It appears to be Music Wednesday on the Internet. On the same day that reports began circulating that Google and Facebook will launch a host of new music features, News Corp’s MySpace is turning up the volume on its own music offering.

The online social network will offer the following new features:

• You already can buy music on MySpace through Amazon, but now you can also get it through Apple’s iTunes.
• All music videos will now be available through a “hub” on MySpace Music. This includes music video recommendations based on what your friends are watching, along with a video player with a link to buy the ones you like, and an A-Z browser to find what you’re looking for.
• An artist’s dashboard (pictured in this blog post). This is not something that fans would see. Instead, it is reserved for artists and bands that want to track their popularity among MySpace users. This is one of the more interesting things that we’ve seen on MySpace. It offers charts, graphs and snapshots of MySpace music data, including where fans are, song plays, profile views, friend count and profile visitors.

MySpace Chief Executive Owen Van Natta says that these moves give the service’s users a “more integrated and comprehensive experience — not just audio in one place and band interaction somewhere else.”

On a deeper level, they are part of a reconstruction of MySpace and its goals that started when News Corp earlier this year replaced top management and brought in Van Natta, formerly of Facebook. Recall that MySpace has not had a great go of things lately, having fallen behind Facebook in the few years since News Corp bought it for $580 million.

As a prelude to talking about music, I asked Van Natta about the big picture and what it was that he saw at MySpace that needed fixing. Some of what we talked about is ground already covered in plenty of previous stories. Here is something else he shared that I thought I should pass along to you:

“Candidly, when I looked at the product road map and plan, there was no better way to describe it than,… it was a mile wide and an inch deep. It was not focused to let the company execute well. We clearly defined the company mission and focused the product roadmap, and reduced the number of initiatives.”

MySpace closed some of the projects that it was working on, including services dealing with weather reports, classified advertising and others. At the same time, Van Natta said, it’s important to mess around and come up with products that might be a hit — but it’s also important to not let them go indefinitely. “If we’re doing a good job, we’re going to invent a lot of things that people don’t like, and that’s ok, and those things cease to exist.”

UPDATE: I neglected to mention this aspect that will be a benefit for MySpace. Here’s how the AP said it:

Social-networking site MySpace is launching a music video service that will pop into millions of profiles at rival Facebook as well. Starting Wednesday, music videos that MySpace has licensed for its site will run as well on the iLike music recommendation application, which the News Corp. unit acquired this month for $20 million.

(Photo courtesy of MySpace. For what it’s worth, the numbers have been falsified so you don’t actually get to see how the Black Eyed Peas are doing on MySpace Music)

Here are some of the day’s top stories in the media industry:

New York Times Asks Subscribers: Is It Wrong to Charge for Online Content? (Poynter)
Bill Mitchell writes: “The New York Times is testing a price point of $5 a month for access to nytimes.com, with a 50 percent discount for print subscribers. The Times e-mailed a survey to print subscribers Thursday afternoon inviting their reaction to that pricing plan and asking a range of questions about online pricing.”

Murdoch papers paid £1m to gag phone-hacking victims (Guardian)
“The payments secured secrecy over out-of-court settlements in three cases that threatened to expose evidence of Murdoch journalists using private investigators who illegally hacked into the mobile phone messages of numerous public figures to gain unlawful access to confidential personal data, including tax records, social security files, bank statements and itemised phone bills,” writes Nick Davies.
> UK police won’t reopen Murdoch paper phonetap case (Reuters)

A is for abattoir; Z is for ZULU: All in the Handbook of Journalism (Reuters)
Dean Wright writes: “The handbook is the guidance Reuters journalists live by — and we’re proud of it. Until now, it hasn’t been freely available to the public. In the early 1990s, a printed handbook was published and in 2006 the Reuters Foundation published a relatively short PDF online that gave some basic guidance to reporters. But it’s only now that we’re putting the full handbook online.”

As Gannett’s Newspapers Suffer, Digital Side Sees Growth, More Hiring And Acquisitions (paidContent)
“As Gannett continues to be roiled with huge debt problems, an absent CEO, and hundreds more layoffs across its community newspapers, its digital division appears to be a sea of calm. In fact [...] things are going just fine on their respective ends,” writes David Kaplan.

