Privately held EMI Group reported to Billboard this week that the free track offered by Coldplay last week, "Violet Hill," was downloaded more than 2 million times. The song was made available from the updated Coldplay website on April 29 for one week before being released "commercially" in digital stores Tuesday, and it remains at Coldplay.com as a stream.

EMI had previously reported that the song was downloaded more than 600,000 times in the first 24 hours it was available. More impressively, EMI also told Billboard that the 2 million mark "is four times that of the combined sales of the Official U.K. Charts Co.'s entire Top 40 chart last week." "Violet Hill" will only be released as a physical single, a 45-rpm vinyl record, via this week's copy of British music newspaper NME. Coldplay's new album, Vida la Vida or Death and All His Friends, is released in the UK on June 12 and in the United States on June 17.

If the free availability and massive download of this one track is any indication, EMI is fully embracing digital downloads. More importantly, and coincidentally, EMI has also picked up on the platform former artist Radiohead used last October to market and distribute their seventh album, In Rainbows. Although the new Coldplay album will not be released in a similar manner, this method of distribution indicates how promising free music is to marketing new albums. At the end of the day, I can only hope that more free music will be this exciting.

Industrial progressive rock band Nine Inch Nails have made another album available to fans and listeners for free this morning. The Slip, the band's first new album in two months, and third in the past year, was posted on a new website for fans to download free of charge. The move comes directly from front man Trent Reznor as a thank you to fans for their "continued and loyal support over the years."

Billboard called the release "a surprise move" but given Reznor's stance in the last year about the music industry and dislike of overpricing it is not all that surprising. It's also not the first time he has released an album this way. In March, Ghosts I-IV was released nearly identically as The Slip. The new album will also only initially be available from the band's website, but will see a future "traditional" physical release on CD and vinyl. Ghosts I-IV was released on CD and other physical formats about a month after it was first released in early March.

I have to say once again (like so many of the other recent Internet only album releases) that this is another great thing for the music industry. Although Reznor and NIN are essentially independent artists now without the backing of a major labor group, it does show that music does not have to be about making as much money as possible. At the end of the day though, neither Reznor nor NIN are probably going to suffer financially from the move, but that might just show us how much the music industry does not have to lose.

Starbucks Corporation (NASDAQ: SBUX) was reported last week to be "pulling back" from the company's one year old record label, Hear Music. The label, which released high profile and chart successes from Paul McCartney and Joni Mitchell, will be turned over to independent label Concord Music Group. Concord will also assume management and promotion for those artists that signed with Hear Music, including McCartney and Mitchell, as well as James Taylor and newcomer Hilary McRae.

In the meantime, Ken Lombard has left the music label and coffee giant "to pursue other business interests" according to MSN. Chris Bruzzo, who had been the chief technology officer, has been promoted to the leadership role in the Entertainment division at Starbucks. According to Billboard, Lombard's exit and the reorganization of Hear Music "are part of a strategic overhaul to examine all aspects of its business that are not directly related to its core."

Over a year ago, when the announcement was first made that Starbucks would be starting a music label and had successfully signed one of The Beatles as its first artist, it made headline news. Given the success that McCartney has seen with his only album for Starbucks and the way the marketing for the album was handled, the news that the label is essentially moving back into the industry is shocking. Even though Concord is an independent label, the exciting thing about Starbucks' music label was that it was so different.

It may not have been any cheaper to buy the album from a Starbucks store, but it was the method with which it had approached selling music that was special. It was inventive and really showcased the full extent of each product. Fortunately, it is doubtful that Starbucks will stop stocking CDs or even Hear Music albums. Perhaps it was just too late for a physical album label to be set up successfully due to the success and promotion that digital music has started to enjoy within the same time period.

Nokia Corporation (NYSE: NOK) will soon begin to offer music from artists at Sony BMG (a 50/50 joint venture between Sony Corporation (NYSE: SNE) and privately-held Bertelsmann AG) on the company's music phones, reports Reuters. The addition of the second largest music company to top label Universal Music Group gives listeners and phone buyers access to tracks and the ability to keep those tracks even if they do not renew the program (or, if Nokia and the labels do not renew the agreements). "Comes with Music" will launch later this year on a number of different Nokia devices in select markets, and the phone company expects all labels to come on board before it is unveiled properly.

Reuters also commented that "such unlimited download models could offer a shot in the arm to the music industry, which is struggling to find ways to make up for falling CD sales." In a market where Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL)'s iTunes Store is the top online retailer for music and other media, a free program with download capabilities would not be a very welcome addition. With the developments in the industry over the past year or so, a move to complete digital access for listeners is quite revolutionary and a very different model for the labels to be embracing. The only shame to it all is that it took as long as it did for the labels to realize how they could readjust marketing and sales platforms in order that listeners, artists and the labels would all profit.

