Late last month we had our first EconMusic conference at the Natural History Museum in London, where we talked about all things digital music, including how its affected by the mobile industry, piracy, as well as the new trend of artists bypassing stores to reach out directly to their fans.…

Everyone, by now, is familiar with Radiohead’s no-label, direct-to-fan experiment last year. But a growing number of operators is playing with different interpretations of a thesis that’s been around as long as the internet - that the label nowadays is an anachronism, and that bands can finance and release music…

Billy Bragg used our EconMusic conference in London to urge the emerging wave of web services to pay artists fairly for using their songs. “Everyone’s making a shitload of money, it seems, except the content providers,” said the singer-songwriter, who has previously criticised MySpace and MTV on artists’ rights and…

Mobile music, the art of welding a Walkman to a handset, has so much promise - but in most countries outside the Far East it’s still just that. Two thirds of mobile users don’t want music, said a recent survey from Jupiter Research, so its research VP Mark Mulligan, our…

Did we mention that Billy Bragg is speaking at EconMusic, our London conference examining the digital music business on September 23? Billy has previously taken on MySpace for its policy on artist royalties and Bebo for building a fortune off musicians’ work. At EconMusic, Billy joins Last.fm, Mog.com and others…

As a bit of compensation for the end of summer, we’re offering tickets to EconMusic at a special back-to-work 20 percent discount for this week only. We’ve got a great lineup for the half-day conference, which will take place Sept. 23 at London’s Natural History Museum—and we’re still not done.…

Some 2.3 million people skanked Radiohead’s latest album from BitTorrent sources during the two months it was legally available for free. A research paper from P2P monitor Big Champagne and the UK’s MCPS-PRS royalty collector said the “staggering” number “far exceeds what outsiders have reported as the estimated download total…

Pretty soon, everybody will be offering a subscription music service. Latest is BSkyB; it’s secured Universal’s Total Music repertoire (which includes Amy Winehouse) for a new launch that will allow unlimited MP3 downloading and on-demand streaming for a monthly subscription in the UK and Ireland. And it’s starting a new…

Terry McBride’s Nettwerk is perhaps best known for funding the legal defense for a 15-year-old music downloader sued by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). But the label, which counts Barenaked Ladies and Dido on its roster, has also set about transforming itself in to a digital distributor, on…

Just another reminder that, on the afternoon of Tuesday, September 23, we will be throwing EconMusic, a half-day conference in London discussing the emerging economics of the digital music business. Sign-up and more details coming soon, but speakers on board so far include… —Martin Stiksel, co-founder, Last.fm—David Courtier-Dutton, CEO, Slicethepie—David…