We wish a goodbye and good luck and say thanks to our longtime Jamaican music correspondent Dave Stelfox as he prepares to take a job on a newspaper in the Middle East. Plus: The birthday bash for Bunny "Striker" Lee that helped him bid farewell to London.

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With Margins Music, Dan “Dusk” Frampton and Martin “Blackdown” Clark join a long lineage of artists who’ve let the world know how London gets down. From London Posse’s “London Posse” to Tek 9’s “A London Sumting” to neighborhood-celebrating dubstep and grime cuts (Burial’s “South London Boroughs, Wiley’s “Bow E3”), the British urban underground has a tradition of proudly and defiantly associating its music with the place it was made.

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Thomas Friedman is about to dive into the green-tech fray. In his latest book, Hot, Flat, and Crowded, the multi-Pulitzer-winning journalist says everyone needs to accept that oil will never be cheap again and that wasteful, polluting technologies cannot be tolerated. The last big innovation in energy production, he observes, was nuclear power half a century ago; since then the field has stagnated. "Do you know any industry in this country whose last major breakthrough was in 1955?" Friedman asks. According to the book, US pet food companies spent more on R&D last year than US utilities did. "The Stone Age didn't end because we ran out of stone," he says. Likewise, the climate-destroying fossil-fuel age will end only if we invent our way out of it.

But he's not suggesting a new Manhattan Project. "Twelve guys and gals going off to Los Alamos won't solve this problem," Friedman says. "We need 100,000 people in 100,000 garages trying 100,000 things — in the hope that five of them break through."

Our current efforts are not only inadequate, they're hopelessly haphazard and piecemeal. Friedman argues it'll take a coordinated, top-to-bottom approach, from the White House to corporations to consumers. "Without a systems approach, what do you end up with?" he asks. "Corn ethanol in Iowa."

The New York Times columnist, who keeps up a punishing travel schedule, is just back from the Middle East and London. "If you don't go, you don't know," he says. Such wanderings provided the material for his 2005 best seller, The World Is Flat. Now he has added two new terms to his diagnosis of global ills: the intertwined problems of climate change and population growth — "too many carbon copies," as he puts it.

In this new world, governments and companies that take the lead will find themselves with the single most valuable competitive advantage of our time.

To illustrate, Friedman tells the story of a Marine Corps general in Iraq who requested solar panels to power his bases. Asked why, he explained that he wanted to win his region by "out-greening al Qaeda." Instead of trucking in gas from Kuwait at $20 a gallon — money that fuels oppressive petro-dictatorships — in convoys that are vulnerable to roadside bombs, why not beat the insurgents by taking away their targets and their funding?

Coming out months before the presidential election, Crowded is sure to bigfoot its way into the campaign. "McCain and Obama come from the right side of this debate," Friedman says. "They have the right instincts, but neither is quite there yet. They haven't yet thought it through fully." The battle over "green," he believes, will define the early 21st century just as the battle over "red" (Communism) defined the last half of the 20th.

This has become the equivalent of first snowfall stories that local TV news stations do every year: this gripe against Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) iTunes has been trotted out every year for the last five years or so, and now WSJ spends tons of words to rehash it again, though with some new twists. This time, like before, the argument is that labels would like to sell the albums as a unit instead of singles, and the new part is that some of them are beginning to bypass the iTunes behemoth distribution machine. Apple insists that labels can't sell the whole album as a unit, and has also stuck, for the most part, to its 99 cent-per-song philosophy, which labels have fought against. Another gripe: Apple often asks for exclusive sales rights for songs in exchange for prominent placement on its home page.

Now, a new example has emerged that runs counter to the Apple monopoly: Kid Rock's Rock 'n Roll Jesus album was kept off iTunes, but managed to sell 1.6 million copies in the U.S. since its release last year, a sizable number in these times for the record industry. Seeing that example, his label Atlantic Records (owned by Warner Music) last week yanked an album by R&B singer Estelle from the iTunes Store, four months after it went on sale there. Warner's rationale? It called the removal part of a broad range of digital-release strategies "uniquely tailored to each artist and their fan base in an effort to optimize revenues and promote long-term artist development," the WSJ story quotes.

But this is risky—first, by dissing Apple, and secondly by keeping songs off the biggest music service, users may go off looking for illegal downloads instead. Then there's the little matter of consumer preference: the majority have shown preference for buying singles than albums.

In any case, trying to develop alternatives to monopoly distribution is always admirable, and indeed, desirable in the long run, but the more pertinent question is: if not iTunes, then what? Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT) is not feasible for every artist or label, and retail sales is on a declining curve. Amazon+Rhapsody+Napster can maybe have the reach, someday, but not the awareness or promotional value. On the mobile side, operators and Nokia (NYSE: NOK) can put up their hands, but the reality is it is not happening on any scale in U.S., yet. The only other alternative left is working through scaled social networks like MySpace. Maybe MySpace Music, when it launches next month, will be able to become that other big alternative the music industry wants...

These and other more nuanced topics will be discussed at our EconMusic conference in London on Sept 23.

Social Media Deals Report: This 199-page report, filled with charts and data, examines the categories, number and size of VC and M&A deal in social media from 2007 through 2008. Visit the ContentNext Reports page

McFly- The Winner Takes it all from the Olympic Handover London 2012.

Author: xxlilgemzaxx Keywords: Mcfly olympic handover london 2012 winner takes it al Added: August 27, 2008

The mass exodus of both execs and rank and file employees at Yahoo continues. In fact the real defections may just be getting started at a high percentage of employees vest on lucrative restricted stock units this month.

Yahoo’s head of communications Jill Nash continues to try to keep the resignations as quiet as possible, and suggests informally to press that most of the high level departures are really just a cleaning house procedure.

What a housecleaning.

Two more SVPs are bailing out. Previously reported was Todd Teresi (pictured left), SVP of Network Business. Teresi is now the Chief Revenue Officer at Quantcast.

Now we’ve heard that the number 2 exec at Yahoo Mobile, ten year Yahoo’er Steve Boom (pictured right), has resigned as well. Boom started in Yahoo’s London office in a business development role. More recently he oversaw Yahoo’s broadband partnerships with AT&T, Rogers, BT and Verizon.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Photos by Andy Parker

Let the sighs and sobs commence, for as of today-- August 27, 2008-- Be Your Own Pet are no more. The electrifying quartet signed off with a final performance last night-- not in their home city of Nashville nor even their home country or continent, but rather in London, a place they declared to be "like a second home."

No dramatic valedictory gestures here, though; just good old-fashioned Be Your Own Pet physicality, the shedding of some clothing, and an opportunity for ecstatic fans to join the band onstage.

While Be Your Own Pet will be missed, their spirit lives on to some extent in Jonas Stein and John Eartherly's current project Turbo Fruits. And-- if there is indeed any justice in this world-- this won't be the last we hear from Jemina Pearl.

Be Your Own Pet