There are conflicting reports out there as well that Nokia was forced to give $35 million to Universal in order for the label to join up with the "Comes with Music" program, but no such details have emerged about the deal with Sony BMG. Regardless, if these types of reports are true, I wouldn't be so surprised if the music industry expected, or demanded, large sums of cash in order to make tracks available in the type of program.

Nokia is certainly out to get music to consumers, but one has to wonder how much these phones will cost. If they are in the range of mp3 players like iPods or the iPhone then the price may be attacked just as readily as the newest generation of those models was. It would not be surprising, regardless of the phone price, if the program adds a small fee or requires some kind of plan straight through Nokia on top of existing phone plans. This is all speculation though, but the good news remains the extent to which the music industry is going to get its product to the consumers at hopefully lower costs and better availability.

According to Fox News, scientists at International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE: IBM) have found "a new type of digital storage which would enable a device such as an MP3 player to store about half a million songs and cost far less to produce." The development was first published in last week's Science magazine and if implemented would allow for devices that could last more than the "standard" service we see now. The technology, called "racetrack memory" is currently only "exploratory", but IBM hopes to have it in devices within ten years time.

As nice as it sounds, it's hard to see manufacturers or production companies seeking to use technology that would allow for devices that "run on a single battery charge for 'weeks at a time,' and last for decades." Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL)'s most spacious iPod has a 160 gigabyte hard drive and can store 40,000 songs. If the new technology was used it would mean more than a 10-fold increase in songs but that is still less than the current iPod's more than "32 times the amount of storage the first iPod had when it debuted in late 2001."

The new memory is reportedly also a major improvement over flash, "the most advanced type of memory for small devices", since it has no moving parts, can write data very fast, and will not "wear out" after countless uses. Stuart Parkin, the lead researcher for IBM, also hinted that "the promise of racetrack memory could unleash creativity leading to devices and applications that nobody has imagined yet." In ten more years maybe we can look back and think about the next step, but until then the prospect of many more small numerous portable devices is exciting and distressing.

Starbucks Corporation (NASDAQ: SBUX) and Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL)'s iTunes Store are teaming up again to promote "Song of the Day" cards for free downloads from the online music store. The first time the two companies worked together was last October when the iTunes WiFi Music Store was launched and featured promotion through the coffee chain. With the renewal, the promotion will follow a more "traditional" music release with new songs released every week on a Tuesday as the "Pick of the Week". The first program resulted in more than 6 million downloads and the new program is hoped to reach a significantly lower figure: 1.5 million downloads.

More than 7,000 Starbucks locations will take part in the program that will also promote videos in addition to songs. It started this week with the new song "Washington Square" from the Counting Crows and future songs will be pulled from a large cache of artists, including Starbucks' own Hear Music label artists' Carly Simon and Hilary McRae.

As it was last fall, this program is a nice promotion for artists and online music. Starbucks' Hilary McRae's first single was one of the tracks in the "Song of the Day" promotion which indicates it is also a nice place for the coffee chain to promote its own label and the CDs that are typicaly on sale in the stores. We can only hope that the program is as successful as its predecessor and that the 1.5 million figure mark is overtaken quickly.

In the wake of his nasty divorce, Paul McCartney and his management are in the process of planning a massive world tour for next fall including shows in the United States. According to British newspaper NME, McCartney is also preparing to debut a large amount of new material on the tour, which will undoubtedly also feature material from his most recent album Memory Almost Full after McCartney played only limited venues last summer for its promotion. The pending tour will be the largest of its size for McCartney in nearly three years, after he toured in promotion of his 2006 Grammy Award winning album Chaos and Creation in the Backyard.

The announcement that a tour is in the planning stages comes nearly a month after a British court awarded McCartney's ex-wife Heather Mills a nearly $49 million divorce settlement, granting her about $34,000 a day for their marriage. McCartney's separation from Mills began in the summer of 2006, and the divorce included security matters and details related to the pair's daughter.

Google Inc.'s (NASDAQ: GOOG) Chief Information Officer Douglas Merrill is reportedly leaving the company to become the president of EMI's digital section. Google confirmed Merrill leaving the company yesterday, while EMI confirmed the rumors today. According to Billboard, Merrill officially joins EMI on April 28 in the brand new position, but will be based at legendary Capitol Tower in Los Angeles. Much of the business for the fourth-largest record label is conducted in London, which may signal that EMI heavily courted Merrill.