Analyst Admits to Being ‘Dead Wrong’ After Disney’s ‘Up’ Is Big Earner (NYT)
“Dead wrong” is how Richard Greenfield of Pali Research put his related analysis in a research note. “The recent success of Pixar’s ‘Up’ (well ahead of our forecasts) has renewed investor confidence in Disney’s creative capabilities,” he added. “Up” has so far sold $265.9 million in tickets in North America and $35.4 million overseas, where it has only begun to arrive in theaters,” writes Brooks Barnes.

TiVo, Best Buy Form Alliance To Boost DVRs Available In Stores (WSJ)
David B. Wilkerson writes: “Best Buy also will use TiVo’s platform to market directly to consumers, offering tips and other information to help customers get more out of the two-way possibilities TV now offers. The company said it will ’substantially increase the levels of marketing and merchandising of retail TiVo DVR devices, as well as other devices that may feature the TiVo user interface and platform in the future.’”

In other news:

• Murdoch says mood of media execs “very bearish” (Reuters)
• AOL reviewing assets, but will likely keep Bebo (Reuters)
• Ad Spending on Social Networks to Cool (WSJ)
• Bertelsmann forms music duo with KKR (FT)

Here are some of the day’s stories about the media industry:

Amazon Patents Detail Kindle Advertising Model (Mediapost)
Laurie Sullivan writes: “The patents clearly note that Amazon would insert advertisements throughout the ebooks, from the beginning to the end, between chapters or following every 10 pages, as well as in the margins.”

> In-Book Ads Coming to the Amazon Kindle? (Fast Company)
> 6 Reasons Why Ads On The Kindle Don’t Work (Business Insider)

Deadline for Globe bids postponed (Boston Globe)
“The New York Times Co. has postponed tomorrow’s deadline for prospective buyers of The Boston Globe to submit preliminary bids for the newspaper, people briefed on the sales process said. No new date has been set for the bids,” writes Robert Weisman.

ESPN to relaunch UK channel in August (Reuters)
“The Walt Disney-owned (DIS.N) sports network ESPN said on Tuesday it would launch a new channel in Britain in August to show its 46 Premier League soccer matches and other international sports programming.”

NYC announces initiatives aimed at strengthening media industry (Romenesko)
“One of Mayor Bloomberg’s eight initiatives: Establishing a Media and Tech Fellowship to be awarded to approximately 20 “rising star” media and technology entrepreneurs on an annual basis.”

Google’s Gmail says bye-bye beta (Reuters)
Alexei Oreskovic writes: “The change is part of a broader move that Google announced on Tuesday involving Google Apps, the company’s suite of online software products that includes Google Docs and Google Calendar, among others.”

In other news:

• Pittsburgh Clears Way For FiOS TV (Multichannel News)
• Michael Jackson Funeral: 500,000+ Facebook Updates Posted (Mashable)
• Music Labels Reach Royalty Deal With Online Stations (NYT)

So how’s the market for sports and concert tickets holding up, given the economic turmoil that has dominated the public imagination since last year? Better than you’d think, according to Mike Janes, the founder and CEO of FanSnap, a live-event ticket search engine that launched in March.

“People’s appetite for the shared experience of a game or show hasn’t changed. Their bank accounts may have changed, but not the desire,” Janes said.

The difficult economy has had the effect of bringing many ticket prices down, he said, meaning there are plenty of bargains out there. While there will always be insatiable demand for big-name performers or games (Springsteen; Yankees vs. Red Sox) keeping those ticket prices high, Janes said tix for your average major league baseball game can be had for below face value in some cases, as folks looking to resell tickets flood the market with supply. It’s a bit too early to see about NFL games, he said.

FanSnap, whose main investor is VC and private equity firm General Catalyst Partners, runs in a similar way Kayak does flight searches. Since there is so much variability in ticket prices (unlike in airline tickets) FanSnap’s search engine turns up seats within mere feet of each other — displayed on a nifty interactive map — but with very different asking prices.  (Janes said the site aims to “make it really hard to overpay for tickets.”)

FanSnap has deals in place with dozens of vendors and re-sellers, including big names like StubHub and RazorGator, and is working to bring others into the fold.

As the world mourned his death, Michael Jackson gave new life to all kinds of media - online, broadcast, print tabloids and broadsheets as the public appeared to lap up the extravagant reflections on the singer’s highs and lows.

