Napster will cease their Canadian operations on December 16th, 2011 and the company advises their Canadian customers to use their credits/gift cards and backup their purchases prior to this date. Click here for more details.
Black Friday Week Deals
The Black Friday sales have begun at Amazon.ca 
, EntertainmentEarth.com
, JR.com
, Musician’s Friend
, Tigerdirect.ca
and Tigerdirect.com
.
The rest of the online retailers I buy from appear to be waiting for Friday itself to offer up their Black Friday sales.
It Makes You Think, Again !
It appears that the pending lists affair is not over.
In January 2011, the major labels in Canada had settled a class action lawsuit against them for the unauthorized use and distribution of recordings, as well as unpaid mechanical and video royalties.
EMI Music Canada Inc., Sony Music Entertainment Canada Inc., Universal Music Canada Inc. and Warner Music Canada Co. had later in May 2011 agreed to pay approximately $50.2 Million dollars to songwriters and music publishers that had not been compensated the use of their works in certain compilations and live recordings.
Well, Universal Music Group and Universal Music Canada is now suing the National Union Fire Insurance Company of Pennsylvania, their insurer, for their share of the settlement and other related expenses in the Supreme Court of the State of California in Los Angeles.
According to their November 8th, 2011 complaint found on HollywoodReporter.com, Universal Music Group had paid $14.4 million in damages and approximately $1.06 million in attorney fees and costs.
CRTC Rules Against Caps
The CRTC has ruled against the capping of wholesale bandwidth.
“Under the CRTC’s new capacity-based approach, large telephone and cable companies will sell wholesale bandwidth to independent ISPs on a monthly basis. Independent ISPs will have to determine in advance the amount they need to serve their retail customers and then manage network capacity until they are able to purchase more. Alternatively, large companies can continue to charge independent ISPs a flat monthly fee for wholesale access, regardless of how much bandwidth their customers use. Both billing options give independent ISPs the ability to design service plans and charge their own customers as they see fit.“
The CRTC has decided there should be two wholesale pricing models, neither of which include “provisions that would require independent ISPs to impose bandwidth caps on their retail customers“.
The first is a “Capacity-based model”, would contain a monthly access rate for each of the independent ISP’s retail customers, a monthly capacity charge, offered in increments of 100 megabits per second, and any applicable ancillary charges, such a monthly interface charge and associated service charges.
The second is the existing “Flat-rate model”, would of course contain a monthly access rate for each of the independent ISP’s retail customers, and any applicable ancillary charges, such a monthly interface charge and associated service charges.
Free Shipping Offers Added
I’ve been getting quite a few emails from retailers in regards to their free shipping offers so I thought I’d compile them for the site.
These free shipping offers are of course for Canadians only and the listing is somewhat limited. But I will add some more from to time.
EMI Music Group Split For Sale
It appears that Citigroup have decided to sell individual portions of EMI Music Group according to two press releases issued yesterday.
The labels within the group will be sold to Vivendi and Universal Music Group for £1.2 Billion whilst the publishing assets of the group will be sold to an investor group that includes Sony Corporation of America, David Geffen and the estate of Micheal Jackson for $2.2 Billion (source : Citigroup press releases 111111a / 111111b).
These sales are of course subject to regulation and independent label association IMPALA expects that the sale of EMI Recordings to Universal Music Group will be “blocked outright” according to their latest press release.