So, I can confirm today’s CMU Daily is 100% April Fools joke free. Well, unless our newsgathering team accidentally picked up someone else’s and opted to report it as fact. Frankly we’ve been far too busy to be making up stories this year; so busy in fact we weren’t 100% certain the Daily would be out before midday anyway. And look, it isn’t. So that worked out well.

Part of that busy-ness has been down to the fact that last night saw the official launch of The Great Escape 2011 at the Irish Embassy in London town, and we’ve been very busy pulling together the final strands of what is set to be one freaking good conference, if we do say ourselves, which we do. As of Monday I’m going to be introducing a different Great Escape session each day here in the Daily, so probably don’t need to say much more now other than what a great venue for our launch the Irish Embassy made.

Also keeping me busy is the crash course in the music business I’m about to deliver to the music community here in Norwich. I say “here in Norwich”, because I’m writing this here week in five in that very city. Shortly I’ll be going on the hunt for wi-fi, which if not successful might mean this Daily not only misses the midday April Fools deadline, but misses the first of April entirely. On the off chance that’s not the case, here’s your week in five…

01: Amazon launched a licence-free music-based digital locker. It came as quite a surprise because everyone had been too busy gossiping about Apple and Google’s ambitions in the digital locker space to notice Amazon getting such an offer ready. The currently US-focused Amazon locker lets users store MP3s on a remote server, and access them through a cuddly player via more or less any net connected device. It’s the cloud player element that sets these sorts of music locker services apart from the many other digital locker platforms on the market (which can be used for storing music). There is much debate as to whether technology companies running music lockers need licences from the record labels. Amazon thinks not, and therefore involved no content owners in the new locker launch. CMU report

02: There were gloomy revenue figures galore. The IFPI revealed that the record industry saw its revenues slump $1.45 billion last year, mainly because of poor trading in the music business’s two biggest markets, the US and Japan. But that was pretty much the same the previous year too. More interesting were PRS’s figures which revealed that the amount of monies it collected on behalf of songwriters and publishers dropped slightly year on year for the first time ever. The slump in record sale revenue – of which publishers and songwriters get a small cut – was to blame, of course, though in previous years other areas of PRS licensing have compensated for record sale declines. Seemingly no more. CMU report

03: HMV admitted it was considering selling off Waterstones, as well as its Canadian business, in a bid to placate its bankers as it struggles to meet the terms of its bank loans. A sale of the Waterstones book shops has long been tipped as an easy way for the entertainment retailer to address its debt issues, though previously top man HMV has resisted calls for a sell off. Despite admitting at least one unit of the entertainment company was now likely to be offloaded, HMV stressed that nothing was set in stone as yet and that a full sale of the whole group would not happen. CMU report

04: Bluebeat.com settled with EMI for a million. The US digital music service sold low price MP3s, including The Beatles catalogue, without a license from any record companies. The service’s owner had some crazy excuse to do with him re-simulating the tracks so that copyright no longer applied. But when EMI sued a US judge quickly threw the defence, leading to this week’s million dollar settlement. CMU report

05: Live Nation bid for Warner, sort of out of nowhere, or so said the Wall Street Journal. The seventh serious bidder for some or all of Warner Music – it’s reported the live firm wants the record labels – if it was to be successful it’s assumed competition regulators would get involved. WSJ report

Right, best go and give this talk.

Chris Cooke
Business Editor, CMU

Sign up to the CMU Daily here.

So, last Friday I joined the guys from Music Supported Here to review the results of that previously reported Ten In Ten survey, in which musicians and music business types were asked to predict what the music industry might look like in ten years time. I won’t go into the survey results in detail, because you can check them out for yourself with a rather neat video presentation here.

What was clear from the debate last Friday is that concerns remain in the grass roots music community about file-sharing and the perception that the value of music has slumped in recent years, though there was also agreement that the internet still offered a lot of potential and the outlook for the future was therefore, in the main, positive. The industry needs to sort out the way it licenses digital services, pretty much everyone agreed, though in the meantime artists should seize the agenda themselves by capitalising on the potential of direct-to-fan platforms for engaging and selling to fans.

Which leads me nicely into my weekly Great Escape plug. As you may have seen yesterday, both topics will get some quality consideration at the TGE convention this year – with a panel involving BASCA CEO Patrick Rackow set to get to the nitty gritty of how music companies should really be licensing their content, plus Topspin CEO Ian Rogers and Bandcamp advisor Andrew Dubber joining PRS For Music’s Will Page to discuss all things D2F. And we’ll be continuing the Ten In Ten debate at TGE too, inviting all our delegates to make their prediction about how the music business will look in ten years time.

