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**This blog was contributed by Eric Volpe, Music Channel Assistant**

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is slowly figuring out how to battle piracy. In the past, the RIAA has dragged a couple of poor, stubborn, and tech-savvy college students to court and hit them with fines so large, it makes student loans look like spare change.

This blog was contributed by Eric Volpe, Music Channel Assistant

Times have changed drastically for budding musicians. As recently as a decade ago, a band would record a demo, send it to a label, and hopefully get signed. Musicians today must market themselves on a digital platform, build a fan-base, tour, blog, tweet, network, and maybe lure the attention of a label, and even then may opt out of signing to a label at all. As more and more musicians consider the Do-It-Yourself model, music professionals are quick to offer insight into the phenomenon.

On Monday, the Dept. of Justice agreed to allow the merger of ticket sales giants Live Nation and Ticketmaster. Combined, the gargantuan company will operate 140 concert venues around the world and sell about 140 million tickets a year.

It was recently disclosed by Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer that the iTunes Store has fiscally performed “a bit over break-even, and that hasn’t changed.” In other words, Apple, being the well-recognized digital sales monster that it is, is not aiming to make a profit from iTunes (despite nearly 2.5 billion songs of annual music sales).

This is a continued series keeping up with this years MIDEM Conference. For yesterday's coverage, go here. Visit Zoom In Music over the next couple days for MIDEM news or to subscribe to the RSS feed.

It was announced yesterday at the MIDEM Conference in Cannes that Seymore Stein and Richard Gottehrer (of Sire Records and the digital distribution company The Orchard, respectively) would be bringing back the 60’s born bluesy label, Blue Horizon.

There are a rising number of bands that are butting heads with their labels over increasingly tasteless marketing deals. With album sales dropped, it seems monetizing in an increasingly free economy means more and more bands are being pushed to swallow that painful pill: selling out. 

This past Saturday, business and networking professionals of the music industry met in Cannes, France for the worlds largest music industry trade fair, the MIDEM Conference. A major topic during this year’s conference: digital file-sharing and its impact on the industry as a whole.

Do not listen to your crotchety friends: 2009 was a fantastic year for music. From Animal Collective back in January to Alicia Keys and Stephen Colbert duetting two days ago, this has been one of the best in recent memory (even so, 2010 certainly has the potential to top it).

The only people complaining about new music these days are those who aren't paying any attention.

Each week ZIO asks a different musician the same 11 questions via email. Visit Zoom In Music weekly for a new installment or subscribe to the RSS feed.

Each week ZIO asks a different musician the same 11 questions via email. Visit Zoom In Music weekly for a new installment or subscribe to the RSS feed.

Each week ZIO asks a different musician the same 11 questions via email. Visit Zoom In Music weekly for a new installment or subscribe to the RSS feed.

This blog post was submitted by Max Willens, ZIO's Music Channel Assistant.

Everybody knows that music magazines are dying. Just head to any book or record store (assuming, of course, that you can still find one) and check out the racks. The advertising is drying up, the readers have moved on, and really, it's only a matter of time.

This blog post was submitted by Max Willens, ZIO's Music Channel Assistant.

Imagine for a moment that one of your all-time favorite rap groups got back together, and held a live press conference where fans got to ask the questions.

What would you ask, given this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity?

This blog post was submitted by Max Willens, ZIO's Music Channel Assistant.

This blog post was submitted by Max Willens, ZIO's Music Channel Assistant.