The Government has come under fire from a range of music trade bodies including UK Music Chief Executive Feargal Sharkey after rejecting numerous recent recommendations to relax certain licensing laws for live music gigs.

This followed the Government response to a report submitted by the Culture, Media and Sport Committee that ruled out a much discussed licensing exemption for venues with a maximum capacity of 200 people. The Committee had also suggested reintroducing a ‘two in a bar’ rule, which had previously allowed venues to host live music performed by one or two musicians without a permit, prior to the introduction of the Licensing Act 2003.

However, Whitehall officials rejected this notion and also stated that the Metropolitan Police currently had no plans to drop the highly controversial Form 696.

In a statement on the UK Music website, Sharkey said: “Yet again we are told to wait. Yet again we are told that there will be another new review process, more meetings and yet another group, this time charged specifically with trying to develop loopholes which exploit a deeply flawed and ill-conceived Licensing Act. At what point does someone within Government become brave enough to acknowledge that it is time to raise a hand, time to admit they have got it wrong and time to fix it”.

Sharkey went on to state that the Government had not given sufficient explanation for its decisions and had consistently failed to provide evidence to demonstrate how music is linked with noise, crime and disorder.

Following this, the Government were also criticised by The Musicians’ Union and Parliament’s Culture Select Committee Chair, John Whittingdale for ignoring such key recommendations. As reported by Music Week, Whittingdale spoke out against the lack of licensing reform at the Musicians’ Union conference, describing the Labour Government’s response as “Utterly pathetic and hopeless”.

Tory MP Whittingdale also advocated the previously reported proposed copyright extension in the UK and joined in the debate regarding piracy, backing the ‘Graduated Response’ system proposed by Sharkey and documented last month in The Gen.

UK Music is an umbrella organization aiming to represent the interests of the UK’s commercial Music Industry. Its members include the Association of Independent Music (AIM), British Academy of Songwriters, Composers & Authors (BASCA), British Recorded Music Industry (BPI), The PRS for Music, Music Managers Forum (MMF), Music Publishers Association Limited (MPA), Musicians’ Union (MU) and Phonographic Performance Limited (PPL).

Have your say! Is this further evidence of a regressive and ineffective Government approach to live music licensing reforms? Is it indicative that the Government are incapable of addressing the key issues and industry concerns surrounding live music? What are your thoughts on 696, ‘two in a bar’ rules, UK Music etc?

Now let us switch the focus to more positive Government related news. Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport Ben Bradshaw launched the UK Young Creative Entrepreneur Awards for 2009/10 at the beginning of this month.

There are eight awards in total relating to different creative disciplines, one of which is music. The other categories are communications, design, fashion, interactive, publishing, screen and visual arts.

Upon launching the scheme, Bradshaw said in a statement: “The creative industries are one of the UK’s success stories and we are known worldwide for the strength of our creative talent. Therefore it’s only right that we celebrate our young creative entrepreneurs and give them an opportunity to gain further experience and knowledge at an international level”.

To find out more about the awards and how to apply, go here.

The art of producing and mixing music
A free 12 week DJ skills and production course

Courses will run throughout 2009/2011
Spaces are free but limited
Get in touch NOW to secure your space

The next courses begin on 15th September, 2009

Candidates must be aged between 16-24. All styles of music catered for.

The Cold Blend course uses first-rate producers and DJs to teach skills including beat-matching, beat juggling, turntablism, CD mixing, FX, editing, sequencing and sampling with access to the latest equipment and software.

If you are starting up, keen to develop existing skills or making first forays into production, get in touch with us to secure your space.

For more information email Joe Frankland phone (0191) 245 0099 (ext.4) or check the Generator website.

The 2009 nominees for the annual Barclaycard Mercury Prize were recently announced. The awards, established in 1992 by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) seek to champion British music and identify the best album from the UK or Ireland each year. A selected independent panel of musicians, music executives, journalists and other prominent figures in the UK music industry choose the short listed nominations, with the emphasis on ‘Innovation and creativity’. Primal Scream’s ‘Screamadelica’ was the inaugural winner of the award in 1992, which in recent years has seen the likes of PJ Harvey (2001), Dizzee Rascal (2003), Arctic Monkeys (2006), Klaxons (2007) and Elbow (2008) walk away with the prestigious prize. The winner also receives a £20,000 cheque.