As always, more about all that at escapegreat.com. Meanwhile, here’s some other stuff that happened in the last seven days in music.

01: BMG put in a new bid for Warner Music. Previously, the German music rights company made a bid for Warner’s publishing business Warner/Chappell, but the US major’s current owners said the offer price wasn’t high enough. According to reports, when BMG subsequently returned with a new offer it was bidding for the whole Warner Music Group, though there has been speculation that if successful it’d actually sell on the Warner record labels, probably to Sony. Warner’s bankers at Goldman Sachs are in talks with at least five parties about them buying some or all of the music major. CMU report | Bloomberg report

02: Citigroup talked to possible EMI bidders, possibly fearing that if it waits too long to sell off the UK-based music major all the serious money will have been spent buying up Warner. Reports this week said that while no official announcement had been made, Citigroup is already in talks with interested parties about them buying some or all of EMI. Many of those interested parties are also bidding for Warner. CMU report | New York Post report

03: George Osborne announced not much about the mail-order VAT dodge. He’d promised to reveal measures to deal with the unfair advantage enjoyed by mail-order operations based on the Channel Islands selling to UK customers – whereby for products under £18 they don’t have to pay VAT – in his Budget speech this week. He did announce he was cutting the threshold for benefiting from the VAT loophole to £15, though that won’t make much difference in the CD and DVD space. Campaigners against the loophole, though, took more heart at his commitment to explore the matter further with the European Commission. CMU report | Telegraph report

04: The DEA judicial review began. TalkTalk and BT have taken the copyright section of the Digital Economy Act to court, arguing it breaches European rules and user rights, and that the measures were not given sufficient scrutiny in parliament. Just as the review began the London School Of Economics published a report saying the DEA got the balance between protecting copyrights and encouraging technological innovation wrong. CMU report | Computing report

05: Apple sued Amazon over the name App Store, which the latter has been using on a site for developers. Amazon is likely to argue any store selling apps should be allowed to call itself an app store. Apple will disagree. Elsewhere in Apple legal news, a court ordered Steve Jobs to testify in a long running anti-trust lawsuit relating to iTunes DRM used back in 2004, even though he is on sick leave. CMU report | CNN report

And that’s your lot. Until the CMU Weekly Podcast this afternoon.

Chris Cooke
Business Editor, CMU

Sign up to the CMU Daily here.

There was another edition of our CMU Training course on music promotions this week, in which, amongst many other things, we discuss building a profile for new talent, and how doing so is a real step by step process, in which early media coverage isn’t so much about recruiting fans and selling records as it is influencing other influencers, whether they be other journalists, or radio or TV programmers, or festival bookers, or A&Rs.

But which media really influences those influencers? Well, if you come on the CMU Training course we give you a few hints, but in May we’ll be hearing it all directly from the mouths of those influencers, at The Great Escape in Brighton, when we discuss which media – from blogs to magazines to radio shows to social media – play a real role in delivering that all important “buzz” around new bands.

We’ll have key players from national print, radio and TV media plus a festival booker and A&R on the panel, making it a must-see event for anyone involved in developing an audience for new music. If you want to be there, you know what to do – www.escapegreat.com – early bird delegate passes are just £125. Meanwhile, here’s your week in music.

01: LimeWire settled with the publishers. The operators of the now defunct file-sharing service were declared copyright infringers in the US courts last summer at the end of years of litigation pursued by the record companies. With infringement proven, the publishers sued separately to get their own helping of damages. The terms of the out of court settlement between the publishers and the former digital firm are not known. The labels are expected to make a billion dollar damages claim in the US courts in May, though a judge this week limited the scale of that claim somewhat by saying statutory damages could only be claimed per track rather than per download. CMU report | CNet report

02: Warner asked for second bids from at least five parties. We reckon over ten organisations had bid to buy some or all of the Warner Music empire, most looking to buy the major’s publishing business Warner Chappell, but about five were this week asked to make more detailed offers. According to reports BMG, Sony/ATV, current Warner shareholder Len Blavatnik’s Access Industries, and private equity types Platinum Equity and Yucaipa Companies are among those still in the running. CMU report | LA Times report

03: The government backed the Live Music Bill. Tim Clement-Jones resubmitted his private members bill to reform rules covering small-scale live music events after last year’s General Election, and this week a government rep in the Lords, Patricia Rawlings, said the ConDem coalition would support the proposals, subject to a few tweaks, and push them through parliament so they become law. It will make it easier for pubs and other smaller venues to stage live music. Since new rules in 2003 made such things harder, many in the grass roots music community say a lot less venues are now staging live music. CMU report | NME report

