MPs from all parties call on government to back ticket tout bots ban
In a bid to maintain the momentum in Westminster that could lead to tighter regulation of the secondary ticketing market in the UK, a cross-party group of MPs joined with reps from the music industry yesterday for a photo-call as the Digital Economy Bill reached its 'report stage' in Parliament.

It is hoped a bots ban can be inserted into that piece of legislation, and yesterday's gathering called on government ministers to now back that move. As much previously reported, Nigel Adams MP first proposed amending the DEB last month so to include a ban of the kind of software used by industrial-level touts to buy up large quantities of tickets.

Those proposals were initially put on hold after ministers said that they wanted to investigate if the Computer Misuse Act already outlawed such software, but following a Culture, Media And Sport Select Committee hearing on the secondary market, introducing a specific bots-ban is now back on the agenda.

Although Adams and his fellow Conservative Damian Collins MP, the current Chair of the Culture, Media And Sport Select Committee, have been most vocal on ticket touting in recent months, the latest move to further regulate the secondary market - or better enforce existing regulations - has cross-party support.

Labour MP Sharon Hodgson, who has campaigned on this issue for years, most recently via the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Ticket Abuse she co-chairs, which pushed for the ticket resale regulations that were added to 2015 Consumer Rights Act, backs the latest proposals. As does Labour Deputy Leader and Shadow Culture Secretary Tom Watson, who also attended yesterday's photo-call outside Parliament.

From the music community, industry backers of the anti-tout FanFair Alliance were in attendance, as was recently appointed Featured Artists Coalition CEO Imogen Heap and Josh Franceschi of You Me At Six, who gave an artist's perspective at the aforementioned hearing of the culture select committee.

Franceschi has also appeared on the BBC's 'Daily Politics' show to speak out against the touts and call for new regulation. Declaring that "if there is one thing threatening the music industry today, it's ticket touts", the You Me At Six man noted: "When a gig is announced, fans head to primary ticket websites often to be told the show is sold out, when most of the time it's not. It's the touts that have bought the tickets, forcing fans to pay hiked up prices on secondary websites".

He went on: "These secondary websites masquerade as fan-to-fan market places, but as we highlighted at the select committee, they are all dependent on hardcore ticket touts. One of StubHub's major clients was recently outed as a man from Quebec, who is still scalping and reselling thousands of tickets to UK events. Enough is enough. Genuine fans are being priced out of the equation, music lovers are consumers too and consumers have rights".

He concluded: "In New York, legislation is in place and the UK must follow suit too - those profiteering should face prison or a fine. And this goes beyond consumer protection, it is about cultural access. The music industry is already suffering from a lack of money coming into it in other ways. If we want the live community to thrive we need this to change".

Meanwhile, back in Westminster yesterday, Hodgson told reporters she was pleased there was cross-party support for further action in the touting domain "after many years of campaigning on the many issues in the ticketing industry which are locking fans out of seeing their favourite artist, sports team or theatre show".

She added: "The chorus of concerns from industry, fans and parliamentarians alike is becoming hard for the government to ignore. It's time the government acted".

Adams echoed Hodgson's call for government support for the bot ban amendment, saying: "It's time for the government to act on industrial scale ticket touting to protect genuine music fans. Criminalising the use of 'bots' by touts to buy up large numbers of tickets is a good place to start".

The proposed amendment was subsequently discussed in Parliament, with Adams reporting on Twitter that culture minister Matt Hancock "says government WILL take action if necessary on bots after meeting with industry later this week".

This will please the aforementioned FanFair Alliance, though for them the bots ban is very much just the start, something Campaign Manager Adam Webb noted during yesterday's event, saying: "Criminalising the misuse of bots would disarm some of the worst online ticket touts - but it is important that government does not stop there. We also need proper enforcement of consumer law to disrupt the touts' overall business practices and bring transparency to the secondary ticketing sites that they operate from".

