CMU Weekly Editor's Letter

CMU Weekly – Friday 20 May 2011

By | Published on Saturday 21 May 2011

Andy Malt and a cake

So, I am back from The Great Escape. In fact, it all seems like a very long time ago now. It was a brilliant, if tiring few days, though.

You may have noticed that last week’s Weekly never reached your inbox, despite the fact that we had promised one. In the end, we made the decision not to run last Friday’s bulletin, which anyone who heard our voices on last week’s CMU podcast will understand. If you haven’t yet listened to our round-up of the Great Escape conference and festival (and the strange deepening of our voices) on the CMU podcast, have a listen here.

But, anyway, we’re back now, and since we last spoke, CMU has turned a year older. Wednesday was our thirteenth birthday. The publication has finally become a teenager, and now all we have to look forward to is five years or so of unreasonable behaviour and dubious music taste. Pretty much business as usual, then.

I’ve not been here for the full thirteen years. In fact, I joined just before the tenth anniversary, but I’ve been an avid reader of CMU pretty much since it started, back when it was still in print form and sent out to grass roots journalists and music types in the late 90s. It all went electronic when the CMU Daily was launched in 2002, which is now received by over 20,000 people who work in the music industry every day of the working week. And then this little thing, the CMU Weekly, began arriving in inboxes every Friday in 2008.

I may only have arrived at the end of that history, but I’m very proud to be heading things up at what is a very exciting time for us. Things are continuing to grow and we’re doing more than ever before. We just programmed the UK’s biggest music industry convention, and the CMU training business we launched last year is doing very nicely. I’d better plug that, huh? You want some music business training, either in PR, copyright or business models? Well, head over to www.theCMUwebsite.com/training and book yourself in.

OK, plugging over. Well, no, actually I’ve got one more thing to talk about: this week’s CMU podcast. In fact, I’ll start with a disclaimer. We recorded this week’s podcast on Thursday evening, and spent some time discussing the rumour that HMV was about to sell Waterstones to Russian billionaire Alexander Mamut. And then what did they go and do? They went and sold Waterstones to Russian billionaire Alexander Mamut on Friday morning. Bah! Still, Chris did a nifty edit in a bid to turn our ‘it’s going to happen’ conversation into a ‘it just happened’ one. See if you can spot it – there’s a free slice of CMU birthday cake if you can*.

As well as the HMV chat, Chris and I also discuss the Hargreaves Review, EMI’s rumoured deal with Apple’s new digital music service (which thankfully they didn’t then go and confirm the next morning), Katy Perry spending a year in the US top ten and Sara Quin of Tegan and Sara calling out Tyler, The Creator.

As well as that, we’ve got a playlist from the brilliant Kissy Sell Out here in the Weekly this week. He has a new album out on Monday, which is very good. I recommend you listen to it. But listen to his playlist first, because that’s also excellent.

Andy Malt
Editor, CMU

* Subject to availability**
** We’ve eaten all the cake already, sorry.

THE BULLETIN: Click here to read this week’s CMU Weekly bulletin

THE PODCAST: Click here to download this week’s podcast or stream below

 
Subscribe to the e-bulletin here | Subscribe to the podcast here | Subscribe in iTunes here
 



READ MORE ABOUT: