On Monday, the public broadcaster exposed CBC Music, an internet site and mobile app with forty radio stations covering genres from indie rock to classical. To keep listeners coming back (that important “stickiness” in digi-speak), the service can also include create-your-own playlists and selections of songs by young artists such as Toronto’s Austra and Montreal’s Plants and Animals.

It’s not just a bid to attract more listeners, but also opens up “a entire bunch of ways to connect with them that [was] hard to do on earthly radio,” said Chris Boyce, CBC’s director of radio and audio.

This comes as broadcasters are rocketing their presence in the world of programmes : Planetary recently launched new mobile software apps for its radio stations, with bonuses like exclusive in-studio performances. In the meantime, subscription streaming services such as Rdio are once again on the rise, offering users access to big libraries of streaming music for a fee.

“Gone are the days when people first heard a new track of music on the radio,” Boyce related.

The CBC isn’t trying to compete with online music outlets like Apple’s iTunes, though. As an alternative the site links to iTunes. And no, it doesn’t replace CBC’s on-air music. There are at the current time no wish to eliminate the Radio two music station, Boyce declared.

The Win

The CBC draws savvy programmers. CBC’s independently energetic Radio three, for example, brings listeners everything from singer and songwriter Kathleen Edwards to local Charlottetown band, Milks and Rectangles. Now that experience can be applied to a broad range of genres, with streams devoted to Canadian classical composers, some of the finest homegrown jazz and alt pop. CBC Music might become a key arbiter of the finest, if lesser-heard, music out there.

The Miss

It’s still radio : You can’t jump ahead to the following song when listening to a stream. So while CBC Music tends to the new-media crowd, it requires old-media patience. You can jump forward or back while listening to playlists though. (Radio three host Lana Gay’s colourful list, including The Gruesome’s garage rocker Hey, is a highlight at the moment). Still, the nascent service only has a precious few playlists so far. And features of individual artists have a grand total of seven acts at this time.

The Contest

The pay service Rdio gives users access to a massive library of music for a once per month fee. Astral’s free programmes are an extension of its stations, with added content like app-only performances of hot acts. In comparison, CBC Music feels like the CBC with a broader cross-section of music, unencumbered by the tight programming formats of non-public radio stations.

Another Big Thing

Spotify, officially not available in Canada, is however seen as a standard bearer with its personalised playlists (Obama just posted his) and its highly searchable library of artists. CBC Music, by comparison, is more like reinforced radio. Yet some digital radio sites, like American public broadcaster NPR, have taken a sharpened direction towards nuanced, esoteric music. The question is whether users will desire more breadth or more eclecticism? More searchability or more of a curated radio feel? What the CBC and the industry knows for certain is that we mostly desire more music as reported tagza.

Agree with it or not, Canadian multimillionaire Jim Pattison has taken over CoMag, the national magazine distributor that was jointly owned by Cond Nast and Hearst.

Pattison, an 82-year old businessman, built a single automobile showroom in the 1960s into a far-flung enterprise that today owns grocers chains, radio stations, entertainment parks, paper pulp mills, Stories Group, one of the largest wholesale magazine distributors in North America, and the Ripley’s Believe It or Not franchise.

The CoMag alliance was always a strange one.

The two publishing giants were regularly sour rivals with Cond titles like Vogue and Glamour struggling it out against Hearst titles Harper’s Bazaar and Sophisticated but they were forced to cooperate in a nationwide distribution joint venture.

As well as the Hearst and Cond Nast titles, CoMag also handled outside clients like Television Guide and Reader’s Digest. Up until two years back, it also handled Us Weekly, but lost it to rival Time Warner Retail group owned by Time Inc.

The national distributors would advance money to publishers based on how many copies were heading to wholesalers and retailers and then it would make alterations based mostly on how many copies were returned. They never actually physically took possession of the copies that task was left to wholesalers who owned warehouses that received magazines from printers and then shipped them to retailers around the country.

“The whole outlet has been financially agitated for 15 years,” said John Harrington, editor of the New Single Copy, which tracks the industry. “This deal has more potential to align finances in a positive way than any development lately. It puts two levels of the industry under one umbrella.”

The biggest shock to the magazine distribution world came in 2009 when one of its largest wholesalers, Anderson Reports, went into Chapter 11.

“Overnight twenty-five percent of the retail market did not receive magazines for two weeks,” claimed Harrington. “Sales shrunk, and then it was followed with the general fall-off in the market due to the recession.”

CoMag is at present losing money, sources related.

John Loughlin, an executive VP at Hearst asserted, “Our final objective is : How will we sell more magazines more effectively.”

He announced that both Cond Nast and Hearst agreed to 10-plus year relationship with the News Group.

While the CoMag deal was being hammered out, Cond brass huddled at the company’s annual publishers’ meeting in bright Palm Beach, Fla.

One of the keynote speakers at the three-day event was Blackstone Group VP Byron Wien who unveiled his “Ten Surprises for 2012.” Among his prophecies : unemployment will fall to 8 p.c, the cost of oil will plunge and the economy will grow at a very healthy 3 p.c rate.

CEO Chuck Townsend also distributed the Publisher of the Year award to Vogue’s Susan Plagemann, whose magazine nosed out Self-importance Fair and Wired to win notable business performer of the year.