AI may replace some forms of music composition, but it will enhance others
While 'machine learning' is possibly a better term than 'artificial intelligence' to describe the kinds of AI technologies that are impacting on music as we speak, it's certainly true that such tech is set to make an even bigger impact in the coming years, both commercially and creatively, according to Goldsmith College's Mick Grierson, who is among the people set to speak at the latest Music 4.5 event in London tomorrow.

CMU Insights always provides a 'story so far' overview for Music 4.5 events, and this month for the first time this will include a special CMU Trends article, available to premium CMU subscribers online and Music 4.5 attendees at the event. Grierson spoke to CMU as part of that review, confirming that "there are huge numbers of applications for the sound and music industries" as machine learning technologies continue to evolve.

"Various forms of machine learning have been used to combat copyright infringement for years", he notes, referring to sound recognition software like YouTube's Content ID. And recent developments mean technologies of this type "can solve problems that were previously thought of as impossible, such as separating individual tracks from a mix".

Though AI technologies are also impacting on the creative side of music too. Says Grierson: "I definitely think that machine learning will provide more people with greater power with respect to creating music. And this will mean that some forms of music composition could be replaced, though, to be honest, this has been the case for years, and you can easily argue that the role of the composer, in many areas of music, is not as important as you might think, and perhaps never was - take manufactured pop, for example".

But Grierson reckons that these new technologies will generally become tools for human creators, rather than replacing them. "Machines only do what people tell them", he says. "Nothing more. Without people to control and drive the process, you end up with nothing".

"And this is where the real benefit will be", he says. "Machine learning is going to revolutionise what is possible for composers. Once contemporary machine learning is embedded in tools such as non-linear editors and music production systems, music makers are going to suddenly realise that the palette of musical possibility just became so much more awesome".

"The ability to create new sounds - sounds that no one has heard before - will be much more accessible with machine learning", he concludes. "This is what we've been working on at Goldsmiths, and I think the future is bright for machine learning and the arts".

Tickets for the Music 4.5 event 'The New Creative Tech' are available here. Use the code 'CMU' to get a 20% discount.

Warner Music boss reportedly involved in bid for NME publisher Time Inc
Shares in magazine publisher Time Inc - the UK division of which publishes music titles like NME and Uncut - rallied yesterday amid reports that the company's board had knocked back an acquisition bid led by Edgar Bronfman Jr, Len Blavatnik and Ynon Kreiz.

According to sources cited by the New York Post, the trio were offering $18 per share to acquire the media firm, which is a 30% premium on the price the company's shares were trading at last week.

Though analysts reckon that - while Time, in common with all traditional media groups, is still attempting to meet the challenge of significantly boosting the revenues of its online properties as print title income continues to decline - the company's board reckons it could nevertheless command something closer to $23 a share in any takeover, in line with its share price when spun off into a standalone company back in 2014.

Time, originally founded in 1922, was a division of Time Warner from 1990 to 2014, meaning for many years it was in common ownership with Warner Music. It was Bronfman Jr who spearheaded the 2004 deal that made Warner Music independent of the Time Warner group, subsequently selling the music firm to Blavatnik's Access Industries in 2011. Kreiz, meanwhile, currently sits on the Warner Music board.

Blavatnik has been busy expanding his media and entertainment assets in recent years, though most of the businesses he has acquired a stake in remain autonomous. Other possible buyers for Time Inc include existing media owners, who would likely integrate the firm's titles with their own, likely streamlining the portfolio in the process, though some reckon that only a private equity-led bid could come in at $23 a share.

The xx release video for On Hold
The xx have released the video for new single 'On Hold'. It features a lot of miming into telephones.

The band explain: "The video is directed by the brilliant Alasdair McLellan, whose work we all adore. It was filmed in Marfa, Texas, a very special place to us, where we wrote and recorded some of our new album. We have a lot of love and respect for the people of the USA, having played hundreds of shows across the country over the past years. We hope this video reflects just some of the warmth and acceptance we have encountered there".

The xx's new album, 'I See You', is out on 13 Jan. They'll also be touring early next year, including that seven night run at the Brixton Academy.

