Factor and also for the inclusion of music in user videos as well.”

YouTube have said that “The videos which had been removed will come back over the next few days.”