T-shirts were sold and TV specials were planned giving a sense of drama reminiscent to the death of Diana Princess of Wales.

In newspapers like the New York Times, Jackson, 50, took over much of the Friday front page. Forget the political uproar in Iran, which has dominated headlines in recent days or the adulturous governor of South Carolina, or even the demise of Charlie’s Angels star Farrah Fawcett.

This makes sense since, as Gawker points out, millions of people who normally wouldn’t buy a newspaper will buy one today to get hold of Jackson headlines.

As the news trickled out on Thursday afternoon, fans scrambled to find out the truth.

“Pop King Dies and Leading News Sites Nearly Die Too,” was the subject in an email from Web traffic watcher Keynote Systems that described the strain Jackson put on news sites.

Within hours, Michael Jackson’s music sales shot up and he occupied the top 15 slots on Amazon.com’s best-seller album list including Thriller, his most famous album.

On Friday, blogs were buzzing about the mystery around the controversial megastar’s sudden death and websites displayed photo montages showing it all - the signature moonwalk dance and his infamous dangling of his baby son over a balcony and everything in between. Others debated the merits of learning the news on microblogging site Twitter.

But amid all the excitement, businessinsider.com had to put a damper on things by suggesting that we could bankrupt the government by wasting all our time on the Web rather than engaging in taxable activities.

Keep an Eye On:

• Apple ups stake in Imagination Tech (Reuters)
• Wired Editor Admits to Palgiarizin Wikipedia (Associated Press)

The global recorded music sales tanked in 2008, according to figures from the music trade body IFPI, which finally confirmed what we all expected. The worldwide decline was led by a sharp 31 percent drop-off in physical format sales (mainly CDs) in the US. Even though US digital sales grew 16.5 percent it couldn’t make up the shortfall, and overall US sales were down 19 percent.

The trends were similar in the Europe where sales fell by 6.3 percent.

It’s not all gloom and doom though. Sales were up 1 percent in Asia, because it was the one region where the growth in digital sales managed to make up for the fall in CD sales. That will likely be due to the fact that CD sales in some Asian countries has never been properly developed due to piracy. Many labels are further along in using digital-only formats in Asia.

Phil Hardy, analyst at The View, said while physical recorded music sales are in terminal decline, a new business is emerging for recorded music companies in which the digital and ancillary exploitation of their rights are growing. Many in the music business are hoping that licensing music rights to social media sites like Imeem and Pandora or mobile music services beyond just ringtones will be a major growth area in years ahead.

Hardy: It is unlikely that the value of these rights will ever reach that of recorded music sales at its height, but for a slimmed down record industry the higher margins that the digital, performing rights and the 360 degree artist deal sectors represent could bring a return to profitability.

Source: IFPI

Digital sales are growing everywhere but perhaps not quickly enough. According to Hardy, who reviewed the IFPI numbers closely, the percentage of overall sales accounted for by digital sales grew in the Top 10 territories. In the US digital sales grew to 36 percent share in the US from 20 percent. And in Japan digital took 20 percent market share up from 16 percent. In the UK digital rose to 14 percent market share from 8 percent.

Source: IFPI/TheView

(Photo: Vocalist Brandon Flowers of The Killers, Reuters)

It’s Day 2 of YouTube versus PRS For Music, the British organization that collects royalties for songwriters and publishers whenever songs are broadcast over the air and the Web or performed in public venues .

As you may know by now, YouTube started blocking UK visitors from watching professional music videos and users’ videos that feature licensed music. The reason, as usual, is each side said the other guys are being unreasonable in their fee negotiations. YouTube says PRS wants many times more than a previous deal, while PRS says YouTube actually wants to pay less than they currently pay.

There was some signs of progress today when PRS put out a statement:

Talks between PRS for Music and Google took place today to discuss the licensing of YouTube following Google’s sudden decision to block premium video content on the service in the UK.

The meeting was positive. We are committed to ensuring our 60,000 songwriter and composers members receive a fair deal and that UK consumers continue to enjoy music videos on YouTube.

PRS said both sides are due to meet again in the next few days.

And like in the US and every other country on the planet, Brits will miss their YouTube music, so much so that the UK’s Minister for Communications, Technology and Broadcasting Lord Carter commented on the row to a House of Commons business committee, according to the BBC.

