We’re all familiar with the monopoly that is Ticketmaster and the vice-like grip that they have on your balls when it comes to buying tickets. However, good news! No longer connected to their parent company IAC (InterActive Corp), the newly-independent TicketMaster is celebrating it’s freedom by being a whopping $750 million in debt.

What does this mean for you? Well, it primarily means that, along with their recent loss of exclusivity with LiveNation, they no longer have access to provide ticket services to most major performance venues in the United States.

Read more after the jump.

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New Jersey metalheads and buds of Late Night Wallflower, The Binary Code, have signed with Tennessee’s Midgets With Machetes/Uprising Records. They have not only become a label-backed band, but they’ve also introduced me to the label with the weirdest name on the planet.  The band plan on hitting the road soon with labelmates Cast Pattern, and releasing new material in the spring of 2009.  

Check out their upcoming gigs after the jump.  

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On June 12th, the Canadian Minister on Industry Jim Prentice introduced the passing of Bill C-61, a law that makes it illegal in Canada to break “digital locks” (DRM, aka Digital Rights Management, technology) on copywritten material.  C-61 is being compared to the American DMCA (the Digital Millennium Copyright Act), a law passed in 1998 that allows for legal action to be taken at the discretion of copyright holders against those who’d use copywritten material without consent.

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CNN.com is reporting, interestingly, that at various music retailers, big and small, that vinyl sales are increasing while CD sales continue to fall. It’s interesting to note that an essentially non-practical medium like vinyl might re-find an audience outside of a mostly-specialty niche, like punk rock.

With the proliferation of digital media in this day and age (with around 45 million CDs sold in the US last year versus just 1 million vinyl records), we’re still a long way off from vinyl making that kind of comeback. But as the article notes, there’s a definite draw to vinyl that rivals and to some, even beats out, CDs.

A recent post on MTV’s Headbangers Ball blog by popular metalcore act Bleeding Through has recently made headlines because of the band’s accusations against their former label Trustkill Records. The band is stating that the upcoming reissue of their 2006 full-length The Truth was not cleared by them.

Read more about this story after the jump.

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