The nominees for this year are:

Florence & The Machine - Lungs
Kasabian - West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum
Speech Debelle - Speech Therapy
Friendly Fires - Friendly Fires
La Roux - La Roux
Bat For Lashes - Two Suns
The Horrors - Primary Colours
Glasvegas - Glasvegas
Led Bib - Sensible Shoes
Sweet Billy Pilgrim - Twice Born Men
The Invisible - The Invisible
Lisa Hannigan - Sea Sew

Florence & the Machine (pictured above) and Kasabian are currently the Bookie’s favourites to win, with William Hill giving them both odds of 5/1.

The winner will be announced live on BBC 2 on Tuesday 8th Sep.

Have Your Say! What are your thoughts on the Mercury Prize nominees this year? Are there many unpredictable names above? Who have they missed out? And who will walk away with the prize this year?

Technology giants Apple and several major labels are reportedly developing a new interactive multi-media music format that will enable fans to experience an album through a virtual CD booklet, including features such as lyrics, photos and liner notes- In essence, the traditional staples and perceived added value of a physical CD or vinyl release.

This would hopefully provide an alternative way for fans to consume and experience digital formats and is presumably aimed at encouraging purchase of complete albums as opposed to individual tracks. Currently, some albums are available for download from iTunes with the equivalent of a limited CD booklet, such as Gang Gang Dance’s ‘Saint Dymphna’ (pictured above).

The new format could see a release as soon as this September and it is heavily rumoured that it is being prepared in conjunction with a newly developed Apple touch screen mini portable computer.

Meanwhile, European streaming music service Spotify has developed an application to use their service on the increasingly popular iPhone, pending approval from the iPhone creators. Apple could conceivably reject the application on grounds that Spotify competes with its own iTunes music store, sharing similar functionalities.

Although Apple has approved applications from streaming music providers Pandora and Last.fm in the past, such services are much more like streaming radio. In contrast, Spotify allows people to choose specific songs to listen to, creating playlists of songs. Crucially, the iPhone Spotify application would also enable users to listen to their favourite tracks in an off-line database as well as streaming through Wi-Fi networks and 3G mobile phone data networks. In the UK, Spotify currently has a free service supported by advertising alongside a premium service which allows users to listen to ad-free streams for £9.99 a month and the proposed I-phone application will only be available to premium subscribers. Stay tuned for further developments!

North East pop legends Prefab Sprout return with their eagerly anticipated new album Let’s Change The World With Music on September 7th through Newcastle based Kitchenware Records. According to sources close to the band, this ‘new’ album started out as a collection of 17 year old demos that never surfaced on Sony or Kitchenware in 1992 due to the excessive mentioning of God and Princess Diana!

The LP was intended to be the follow up to their album ‘Jordan the Comeback’ and now songwriter Paddy McAloon (pictured above) has revisited the compositions, also producing the record, with song titles including ‘Ride’, ‘Let There Be Music’ and ‘Sweet Gospel Music’. It is Prefab Sprout’s first release since 2001’s ‘The Gunman and Other Stories’.

Based on a sneak preview in the Generator offices, this could well be the gospel album Quincy Jones never produced for James Ingram. For a listen to the track ‘Let There Be Music’ go here.

Notorious File-sharing site The Pirate Bay was ordered to shut down in The Netherlands by a judge in Amsterdam on 30th July.

The anti-piracy organisation BREIN filed a suit against The Pirate Bay, stating that it is responsible for millions of copyright infringements on a daily basis.

Web Traffic to and from The Netherlands relating to The Pirate Bay must be blocked within 10 days, and if they fail to do so, the company co-founders Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Peter Sunde Kolmsioppi and Fredrik Neij will be ordered to pay $42,300 per day in penalties.

Last week, co-founder and main spokesperson for the site Peter Sunde resigned from The Pirate Bay. In a statement on his own blog Sunde said: “I have decided to not be the spokesperson for The Pirate Bay anymore. The reasons are many but most importantly it takes too much of my time. I want to build something new and I want to focus my energy in a different direction”.

As previously reported in April, the three co-founders alongside Carl Lundstrom, who financed the site, were sentenced to a year in jail and fined £2.4 m for copyright infringement.