The headline of the same BBC story might lead readers to think online radio service Last.fm was also about to fall out with the PRS: “Last.FM joins Google’s rights row”. But the story in fact quotes Last.fm founder Martin Stiksel saying while his company has an agreement with PRS, the licenses are getting expensive:

It is a fundamental problem that we have been facing in that online music licensing is getting more complicated and more expensive.

(Photo: Michael Jackson’s Thriller performance by prison inmates in the Philippines, which was made popular on YouTube/REUTERS)

In his speech at the Shorty Awards — the first unofficial Oscars for Twitter users — on Wednesday night, CNN anchor Rick Sanchez marveled at the intermingling of new and old media. Then he told the smartly dressed audience that Tweeters are “my editors, my sources, my friends, my focus group. You’re the people who matter to me more than some of the people who are supposed to matter to me.”

All this from a site where everything starts with a simple question: “What are you doing?” As the audience kept an eye on the stage while typing furiously on their cellphones, event organizer Gregory Galant told us Twitter was about much more than “where you write about what you had for lunch.”
This seemed to be confirmed by by this so-very-novice-tweeter reporter’s straw poll of attendees, who were treated to an appearance by fellow-tweeter MC Hammer.

Whatever else it is, Twitter is definitely a commercial tool as well as a social platform. Many of the 26 winners even used their tweet-sized-140-words acceptance speeches for blatant promotion of ideas, blogs businesses or causes.

Rich Tucker, known as @cruisesource on twitter, won the travel award and used his short spot to plug something called the Sofresh Social Media Cruise.
Politics winner @justin_hart promoted a politician while Scott Zagarino @athletes4acure spoke out about prostate cancer when accepting the nonprofits prize.
Martin Sargent @martinsargent, won the weird category and took a dig at the platform itself. “What’s truly weird is that by receiving the $1,000 grant that accompanies this award, I’m 1,000 times more profitable than Twitter. Thank you.” Another contendor for the weird prize, @Matman showed up at the party in an outfit to promote WellComeMat.com

Then there was the mix of attendees, many of whom paid a $60 entrance fee, besides the reporters who gave the event pretty wide coverage.
Nora Abousteit, who runs an open source sewing pattern web site burdaStyle.com, said she depends so much on Twitter for media updates that she changed her cellphone number and service after discovering twitter didn’t work well on her old phone.
Liam, a bemused 26-year-old from Brooklyn went because he is friends with the organizers. “I don’t understand twitter at all. I don’t get it,” he said. “I don’t like the idea of social interaction being boiled down to a computer.”

But Claire Chang of San Francisco-based Psolenoid saw practical uses. Chang, who is developing a twitter application, tweeted that she was going from Times Square to the awards. A reply came in time to share a car with another tweeter. At the end of the night Claire was confidently tweeting for a ride back to the city.

Vonda LePage, communications director for ad agency Deutsche Inc, dabbles with all kinds of social media. New York Times David Pogue may see twitter being “What you make it” but LePage has definite notions about what Twitter means to her - sharing information for business. But you have to be sincere or people will stop following your tweets, “if you only use it for commercial purposes, you’ll be turned off,” she said. As for the idea of telling the world you’re drinking a coffee or upset about something, LePage said, “That’s Facebook.”

(Photos of @Matman and stage screen at Shorty awards/Sinead Carew)

The New York Times headline on Apple’s Macworld convention is so snappy that it almost frees me of the obligation to write this blog entry today:

Want to copy iTunes Music? Go Ahead, Apple says.

Fortunately, the Times couldn’t fit this other part into the headline, giving us something to quote:

Beginning this week, three of the four major music labels - Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group - will begin selling music through iTunes without digital rights management software, or D.R.M., which controls the copying and use of digital files. The fourth, EMI, was already doing so.

In return, Apple, whose dominance in online music sales gives it powerful leverage, agreed to a longstanding demand of the music labels and said it would move away from its insistence on pricing all individual song downloads on iTunes at 99 cents.

Instead, the majority of songs will drop to 69 cents beginning in April, while the biggest hits and newest songs will go for $1.29. Others that are moderately popular will remain at 99 cents.

The music industry thinks these moves will help sales, while people who like to share their music or play it on devices that are not iPods might stop re-mixing geek rallies with street protests.

