Hypebot’s New Music Industry Briefing For Friday September 8th, 2006

– Amazon has opened UnBox ,it’s long rumored movie and TV rental and purchase download store beating Apple to the launchpad.  A similar announcement by Apple is expected Tuesday. The Amazon rental downloads are good for 30 days and all downloads can only be viewed on a PC or few select players with no burning which could hurt adoption. Is a music download service far behind? (Unbox, cNet)

– Acording to Pollstar, Merck Mercuriadis, the CEO of troubled Sanctuary Artist Management has left the company and taken at least one client Guns N’ Roses.  Sources have Merk landing at Irving Azoff’s Frontline Management who interestingly also reps Velvet Revolver featuring a number of ex-Guns & Roses members and rivals.

– Music and mobile phones continue to a winning combination as Clear Channel Radio offers Z100 streamed via Cingular with more formats to follow (R&R) and Blackberry unveils a cool new phone dubbed The Pearl with a media player, memory card slot sideloading, and camera via T-Mobile (rave review from the NY Times and the Wall Street Journal).

– Bertlesmann has settled a long standing Napster related lawsuit with Vivendi Universal. (Reuters)

– Digital distributor The Orchard signs with ad supported P2P Qtrax which is still in beta. (press release)

– Old school music distributor Handleman posts another big loss. (press release)

– As predicted European indie music trade group Impala began active opposition to a proposed purchase of BMG publishing by Universal. (Impala) And Impala and Beggars Banquet head Martin Mills speaks out on a possible (but unlikely) Sony BMG merger annulment in Billboard. (pdf)

R.I.P. – Former New Kids On The Block and Boys To Men manager Dick Scott.