Yahoo’s Music Blog has an announcement about the creation of a new Hot 100 singles chart in conjunction with Billboard.  I would agree with them that this represents recognition of a momentous shift in how people listen to and find music.  With radio and CD sales increasingly less relevant to music distribution patterns, it makes sense to incorporate downloads into the formula for determining song popularity.  Watch for the current 5% weighting to keep rising.

You can hear sample’s from Siouxie Sioux’s new album on her MySpace page.  I really like “Here Comes That Day.”

For Paul McCartney, £50m payout or “I’ll see you in court”.  For our North American readers, that’s a neat $102,000000 at today’s exchange rate.

A new Ween album. Good?  Bad? Indifferent? The comments might be more enlightening than the article.

Maybe I’m reading it wrong, but is it awesome, or is it methodical?  Can you be methodically awesome?

“Does it make sense to judge a band by what it’s done in the past, or should each release be viewed in a cultural vacuum?”  Find out.

And a lot of other places, see the list here.

I was going to write about the Japanese Beatles tribute band The Parrots, but when I was reading NPR’s music coverage I just found this fascinating, so we’ll save the Parrots for another day.  Amazingly,  Janet Reno’s newest project is a folk compilation album entitled “Song of America,” which she developed to share with her nieces and nephews.  You can listen to it here.

Check it out.

Still funny.  If you haven’t read the Village Voice’s take on why it’s hot, you’ve missed out.