x If you're attending this year's NAB 2007 in Las Vegas, we hope you include the RAIN Las Vegas Summit '07 in your plans. This year, our lauded annual Summit will be all day Monday, April 16th, (with our customary cocktail hour following), just steps from the Las Vegas Convention Center at the Renaissance Las Vegas Hotel. (That's the Convention Center on the left in the photo above.) Over the next few weeks, we'll announce the meeting agenda and give you a run-down of scheduled guest speakers. We hope you can join us! xx

From the Globe and Mail: "Though Astral Media Inc. has announced its intention to buy Standard Radio Inc., key details must be worked out this week, including which broadcasting businesses are included in the deal — such as its burgeoning Internet radio operation.

"Astral revealed Friday that it signed a letter of intent to buy 'substantially all of the assets' of Standard for a price expected to be roughly $1.2 billion.

"The deal will include Standard's 52 commercial radio stations... and could be finalized  in March.

"Astral is scrutinizing the value of Standard's Internet radio business, called Iceberg Radio, which has been an important piece of its internal growth strategy over the past year, a source close to the deal said. It is not clear whether Standard wants to part with that business.

"Standard's 40% stake in Sirius Canada satellite radio, which could be valued in the hundreds of millions, is not included in the deal."

Read the entire article at the Globe and Mail.

From Radio and Records: "Radio station Web sites have come a long way, baby, in the past two years. In fact, it’s not unusual for PDs to be  'programming' their site’s content as much as they do their station’s on-air sound. For many listeners, their favorite radio station Web site is like home—literally, their home page...

"...Rocco Macri, president and founder of Promosuite, a software and interactive services provider for radio... says, 'your Web site is an opportunity to build a relationship with listeners. The first thing you need to do is to give them an incentive to give you personal information. The best way to accomplish this is to offer many different entry points. And your best opportunity to get listeners to give you information is the first time they sign up.”

"These entry points include loyal listener clubs, Web site contesting, text messaging alerts, Web site surveys and music testing...

"One of the most common uses of a database is e-mail marketing. Stations also use databases to do online music testing and perceptual studies. Previously, direct marketing was conducted through the mail and was a costly option. With an e-mail database, the cost is much more efficient, if there is cost at all. And you can reach listeners more consistently...

"More recently, with Web sites becoming a greater generator of revenue for companies, the database can also help sales teams sell Web site advertising."

Read the entire article at Radio and Records.

From the Washington Post: "The husband of a British classical pianist has confessed to plagiarizing recordings and putting them under his late wife's name, according to a report by the classical music magazine Gramophone (previous RAIN coverage here).

"Pianist Joyce Hatto (pictured) gained posthumous notoriety this month when technology used as part of Apple's iTunes software revealed similarities between two recordings. The technology, which recognizes tracks on a CD that are being imported  by a computer, identified a recording attributed to Hatto as an album by another performer.

"Gramophone, which first reported the controversy on its Web site, retained sound engineers to analyze Hatto's CDs. The engineers found that her alleged recordings, produced under a small music label run by her husband, were identical — down to fractions of a second — to performances by other pianists.

"Her husband, William Barrington-Coupe, denied any wrongdoing last week but later confessed to the plagiarism in a letter to the head of BIS Records, one of the labels that produced one of the plagiarized recordings, Gramophone reported...

"The obscure pianist died last year, a result of a cancer that had prevented her from playing in public for decades...

"Gramophone's editor, James Inverne, said it could take years before anyone knows which recordings are genuine Hatto performances. There are more than 100 recordings under her name from her husband's label, Concert Artist."

Read the entire article at the Washington Post.