We’ve been a little quiet on blog.amazingtunes.com, probably whilst we’ve been concentrating on office moves, national DAB radio stations and streaming speechless audio on the Internet… If you’re interested in what we’re doing with Amazing Radio (and why wouldn’t you be) then check out at www.amazingradio.co.uk

We’ll be back to blogging on here about all the good stuff happening on amazingtunes.com, new music, unsigned artists, growing numbers of fans and plenty of innovation. The site’s had a spruce up recently and we’ve been working hard on a raft of new features which we’ll let you know more about in due course. The plan is little and often; improvements and innovation to give you even more reasons to love amazingtunes.com

We’ve already been voted Pocket-Lint’s ‘Website of the Day’ this week. See what they had to say about amazingtunes.com and Amazing Radio at http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/31047/new-unsigned-acts-on-radio

Top of the Pops has found itself top of the BBC agenda of late as this years one-off Christmas special got announced, then got axed, only to be announced again, and as it stands the show is now accompanied by a New Years Eve special to boot.

At the ripe old age of 42 Top of the Pops was cancelled by the BBC in July 2006 due to waning figures. However when rumors and a subsequent announcement that this years Christmas special was to be cancelled there was an overwhelming show of support for the program, now causing speculation that the BBC must bring back the iconic chart show to a regular weekly slot. A poll running on MusicWeek.com showed a 91% majority in favor for the return of TOTP, with a host of industry insiders all optimistic of a return to our screens in the near future.

Obviously though, there’s more than one music chart that matters, and for all that is current on amazingtunes check out our run down of the amazingtunes top 10 here.

…amazingtunes

• The latest offering from Oasis, their 7th studio album Dig Out Your Soul, has entered the charts this week going straight in at number one selling just over 200,000 copies. Pretty remarkable considering that’s seven albums and seven consecutive number ones.

• Ringo Starr has posted a video up on his site requesting fans, as of next monday (20/10/08), to stop sending him fan mail as he has “too much to do”. The note to admirers warns that any mail received on or after the 10th will be thrown away without consideration. This PR blunder is the second of the year after he caused outrage implying he was disgusted at the suggestion of moving back to his hometown Liverpool.

• Findings from a recent study have suggested that online music piracy has had a 10% reduction in 2008. The results from Entertainment Media Research offer positive suggestions that actions from distributors, labels and Internet Service Providers are all encouraging the listener to follow legitimate means to get their music.

• Glastonbury are to abandon the pre-registration system put in place in 2007 after they’ve failed to shift the 145,000 tickets made available to the public. Suggestions of ‘wordsmith’ Jaz-Z’s appearance on the bill being a culprit for the low sales has been flatly refused, though opening tickets up to the public in the more conventional manner last week has still failed to realise a sell-out.

• Sony BMG have become the latest major to join Nokia’s new music intiative ‘Comes With Music’. The project will see Sony BMG, along with Universal, offer free unlimated access and downloads of their catalogs on Nokia phones when you purchase certain Nokia handsets. The music will however be hampered by DRM and won’t play on your iPod, however the ownership won’t expire when they promotion does.

• Coldplay are joining the here’s-one-for-free bandwagon, as the moderate rockers prepare to give aware their first single of their new album Viva La Vida in the May 7 edition of the NME. The single, Violet Hill, will come in the form of a special edition 7” vinyl with B-side A Spell A Rebel Yell. The single will have it’s formal release on June 16.

…amazingtunes

It’s a given that Sony BMG are fairly active in the world of piracy due to the current state of affairs in the industry, bringing to justice those ‘evil’ propagators and perpetrators of illegal file sharing.

It turns out however that they’ve been busier than you may think; in between the numerous individual court cases and the anti-piracy software that they hid in their CDs – to the outrage of many – they’ve found time to bag themselves a slice of the free illegal software pie.

PointDev, a software company from France, got tipped off to Sony BMG using their software with a pirated license code, with a subsequent raid confirming the illegal usage of the software. To further taint Sony BMG’s image, and illuminate their hypocrisy, the Business Software Alliance suspects that up to 47 percent of the software installed on Sony BMG’s computers could be pirated.

It’s all a bit ironic really.

…amazingtunes.com

• U2 have followed in Madonna