HOLLYWOOD, Calif. — Georg van Handel (CEO) and Chris Honetschlaeger (President) with BETA Records, LLC, announced today that they will partner with Javien Digital Payment Solutions, Inc. to provide a complete solution for the sale of music, merchandise, and other content from their artists within BETA’s upcoming social music community.

TOLUCA LAKE, Calif. — The National Association of Record Industry Professionals (NARIP) announced this week a variety of upcoming music industry events, including top producer songwriter Derek Bramble at NARIP’s Producing Hit Songs series in L.A. on May 18th, and Modern A&R with Joe Poindexter in Phoenix on May 19th.

SANTA MONICA, Calif. & EMERYVILLE, Calif. — Yahoo! Music (NASDAQ: YHOO) and Gracenote(R) today announced a new licensing deal allowing Yahoo! Music to offer the largest catalog of legal, licensed song lyrics from Gracenote to Yahoo! Music’s consumers. Beginning today, song lyrics for hundreds of thousands of songs from all five major publishers will be incorporated into Yahoo! Music through Gracenote’s growing database.

TOKYO and OAKDALE, Minn. — Imation Corp. (NYSE: IMN) and TDK (NYSE: TDK) announced this week that they have reached a definitive agreement under which Imation will acquire TDK brand world wide recording media business and use of the TDK brand name for recording media products.

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — TrueFire.com, a leading provider of online guitar lessons and interactive courses, is now shipping Marc Schonbrun’s Geek Guitar, an interactive video course designed to bring the latest technology to guitarists for recording and performing.

REVIEWS: Scott G goes back to old habits by writing a batch of CD reviews. As in his prior reviews, the musical styles he covers are all over the place, from the hip hop of Enjae to the glorious organized noise of Nine Inch Nails, from East/West chanteuse Noa Dori to two very diverse soundtracks (’Rize’ and ‘Young, Single and Angry’).

SEATTLE, Wash. — iLike, inc, the six-month-old social music discovery service, announced today that it has surpassed one million registered users and is now processing over 200 million monthly track plays based on enabling users to log their listening habits on their iPods and PCs. The company also announced new concert-discovery features with event listings provided by Ticketmaster.

SEATTLE, Wash. — As a co-producer and music supervisor of the buzz-heavy indie flick “A Lawyer Walks into a Bar,” Evan Fitzmaurice had to match top-quality film content with a similarly powerful soundtrack. He began by looking online for original music aggregators, and was impressed by GarageBand’s “excellent interface and search function.”

COLUMN: CHAPTER TWO: Outline of Producing a Show — Choosing to create your own Podcast can be approached in several ways, which will vary depending on your goals. For the kinds of Podcasts we’re going to cover, it’s generally assumed you have a personal computer with an Internet connection, which would be the primary necessity for the typical form of Podcasting.

REVIEW: You can never be too rich or have enough disk space, or be too paranoid about data back-up. In recently deciding it was time to do some back-ups of audio and imaging projects, and other valuable docs, and put them in a fire-proof safe, after somebody’s house burnt down nearby, I chose to look at external hard drives.

LOS ANGELES, Calif. — If you are an unsigned music artist, BETA Records invites you to a special event May 1st at the Sunset Strip Key Club as part of MUSEXPO 2007, the annual gathering of the world’s leading music executives, producers, managers, and new media content experts.

NEW YORK, N.Y. — SoJo Artist Management is pleased to announce the recent signing of New York based Live Society. Hot off their New York win of Bodog’s $1 Million Battle of the Band competition, the band is ready to take the world by storm. Representing a modern day twist on the R&B and Classic Pop sound, Live Society’s danceable grooves and rich harmony driven songs are sure to appeal to all ages.

LOS ANGELES, Calif. — BETA Records Mexico announces additional international expansion which follows the success enjoyed by U.S. and German sites of the online record company headed by founders Chris Honetschlaeger and Georg van Handel. BETA Records actively finds, produces, and showcases unsigned artists and distributes content to fans via digital channels.

HOLLYWOOD, Calif. — A&R Select, the music industry’s benchmark in independent promotion and marketing, is currently hosting an online Battle of the Bands competition held at BB King’s Bar and Grille, located at Universal CityWalk. Over 80 local and regional bands will perform for an industry panel of well-known record labels, music supervisors, managers, music directors, and publishers.

COLUMN: With the BBC announcement of a new version of the Sgt. Pepper album (cover versions of Beatles songs by mostly mediocre bands), Scott G suggests we take this concept to ridiculous heights (or depths). Imagine the Insane Clown Posse singing Merle Haggard.

NAB 2007 - Las Vegas — ADAM Audio, a leading provider of top quality professional audio reference monitors, announces the NAB debut of its A7 near-field monitor. This active, 2-way reference tool offers broadcast engineers, production directors, producers, and talent the most accurate audio reproduction available today.

COLUMN: Scott G offers a warning to musicians: the world says it wants originality, creativity, boundless imagination, innovation, and new ideas, but it just isn’t so. The fact is that you can go too far. Handcrafting your own CD packaging, for example. Or covering it with wax before sending it to anyone.

JAMAICA, N.Y. — The Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning (JCAL) is pleased to present “A Jamaica, Queens Thing”: Rap and the Crack Era in South Jamaica, organized by guest curator Herb Tam. The opening artist reception takes place Saturday, April 14, 2007, 4 - 7 pm.

MADISON, Wis. — Sony Creative Software announced today the release of Sound Forge 9 Professional Digital Audio Production Suite. Sound Forge 9 new features include multichannel file recording, editing and processing, phase scope metering, and Dolby(R) Digital AC-3 export.

PFINZTAL, Germany — Hot on the heels of their 1.0 launch announcement in March, VirSyn has already posted a patch to their new chaos synth called POSEIDON - the Ocean of Sound, which updates the program with both new features and the expected minor bug fixes for a new product.

PORTLAND, Ore. — Zack Orr Music proudly announces the release of “Francisco the Man.” Francisco the Man is 12 songs, each coinciding with the months in a year. As the album progresses through the four seasons, the instrumentation and overall sound changes as well. Zack recorded natural sounds from each of the four seasons and arranged them as rhythmic beds and soundscapes throughout the record.