Poor Mojo's Newswire

Beastie Boys rapper Adam Yauch has died at the age of 48, Rolling Stone Magazine has reported. The star was diagnosed with cancer in 2009 but it is not clear whether his death was connected with the illness. Yauch had surgery and radiation therapy but said last year "reports of my being totally cancer free are exaggerated". Under the alias MCA, he joined the group co-founded by Mike D, Mix Master Mike, and Ad Roc in 1981. They went on to sell more than 40m albums worldwide. The band started out as a hardcore punk outfit called The Young Aborigines in 1979 but switched to hip hop in 1984. Two years later they launched their critically-acclaimed debut album Licensed To Ill, which spawned the hit singles (You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (To Party) and No Sleep Till Brooklyn.

The Sound Recordings catalog comprises over 17,400 digital audio files, beginning with Lomax’s first recordings onto (newly invented) tape in 1946 and tracing his career into the 1990s. In addition to a wide spectrum of musical performances from around the world, it includes stories, jokes, sermons, personal narratives, interviews conducted by Lomax and his associates, and unique ambient artifacts captured in transit from radio broadcasts, sometimes inadvertently, when Alan left the tape machine running. Not a single piece of recorded sound in Lomax’s audio archive has been omitted: meaning that microphone checks, partial performances, and false starts are also included. This material from Alan Lomax’s independent archive, begun in 1946, which has been digitized and preserved by the Association for Cultural Equity, is distinct from the thousands of earlier recordings on acetate and aluminum discs he made from 1933 to 1942 under the auspices of the Library of Congress. This earlier collection — which includes the famous Jelly Roll Morton, Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly, and Muddy Waters sessions, as well as Lomax’s prodigious collections made in Haiti and Eastern Kentucky (1937) — is the provenance of the American Folklife Center at the Library. Attempts are being made, however, to digitize some of this rarer material, such as the Haitian recordings, and to make it available in the Sound Recordings catalog. Please check in periodically for updates.

Over the last few months, the music industry has been rocked by multiple lawsuits alleging that artists such as Kenny Rogers, Sister Sledge, Rob Zombie and others have been cheated out of substantial money from the improper calculation of revenues from digital music. The plaintiffs in these cases assert that the music giants have been wrongfully treating digital music purchases as "sales" rather than "licenses," and thus only sharing 10-20 percent of revenue instead of a near 50-50 split they believe is owed. . . . At an upcoming jury trial, the two sides will fuss over exactly how much money is due to Eminem's production team. In advance, THR has obtained the audit report prepared by the plaintiff's accounting expert that F.B.T. hopes to showcase before a jury. The report, which is being vigorously disputed by the defendants, represents millions of dollars in claimed revenue from digital downloads. It also shows the other ways that record labels supposedly withhold too much income from artists, from overstating the costs of advertising on TV to not sharing the proceeds of litigation winnings. The trial is scheduled for April 4. . . .