The move was as much about competition as beneficence, as The Wall Street Journal noted:

New online-music rivals have also emerged, including Amazon.com Inc., which sells many songs at a cheaper price than iTunes and without copy protection, giving users more freedom with the songs they have purchased.

Also from the WSJ:

Starting Tuesday, Apple said iPhone 3G owners will also be able to download songs from the iTunes Store via their cellular networks instead of having to connect to a wireless Internet network. The company said the price, selection and quality of the songs would be the same as they are online.

Reuters and Bloomberg focused on the Macworld show itself, and how from a fireworks perspective, it was plain boring.

Bloomberg:

The company said last month that it won’t attend Macworld conferences anymore after this week. Apple shares often fall after its events because investors frequently want bigger announcements, said Gene Munster, an analyst at Piper Jaffray & Co. in Minneapolis. Even so, today’s presentation was “underwhelming,” he said.

“Apple made a statement that Macworld is not important and they showed it with the products they announced,” Munster said. Updated software, a new notebook and iTunes price changes are “nice, but not needle moving.”

And Reuters:

With consumers flocking to low-cost PCs like netbooks, which Apple has dismissed, many analysts hope to see some new product catalyst in the near term to bolster the company’s sales in a recession.

Of course, Reuters noted, that’s not what they got this week.

Keep an eye on

New York TImes, Part 1: Your correspondent and a bunch of others wrote about the paper’s decision to start running display advertising on the front page, with CBS getting the first slot this past Monday. So far, that’s the only one we’ve seen. Tuesday and Wednesday featured ad-free fronts. C’mon advertisers — save your favorite paper! (To be fair, The Wall Street Journal and other papers don’t ALWAYS sell their front-page ads every day)

New York Times, Part 2: Writing in the Atlantic, Michael Hirschorn posits the notion that the Times could go under — in a few months’ time. Having scared the kids, he points out how slim the odds are. It’s tempting to embrace nightmare scenarios, but let’s keep in mind that the Times could do a lot of things to preserve its core: the newspaper. (The Atlantic)

New York Times, Part 3: Many media writers can barely resist the urge to beat up on Times Co Chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr, the latest of the Ochs-Sulzberger clan to chair the company and publish the paper. There’s plenty of reasons to do so, as New York Observer’s media writer extraordinaire John Koblin points out. Still, he said that Sulzberger is sticking to the task at hand: journalism. That might help the Times ride out the storm when other newspapers founder. That, Koblin said, is why the NYO has named Sulzberger one of its “Media Mensches” of 2009. (New York Observer)

(Photo: Share your Randy Newman tunes, courtesy of Apple. Here’s Randy performing at Macworld. Reuters)

Sirius XM Radio has got a lot of big issues: a huge debt load; its deflated stock price; the auto industry — its biggest source of news subscribers — is hurting; and consumers are shying away from consumer electronics this holiday season.

The company planned to address some of those issues today at its shareholder meeting, hoping to win the right to issue 3.5 billion shares and launch a reverse stock split. Those moves may not fix all of its woes.

But the company has at least addressed one other festering problem. They are bringing back Monie Love in January.

To be clear, they are bringing back “The Strobe” and “Backspin”, respectively, Disco and Old School Hip-Hip channels that bit the dust when Sirius last month combined its content with XM’s. The consolidation angered listeners and even sparked a mass cancellation effort.

Rapper and Radio Host Monie Love

Most people, save for “hip-hop heads”, have no idea who this respected figure in old school rap is. But for listeners of XM Satellite’s defunct channel “The Rhyme”, her show “Ladies’ First with Monie Love” was a “must-hear”, full of classic jams and special guests. (Think Little Steven’s show for rap crowd).

CEO Mel Karmazin at the Reuters Media Summit suggested that tough times call for tough programming choices. This week Sirius seemed to say “Look! we are flexible!”

We will continue to listen to them (subscribers) as we strive to create the best audio entertainment experience available.
– Scott Greenstein, President and Chief Content Officer, SIRIUS XM Radio.

Now about that $1 billion in debt…

Keep an eye on:

• - Live Nation to lose $19 million on U2 share deal (WSJ)
• - LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman returns as CEO (WSJ)
• - Disney has been sued over a profit sharing contract (LA Times)

(Photos: Reuters, Monie Love’s Myspace page)