In other honors, the business turn-around award went to Giulio Capua at Architectural Digest, the cooperative leadership award went to New Yorker Editor-in-Chief David Remnick and publisher Lisa Hughes. Gina Sanders, Chief Executive of the Fairchild Group, was knighted with the executive of the year award.

Fast vote

More than 60 workers of El Diario / La Prensa who are part of the Paper Guild unit will turn a thumbs down or up on a new contract today barely 24 hours after they got their first look at it.

The suggested contract, worked out between the union and the parent company, Impremedia, with the help of an outside mediator, is still asking for 17 heads to be axed.

It’ll give as severance two and a half weeks pay for each year of service and bar further redundancies for a year.

The deal comes as Impremedia continues negotiations to sell itself to the politically-connected Mitre family of Argentina, the powers behind La Nacion, the second largest newspaper in Argentina.

“Everybody is ticked off,” said one insider. “Nobody understands the contract and they aren’t giving us any time to study it.”

The vote is set for 4:30 pm today.

Impremedia owners include the Lozano family, the founders of La Opinion, the corporation’s Spanish language daily in L. A. , and personal equity firms Clarity Partners, Acon Capital, Halyard Ventures and the Brenner Group.

Monica Lozano, a great granddaughter of La Opinion’s founder and the daughter of former envoy to Columbia, Ignacio Lozano, Jr, is the Manager while her brother, Jose, is the VP.

A spokesman for Impremedia made no comment on the outstanding contract and any sale talks, writes tagza.com.

Eddie Van Halen turned 57 Thursday, but fans of the guitarist and his namesake band have been the methods receiving gifts in musical form all week since the group has continued what has fundamentally turned into an all-out media overwhelm in anticipation of its first record since 1984 with authentic singer David Lee Roth, “A Different Kind of Truth,” and the enormous North American tour slated to follow along with.

It’s been such a longtime given that Van Halen has had anything apart from a tour to promote that it’s shocking to see how well the usage of social websites and the Internet has propelled the promotional machine for you to such a high level. Not many could have expected a band that’s been recently dormant for so long would certainly impact the charts the way it has, and that the new songs would be the talk of the good ole’ world.

The first single, “Tattoo,” has been added to more than 160 the air across the country since its release Jan. 10 and has attained the top of Billboard’s Hard Rock Singles chart.

It was the number-one most played song on traditional rock radio in its first week and the top most added song on mainstream and active rock radio stations.

Response to “Tattoo” has been at both ends of the variety with some hard-core fans drooling regarding this and others dismissing it as discouraging. Even former VH frontman Sammy Hagar chimed in by saying: “I personally don’t think that what they’ve got just released, what I have seen and heard, is great at all.”

The Van Halen camp via pressed forward nonetheless.

1st came an extended black and white video interview with Roth where this individual sat on a stool with all the New York skyline behind your ex and explained the meaning involving “Tattoo” and the significance behind the actual lyrics.

Wednesday, it was released that a part of “Tattoo” along with a little bit of an unheard new song, “Stay Frosty” could be heard in Wednesday’s show of “CSI.” That day, out of nowhere, a minute and a half sneak peek with another song, “Blood and Fire” showed up online.

The reaction had been overwhelmingly positive to the course, so much so that by first evening, it was available to buy online as a download along with yet another number, “The Trouble with In no way.”

The only problem? You could only pick the songs in the United Kingdom.

That didn’t end some enterprising music fans and, um, journalists dying to listen for the songs from working out a way to bypass the intercontinental downloading restrictions. The results ended up more than worth all the trouble.

“Blood and Fire” is so far the very best of the bunch to have turn out. It is based off a new composition Eddie Van Halen used to score the long forgotten 1984 film “The Wild Life” called “Ripley.”

That piece didn’t have any vocals, yet this one does, and Roth hasn’t seemed as solid in a while. He even drops in a very great line where according to him, “I told ya I was arriving back…say ya missed me…say it like ya mean it!” It’s hard to imagine that being about anything but his long exile from the group.

Musically, “Blood and Fire” sounds like something that would certainly fall somewhere between 1982’s “Diver Down” and 1986’s “5150” – it’s based more on melody and fewer on fire and bluster.

Somewhere in the process, people may have forgotten that that was just one more path where the group excelled along with Diamond Dave at the helm.

“The Trouble with Never” is the opposite, blasting out from the gate with a guitar and drum attack reminiscent of the early Roth solo tune “Bump and Grind.”

Eddie’s wah-wah your pedal sounds like it’s stuck, he has the idea on for pretty much the use of the track, which sets it apart from the guitar appear of almost everything else he has noted.

Nearly forgotten in all of the excitement of the two new songs was the “CSI” episode and what was now going to be a flavor of a fourth, “Stay Frosty.”

The particular minute-and-a-half sample of that track went up late Wednesday, and the reviews to the Van Halen take on “Ice Product Man” were instantaneous.

It commences with Roth singing over an beginners guitar accompaniment, but by the time the idea ends and the song leg techinques into a higher gear, the actual sample ends.

Now, soon after revealing four out of a planned 13 tracks on the forthcoming “A Different Kind of Truth,” in addition to one more having been played in the already legendary small golf club show in New York City at the beginning of the month, it’s looking increasingly more like all the waiting for brand-new material is going to be worth it.

To contact music columnist Michael Christopher, send an e-mail torockmusicmenu@hotmail.com. Additionally, check out his blog on the Daily Times website,while reported tagza.com.