Here's the video for 'On Hold'.

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New Burial single officially released, after 'accidental' Black Friday sale
Burial has released a new single, his first solo release on Hyperdub since 2013. Featuring two new tracks - 'Young Death' and 'Nightmarket' - the release is available now on Bandcamp.

The new music is also available on limited edition twelve-inch. Good luck bagging one of those though. You could, it turns out, have picked one up in Toronto last Friday, when record shop Sonic Boom accidentally sold five copies of it early. Or, perhaps, 'accidentally'. Either way, people bought them.

Sonic Boom buyer Blair Whitmore tells Pitchfork that the records turned up unclearly marked, so the shop "assumed it was a Black Friday secret listing" and stuck the records on their shelves. It was only the next day that an angry call from Hyperdub revealed that the label was "not happy" about this.

Anyway, that all happened, and now the release is available. Check it out on Bandcamp here.

Coldplay top Ticketmaster's poll of top events in 2016
If there's one thing human beings in 2016 like, it's a list. Everyone knows that. Even Ticketmaster. Which is why the Live Nation ticketing firm polled its customers around the world on the most popular events in 2016, and the most hotly anticipated shows in 2017.

Of course, what Ticketmaster has failed to notice is that, while they definitely like lists, human beings in 2016 aren't that bothered about whether or not those lists contain actual truths. So rather than going to the effort of actually surveying some customers, the ticketing firm could have just made these lists up.

Now, of course, all you cynics out there are probably saying, "well, CMU, how do we know that that's not exactly what Ticketmaster did, and that these lists you are about to publish aren't a load of made up nonsense direct from the imaginations of a Ticketmaster PR whizz?" Well, cynics, it's simple. No one would voluntarily choose to give Coldplay three spots in the UK top ten would they? No one would imagine such a thing. As 2016 has proven time and again, only reality is this grim.

Anyway, lists...

UK Tickets Of The Year 2016 (most popular events)
1. Coldplay (London, Wembley Stadium)
2. Download (Derby, Donnington Park)
3. Beyonce (London, Wembley Stadium)
4. Stone Roses (Manchester, Etihad Stadium)
5. Coldplay (Manchester, Etihad Stadium)
6. Creamfields (Cheshire)
7. Coldplay (Glasgow, Hampden Park)
8. NFL International Series (London, Wembley Stadium and Twickenham Stadiums)
9. Bruce Springsteen And The E Street Band (London, Wembley Stadium)
10. Biffy Clyro, Glasgow Summer Series (Glasgow, Bellahouston Park)

UK Most Anticipated Events 2017
1. Robbie Williams
2. Coldplay
3. Take That
4. Drake
5. Guns N Roses
6. Bruno Mars
7. Download Festival
8. Kings Of Leon
9. The Weeknd
10. Radiohead

Global Ticket Of The Year 2016 (most popular events)
1. Coldplay (London, United Kingdom)
2. Rock Werchter Festival (Belgium)
3. Justin Bieber (Arnhem, Netherlands)
4. Download Festival (United Kingdom)
5. Beyonce (London, United Kingdom)
6. Lollapalooza (Berlin, Germany)
7. Bruce Springsteen And The E Street Band (Den Haag, Netherlands)
8. The Stone Roses (Manchester, United Kingdom)
9. Coldplay (Manchester, United Kingdom)

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Laura Marling announces new album tour dates
Laura Marling has announced that she will release her sixth album, 'Semper Femina', on 10 Mar. She will also be touring the UK the same month.

"I started out writing 'Semper Femina' as if a man was writing about a woman, and then I thought; 'it's not a man, it's me'", says Marling. "I don't need to pretend it's a man to justify the intimacy, or the way I'm looking and feeling about women. It's me looking specifically at women and feeling great empathy towards them, and by proxy, towards myself".

Watch the Marling-directed video for first single, 'Soothing', here.

