A Women’s Music Fest Looking For An Audience

Cal State University at Fullerton throws a women’s music festival and few people show up. “Is it the women themselves who are scary? Their music? Ironically, this annual festival, created five years ago by Pamela Madsen, a composer on Fullerton’s faculty, strives for inclusion. The attitude, and one rehashed in the panel, is that no one can really say what women’s music is. Some women address gender issues, some don’t.”

Google’s New Book-selling Scheme

Google is offering to broker sales of books online for publishers. “The new offering would allow people to sign in and purchase immediate, browser-based access to books, Google said on its site. Purchasers would not, however, be allowed to save a copy of the book to their computer or to otherwise copy pages from the book. Google is marketing the new program as the first of several tools intended to help book publishers boost their revenues, though it was unclear Monday how many had signed up. Pricing would remain entirely at the book publisher’s discretion.”

Chart-Fixing Downloading Discovered, Disallowed

Over-eager fans of a band tried to promote the group by buying multiple downloads of the group’s new recording to boost them in the charts. But the buying was discovered and disqualified. “Due to over-enthusiastic members of the band’s fans and family, an unacceptable number of records were ordered per person online. Sadly, rather than these sales ending up supporting the band, this has resulted in The Modern’s chart position of number 13 being deemed invalid according to The Official Charts Company’s strict rules and regulations.”

Brown Testifies In Plagiarism Case

Da Vinci Code author Dan Brown started testifying in his plagiarism trial. “Mr Brown said Mr Baigent and Mr Leigh were just two of a number of authors who had written about the theory. ‘Yet I went out of my way to mention them for being the ones who brought the theory to mainstream attention. I would like to restate that I remain astounded by the claimants’ choice to file this plagiarism suit. For them to suggest, as I understand they do, that I have hijacked and exploited their work is simply untrue’.”