Hypebot’s New Music Business Briefing For Thursday October 5th, 2006

• How Live Nation and the concert industry is making more while selling fewer tickets. It’s not just higher ticket prices. (Pittsburgh Post Gazette)
• Ludacris and Janet Jackson top the charts but with far lower sales than a year ago. (Reuters)
• A report from the Digital Music Forum in Hollywood were interoperability remains the lead topic. (TechWeb)
• Social networking sites are increasingly giving acts their first break. (Guardian UK)
• The Wall St Journal’s influential Walter Mossberg looks at the new iPod/iTunes combo vs. new competitors Zune and Sandisc/Real and finds it up to the challenge.  (WSJ)
• Amazon, Yahoo and others sued over sample of Knack’s "My Sharona" in Run-DMC classic "Tricky". (PC)
• A detailed look at just how unprofitable YouTube is and how it may always be that way. (HipMojo)
• PayPlay drops the DRM for indie downloads. New widget makes selling tracks form MySpace and other sites easy. (press release)