And here are the tour dates:

8 Mar: Leeds, Academy
9 Mar: Bristol, Colston Hall
10 Mar: Glasgow, ABC
12 Mar: Manchester, Albert Hall
13 Mar: Oxford, Academy
14 Mar: Birmingham, Institute
16 Mar: Brighton, Dome
17 Mar: London, Roundhouse
18 Mar: Salisbury, City Hall

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Wolf Alice to headline Help Refugees shows
Wolf Alice will headline two benefit shows for the Help Refugees charity next month, which will see them joined by members of Years And Years, Dream Wife, Alt-J, Black Honey, Slaves, The Magic Gang, Spectator, Bloody Knees, Swim Deep, Peace and Superfood to perform a set of covers.

Titling the shows Bands4Refugees, the gigs sit alongside the previously announced Rave For Refugees nights, which also take place in December. And a special 14+ show with a 3pm start, added due to demand, will kick things off this Sunday.

"We wanted to bring together musicians to stand in solidarity with refugees and to raise money for Help Refugees during their winter campaign Choose Love", says Wolf Alice's Ellie Rowsell. "Inspired by seeing Peace and Superfood collaborate in a one-off show of covers, we thought it would be so fun to do the same with some of our favourite musicians".

The shows will take place at Kamio in Shoreditch on 4-5 Dec. More info here.

Nordoff Robbins, Independent Venue Week, Olly Murs, more

Other notable announcements and developments today...

• Nordoff Robbins has launched its Christmas appeal, with a video telling the story of how the music therapy charity helped seventeen year old Justin Bieber fan Evie. The campaign comes with the support of Bieber himself.

• Independent Venue Week returns next year from 23-29 Jan. Acting as ambassador for the event will be Tim Burgess, who says: "Independent venues are where every band starts and where music fans get to see emerging talent ... Lots of venues are closing - we definitely need to stick together and stop this happening".

• Billy Corgan has settled his lawsuit with TNA Wrestling and its parent company Impact Ventures. So that's a relief, I'm sure we can all agree. As previously reported, Corgan started working with TNA last year in his latest dalliance with the world of wrestling, but fell out with the company after it failed to repay him money he loaned the business.

• Fufanu have released the video for new single 'Bad Rockets'.

• Olly Murs will be touring the UK in June, July and August next year. Tickets on sale on Friday at 9am.

• Aphex Twin is headlining next year's Field Day in London on 3 Jun.

• Ghetts will celebrate the tenth anniversary of his 'Ghetto Gospel' mixtape by performing it live in full at the Roundhouse in London on 30 Jan.

• Gaika will headline Corsica Studios this Wednesday (aka tomorrow, aka 30 Nov), with support from 808ink. Tickets here.

X-Factor winner's winning single will be digital-only for first time
Bad news people, the post-victory single from this year's 'X-Factor' winner won't be getting a CD release. So, however much you were hoping to celebrate with a shiny piece of plastic the potential win of one of this year's hot contenders - like Burt Curtain, Shelly ShowerCap or the Simon Cowell-coached boyband BRXT - you're going to have to make do with a new-fangled download or stream. It's as if 'X-Factor' bosses think it's 2013.

According to the Official Charts Company, last year's 'X-Factor' champion Louisa Johnson somehow managed to shift 30,000 physical copies of her cover of 'Forever Young', while 2014 victor Ben Haenow sold 92,000 CD copies of his winning-lap single 'Something I Need'. Who'd have thought it possible? Though some prime racking in the country's finest supermarkets have helped with those CD single sales in past years, a strategy that used to secure 'X-Factor' winners the Christmas Number One spot in the olden days.

But no more. While whichever 'X-Factor' finalist most quickly navigates the inflatable assault cause, performs the best waltz with a failed politician and/or bakes the biggest Victoria sponge will immediately release a track, just as soon as Bob Holness has declared them the overall winner on 11 Dec, said track will only be available in a digital form. Sorry Aunty Shelia, but that's modern living.

I've never actually watched 'X-Factor'. Is that the one hosted by Kate Thornton?