At a time when the music industry is in flux, Merrill's move from Google to EMI is inventive and should help the music company foster growth into a realm that all music companies have had trouble entering successfully: the digital world. Apart from limited success here and there, the music industry overall has not handled technology that makes many of their marketing and distributing schemes obsolete. The report that commented heavily on Merrill's move noted how his experience at Google can help EMI form a strategy to compete on the Internet.

For Merrill, the report comments, "the move will require either a huge mental exercise or a near religious conversion." The report also notes "it will be interesting to see what an executive from a company known for pushing the envelope on fair use can bring to an industry that has rabidly protected its copyrights." That's a nice sentiment, but any hopes that a quick or painless transition for EMI and Merrill seems impossible. Like the article says, "maybe he can help them use the Web to make money instead of trying to keep others from using it at EMI's expense."

Guy Hands, the chief at EMI, might be despised by some parties for taking a wrecking ball to expenses, but if this move does anything it should indicate that the Internet as a tool for growth is being taken seriously. At the same time, should it really take an Internet executive to reveal that vital piece of information? Either way, since the music industry is in flux, maybe this addition can add another level of change that will excite everyone involved.

According to the BBC this morning, Irish rock band U2 have signed a 12-year deal with Live Nation, Inc. (NYSE: LYV) on top of the band's deal with Vivendi's Universal Music Group. The deal will see the band consolidate previous arrangements and connections with Live Nation and includes merchandising, digital, and branding rights. U2 follows Madonna into an extensive contract with Live Nation, although record releases were included for Madonna.

Financial arrangements between U2 and Live Nation have not been disclosed, but it would not be surprising to see the band enjoy a similar deal to Madonna, who reportedly signed for $120 million over 10 years. Both deals are part of a larger trend of so-called "360 degree deals", according to the BBC, where artists "combine their recording, publishing and touring revenues." U2's lead singer Bono told the BBC as well that U2 and Live Nation had been in a "relationship for 20 years" so the new deal has been a long time coming.

U2's move is quite unsurprising given the latest trends for artists, but it should be noted that record label Universal retained a relationship with the band. As previously stated, Madonna's deal included Live Nation taking charge from Warner Music Group (NYSE: WMG) to release her new albums (after the upcoming release). The fact that Universal was able to keep U2 in some degree means that either a larger deal for the release of albums was already in place, or the record labels are seeing the shift and making amends to keep artists in traditional outlets.

As Radiohead prepares to embark on a number of tours to promote In Rainbows, numerous contemporaries have weighed in and offered critical assessments of the way the album was released. In case you don't remember, In Rainbows was the "little" album that stirred so much trouble after Radiohead decided to self-release it digitally before any physical version was available. It quickly became the centerpiece of news and comments about the record industry, taking the promotion for the album well beyond the limited nature provided by the band.

A couple of weeks back, Nine Inch Nails front man Trent Reznor told ABC News that Radiohead's gimmick of self-releasing In Rainbows was insincere since the initial download-copies were such low-quality kbps and did not include artwork, despite his admiration about the method and marketing the band did for the album. Furthermore, Reznor does not see the record as opening a new revolution and does not feel that Radiohead should get the credit. Keep in mind that Reznor said these things about Radiohead as he was promoting his new album with NIN, Ghosts I-IV, that was released in the same way, but included better than CD-quality downloads, artwork, and a digital booklet.

Meanwhile, Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins recently told Rolling Stone that he felt the message Radiohead and other bands are sending to young artists was bad because they rely on "gimmicks." Corgan felt that the In Rainbows release was more about publicity than the music and follows in the same vein as problems that plague many musicians of late, like the publicity that surrounds artists like Britney Spears or Amy Winehouse. Again, Corgan also revealed that future release plans for the Smashing Pumpkins will follow in the footsteps of Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails, utilizing digital release and promotion over CD availability.

International music industry trade group IFPI is applauding recommendations made in a new British report about "the potential hazards the Internet can pose to children." The Byron Report is being accepted and implemented by the British government, calling for new gaming review systems and having the British Department for Children Schools and Families and the Department for Culture Media and Sport "vowing to work with industry, schools and parents to ensure children and young people remain safe in the online world." Billboard also reports that the IFPI is planning its "own guide for parents and teachers informing them on how to obtain music safely and legally online."

The merits of commending the new report on Internet safety are obvious, so it is no surprise the IFPI would welcome it. At the same time, one has to wonder how illegal music downloading is connected to the fears of the violent nature of online games. Regardless, as Billboard notes, greater fears of identity theft and online fraud were pertinent in the report and it is possible to understand where fears of children and illegal downloading would come in.

