The Lonely Forest, Natalie Portman’s Shaved Head and The Oregon Donor are Pacific Northwest pop bands finding new fans across the country. The groups are getting recording contracts, touring widely and generating buzz in the pages of pop music magazines like Spin. Part of their success comes from their prize winning performances at Sound Off. Sponsored by Seattle’s Experience Music Project, the Sound Off competition is a battle of Pacific Northwest bands made up of musicians 21 years old and younger.

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Tom Morello, lead guitarist for Rage Against the Machine performing “Midnight in the City of Destruction” from his new solo album “The Fabled City” at the Wall Street Journal … of all places.

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From KCRW’s On the Beat – Last month, the legendary rock band, the Allman Brothers, filed a lawsuit for $13 million against Universal Music. The Allman Brothers contend that Universal has been shorting the band their full compensation for the sale of their music on outlets like iTunes. The Allman Brothers are hoping to make their case an example for other recording artists with similar contracts. Cheap Trick has already filed suit, and many in the business are watching to see how these lawsuits will finally play out.

Innovations in the marketplace require contractual clarity, for the fairness of all involved. But before the 1970′s, no one was thinking about their digital future. Who could have imagined new distribution pipelines, created by third parties who would parse out a digital song file and sell it at the click of a mouse.

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One of the great things about the music business right now is that the door is wide open for talent with vision, particularly if they already have a fan base. Celia Hirschman with On the Beat for KCRW discusses how innovative musicians are bypassing the traditional model of music distribution to reach their listeners.

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For years, DJs and MCs fended off declarations of hip hop’s demise with innovative beats and chart-busting albums. But these days, hip hop is stuck in a deep funk. From WNYC‘s Soundcheck, we look at hip hop’s soul-searching journey into the future.

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The record industry decline actually began the day the Sony Walkman was released.

Up until the Walkman’s innovation, people shared the experience of music. They bought records and played them for their friends. But once they had a portable player, with earphones firmly nestled in their ears, sharing music was no longer important. And by the time downloading was introduced, listening on your own was well established.

Let’s face facts. Americans want to be entertained. The average American family is watching American Idol, Hannah Montana, and buying Guitar Hero and Grand Theft Auto. The record business is being given a real run for its money. Those shiny music discs are just no competition for what is considered entertainment these days.

Many in the business are trying to solve this difficult problem. But to solve it, you need to understand what the problem really is.

From KCRW‘s On The Beat, find out why the music business needs to adjust to meet the market rather than hoping the market will come and meet them.

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This panel discussion took place at the RSA regarding the future of radio.

The UChannel, Princeton’s eclectic education video blog, has a great summary:

Radio as a medium of culture and information is about to undertake a paradigm shift. It’s not that radio needs a new story, it has one already. The question is how are we going to adapt to it?

Future radio offers radical new ways of engagement. The opportunities offered by high speed connectivity between portable handheld devices, the wide take up of wi-fi internet broadband, the nascent vitality of social networking sites and the inevitable process of human viral networking will increasingly define the future radio landscape.

Future radio will be a multi-media, downloadable, time-switchable, podcastable, portable, interactive, international and consumer-led process.

Are we ready for it? Can we afford it? Can we afford not to afford it? Do we have to let go of all we hold dear? And how do we ensure that a remarkable radio heritage is not lost in the process?

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The internet puts control back in the hands of the people. For solo artist Modcam, the internet has become the primary means of distributing his music worldwide. His latest creation is a mixture of ambient, glitch, and dub sounds, titled “Six Minute City“. Creating everything on his own was the most satisfying aspect of creating the album. Realizing that the music industry is shifting towards a more independent-friendly environment, Modcam decided to pursue his own musical career without being signed to a label. Instead, he created his own net label, Spectral Onyx Records, where all of his music is on display for free downloads and for purchase, at www.spectralonyx.com.

Bob Marley’s music has never died and his influence on reggae musicians continues. Jamaica’s 2nd most favorite export would have been 60 on 02/06/2008.

In his heydey, some hard core fans and Jamaicans felt Bob had sold out with his new western influenced style, hanging out with Mick Jagger and living in the United Kingdom.

American reggae star Shaggy compares himself with Bob Marley, and said that you have to dilute the music to go mainstream but your core audience should never ignore you.

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The streaming audio features a broadcast of the former Beatles’ recent live gig at Amoeba Records on the radio show Morning Becomes Eclectic. Sir Paul McCartney also talks with Nic Harcourt at LA’s KCRW.

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How do you go from a hustler to CEO? Jay Z’s bankrolled an estimated $320 million fortune in 10 years.
Finance guru, Alvin Hall speaks to Jigga about his success as an entrepreneur and CEO of Def Jam.

1Xtra tells the story of how the Jay Z went from rags to riches. Is he proof that rappers make great entrepreneurs?

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When the Grateful Dead’s 30-year run ended with the death of guitarist-composer Jerry Garcia, the band had morphed into one of the world’s most popular concert tour attractions. Now they’ve made it to the concert hall. Lee Johnson, the composer behind “Dead Symphony No. 6: An Orchestral Tribute to the Grateful Dead” joins us to talk about the long strange trip.

Listen to the interview with Lee Johnson (mp3)

The music journalist Carolina Gonzales talks about some of the hottest music web sites for Latin Alternative Music from the Latin Alternative Music Conference in New York.

Listen to an introduction to Latin independent music (mp3)

Here are the sites referenced in the WNYC interview:

Batanga.com
Elhood.com
Quepasa.com

Each week, industry veteran Celia Hirschman considers the changes and trends happening in the music business. An independent consultant for the music business, she founded the marketing consulting company Downtown Marketing and also runs the UK-based record label One Little Indian in North America.

Here is a recent show originally aired on KCRW in LA:

According to Roll Call, which is the Congressional newspaper, the Recording Industry Association of America, or RIAA, is joining forces with several artists’ organizations to push Congress to require that broadcast radio stations pay royalties to performers. This is an entirely new issue and one that will be hotly argued by all sides.

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