The Sweden-based site was to be acquired by Swedish software company Global Gaming Factory X AB in August after being sold for 60 million Swedish Kronor (£4.7 m according to current exchange rates).

The Pirate Bay is to be transformed by GGF into a legitimate music site that sees artists and record labels get revenue for downloads provided. However, there are currently major doubts over the deal actually coming to fruition following the walkout of Wayne Rosso, the man responsible for making it happen. The closing of the multi-million-dollar Pirate Bay buyout was due this week but Rosso, who only joined Global Gaming Factory X AB in mid-July, has now resigned his position with the company.

A report published by the European Commission this month revealed that One in Three young people in Europe say that they are not willing to pay for online services such as digital music and video downloads.

The report, which aims to examine the competitiveness of Europe’s digital sector over the past five years, found that 16- to 24-year-olds have a particularly uncompromising attitude to online payment systems.

Digital Competitiveness found that 33% of the so-called ‘digital generation’ are reluctant to pay at all to download or view online content, twice the average across the entire EU.

In related developments this month, Joel Tenenbaum, an American student who admitted illegally sharing 30 songs online, has been ordered to pay a fine of $675,000 (£400,000). Tenenbaum is only the second person in the US to be found guilty of illegal filesharing, with a jury deciding that the 25-year-old should pay $22,500 (£13,370) per song to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), to be distributed between the record labels whose copyright had been infringed.

As previously reported by The Gen , earlier this year Jammie Thomas Rasset was found guilty of illegally sharing 24 songs via Kazaa and ordered to pay pay a £1.2m fine in the first music copyright violation case to go to trial in the United States.

Wearside/ Tyneside / North West ensemble O’Messy Life are the new musical project fronted by David Littlefair, former Hot Air Balloons singer and Portions for Foxes Independent live music promoter.

Evoking a drunken, folk inflected and intricately augmented take on Bright Eyes, The Pogues and 10,000 Maniacs, O’Messy Life recently released the intriguing Green Posies Growin’, Gangrene Below ‘Em’ EP, which you can purchase at their Myspace. You can also download the earlier Worry Party EP there completely for free.

Catch them live on 24th September at World HQ or the Ouseburn Boathouse on 10th October. To hear some tracks and find out more about forthcoming live shows, go to their Myspace.

Other names to watch out for:

Lets Buy Happiness

Young Rebel Set

Key regional gigs over the next few weeks:

15th August- I am Kloot, Wolves At The Door, Ever Since The Lake Caught Fire, Mick Rolfe, The Felons and Marcheys House at The Railway pub, Bedlington

17th August- Three Trapped Tigers, Gold Panda at The Head Of Steam.

08th September: The Low Anthem at The Cluny 2.

Toonwaves is a new webzine dedicated to music and culture in the North East. Launched in May 2009, it aims to encompass cutting-edge features, reviews, news and previews documenting musical happenings in Tyneside.

Toonwaves was devised by Newcastle based Journalist Toby Rogers, who told The Gen: “I love this city and I’m proud of its artistic output”.

Rogers continued: “With the recent successes of Maximo Park, Detroit Social Club, The Chapman Family and Beth Jeans Houghton (pictured above), it feels like the UK is finally starting to take notice.”

With significant experience contributing freelance features and reviews to both the UK and US music press, Toby is obviously well placed to document independent music in the region.

Check out this new North East blog here and e-mail Toby Rogers for further info.

The month in music - Our soundtrack to August for you to enjoy. The best new bands and releases, the Mercury Prize nominees, the festivals, the reissues, the hottest new tunes alongside some classics, remixes and guilty pleasures - Its all here if you look carefully.

If you haven’t already, you’ll need to download the Spotify software for free and then simply click this link: The Gen Spotify Playlist August 2009 .

Enjoy it and don’t forget let us know what you think by commenting below and send us your suggestions for next month. Why not compile your own and post the link below?

Twitterati

Five to follow this August. Keep in the loop with the most entertaining and informative sites from around the North East and the UK on Twitter. Follow Generator here.

Toonwaves: North East webzine
Frankie and the Heartstrings: Keep up to date on the North East’s hottest new band.

Narc Magazine.

Lucas Renney: Ex Golden Virgins Sunderland songwriter, about to release a great debut solo album.
Featured Artists Coalition.

Can you recommend anymore for next month? Post your links below or e-mail us.