Unfortunately, despite the merits and value in the Byron Report, the fact that the IFPI would applaud it so greatly only speaks to the lengths that trade group is willing to go to prohibit illegal downloading. With as much resistance as the IFPI is facing in a number of countries about having Internet providers turn over users that illegally download, the connection to fears based on children's access to the Internet makes sense because it markets the IFPI to consumers who might otherwise be unaware of their existence.

According to a report by Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO), more music listeners search for information about music acts on Wikipedia than they do on News Corp.'s (NYSE: NWS) MySpace site, which features media from the acts. Wikipedia is also outpacing "official band websites" as well. The difference may well be the ease of navigating a Wiki page over a MySpace page and the free, uncopyrighted content that can be offered in a Wiki. Jay Walsh, the communications manager for Wikipedia cited this exact scenario, stating that the website was not preparing to add any music content, staying with "content [listeners] can use and enjoy without worrying about violating any copyrights."

From personal experience, I see how this scenario is accurate. More often than not, a Wikipedia page is just simpler and easier to navigate since it does not require a long loading time (this might not be a major issue for some internet users though) due to a large quantity of media-related content. The pages also always seem to have better information about what albums are available and what reviews have said about those albums. MySpace pages may not feature these aspects (although some do), but more often than not it just feels hard to navigate a page because of the layout and the ads that are on the site.

MTV, a part of Viacom, Inc. (NYSE: VIA), revealed to Billboard Thursday that the digital stores for the popular video game Rock Band saw the number of downloadable songs ("levels") more than double in the last two months. The more than 6 million downloads easily beats the 2.5 million that were purchased between the release of the game in November and when MTV last reported download figures in January.

In an effort to streamline the purchasing process, MTV will also be releasing a new software update to the game this week. The new update allows players to purchase downloadable songs from within the game itself, versus exiting the game and using the platform marketplaces. According to Billboard, "the new Rock Band Music Store feature instead allows gamers to browse, preview and purchase tracks through an interface included in the game" and "will be available as a free download later this week."

Rock Band has enjoyed quick success in the last four months, and with the large sales figures and new changes, the video game indicates a new market the music industry should be able to tap into. The online community within the game can only help spur greater sales as well, with players hoping to connect with new songs that can be added to the store and the game. Another doubled increase may be too much to look toward in the next period, but more growth is certainly bound to happen.

Reuters reported yesterday that privately held EMI Group plans to join Vivendi's Universal Music Group and offer songs in Nokia (NYSE: NOK) mobile devices as part of the new "Comes with Music" program. The report comes out of Nokia's home country, Finland, but since Universal's commitment bridges international divisions, it is likely the EMI connection will as well.

The "Comes with Music" program was first announced in December 2007, with Universal fully on board to offer unlimited access to millions of Digital Rights Management-free tracks for a year, and any tracks on the phones at the end of the year becoming the consumers'. Clearly, the program has a major upside in that the end of a subscription does not mean music tracks are going to disappear, something that always seems to be at the fore of subscription-based music plans. The tracks will also be available on those consumers' computers.

As nice as the plan is, the labels will not lose too much from allowing a subscription plan like that to take off. Nokia and label executives are banking on the size of catalogs to combat fears that it will hurt the music industry financially. In the press release for "Comes with Music", Nokia's Executive Vice President for Multimedia stated, "even if you listened to music 24 hours a day, seven days a week, you would still only scratch the surface of the music that we're making available."

With two major labels on board, the "Comes with Music" program is sure to be on the right track to succeed when it is launched later this year. The only worry that likely remains is whether any other digital store will initiate a better or similar plan to increase sales.

A month from now, on April 19, "hundreds of independent record stores across the country will celebrate Record Store Day." In addition to the stores, numerous artists will lend their support to the day and some will appear or offer special gifts to lucky fans and attendees. This support indicates what place the CD has even in a shrinking market and where the record industry fits into that market. If artists can still support a dying format and the stores that rely on that product, hopefully fans, listeners, and consumers can find something in it, too.

A kink in the plans of artists like Paul McCartney and Stephen Malkmus to support the day is that while they can appreciate record stores based on experiences in their youths or support the stores by buying hundreds of dollars worth of CDs, young people today may not be as familiar with the entity or have the money to buy that many CDs. This is especially true in the economy right now, but even more pronounced when one considers the ease and availability that digital stores have introduced to accessing and enjoying music and other media from the comfort of one's own house.