04: Qtrax returned, with out of the blue launches in the US, Canada, Hong Kong, Australia, New Zealand and Fiji. What was originally going to be a licensed file-sharing network is now an ad-funded download store – music is free, but ads may play as songs are downloaded, and tracks can only be played through the Qtrax player which also comes with ads in-built. Three of the majors have licensed the service on a short term basis. One UK lawyer, Ian Penman, has used the launch to note that he is still owed nearly twenty grand from the digital firm for work he did two years ago; until the relaunch he assumed the company was insolvent. CMU report | Billboard report

05: Lucian Grainge became chair of Universal. He will do the Chairman’s job at the world’s biggest music firm in addition to his existing role as CEO. The extra responsibility follows the news that the major’s former Chairman, Doug Morris, who originally took on the Chair role after handing over the CEO post to Grainge last year, is leaving Universal Towers to become CEO of Sony Music. CMU report | Telegraph report

And that’s your lot. Look out for more week in view chatter in the good old CMU Weekly podcast later today.

Chris Cooke
Business Editor, CMU

Sign up to the CMU Daily here.

So, at an FT conference in London this week Virgin Media’s music man Richard Wheeler discussed the challenge of (unsuccessfully) convincing music companies other than Universal to sign up to the proposal of an unlimited all-you-can-eat subscription-based MP3 download service. He also admitted that Virgin was now thinking of launching a music offer more akin to Spotify – so stream-based, with the option to store cached tracks within a player on mobiles – rather than the original unlimited MP3s plan.

So two debates to be had there, and we will be discussing both at The Great Escape in May. First, which digital music business models have the most potential, will one of them win out in the end, or can they co-exist? And second, is the current digital licensing approach fit for purpose, or should the industry be looking to license more digital businesses through collecting societies? We’ve got some great digital and music execs on board to discuss these issues – who we will be announcing very soon – but if you want to be part of the debate get yourself a Great Escape delegates ticket right now at escapegreat.com.

Meanwhile, what else happened this week?

01: Sony Music recruited Doug Morris for its soon to be vacant CEO position. The 72 year old record industry veteran and Universal Music Chairman will join Sony on 1 Jul, having negotiated an early departure from his current employer. Morris emerged as a contender for the Sony top job earlier this year, he seemingly not enjoying the back-seat role he took at Universal last year after giving up the CEO job there. CMU report | MTV report

02: HMV issued another profit warning, and admitted it is now unlikely to meet the financial performance terms of its £100 million+ bank loans. We already knew HMV was busy trying to renegotiate those terms, but this confirms that the next month is going to be very tense for the albeit profitable music and entertainment retailer. The fact that Chairman Robert Swannell quit this week will presumably only make it more so. Given the financial stresses, it seems more and more likely that HMV will accept shareholder Alexander Mamut’s offer to by Waterstones, despite past insistence the books bit of the group wasn’t for sale. CMU report | Telegraph report

03: A treasury minister said to expect an announcement on the mail-order CD VAT loophole in the next budget. James Sassoon told the House Of Lords that the government was reviewing the loophole that lets mail-order websites based in the Channel Islands sell goods under £18 without paying VAT, giving them a 20% advantage over mainland sellers. This has raised hopes among those who oppose the VAT dodge that Chancellor Georgie Osbourne will now stop it. Sassoon was responding to questions about the dodge raised by Tory Lord Ralph Lucas. CMU report

04: Warner Music’s owners were considering over ten bids to buy some or all of the music major. The bids have come in via Warner’s bankers Goldman Sachs. It is thought most bids are just for Warner’s publishing business Warner/Chappell. Selling just that bit of the Warner Music Group is also thought to be Warner CEO Edgar Bronfman Jr’s preferred option. He wants to use some of the money made to buy EMI’s record labels when they go up for sale later this year. CMU report | Hollywood Reporter report

05: IFPI announced an alliance with the City Of London police and credit card firms to fight rogue download sites. Moving forward, the global record industry trade body will alert to the City Of London authorities to websites they believe are selling digital music illegally. Credit card firms will then ask the banks providing those sites with payment services to demand to see their music licenses and, if there are none, to stop providing said services. The hope is this can hinder those rogue download sites based in places like Russia where it’s hard to pursue copyright litigation. CMU report | Zeropaid report

And that’s your lot. But do look out for our cuddly podcast where we’ll chat about some of these stories, and some more, for your listening pleasure. It’ll be online later today, so why not sign up now via iTunes.

Chris Cooke
Business Editor, CMU

Sign up to the CMU Daily here.

So, this is exciting, don’t you think? The mighty DJ Shadow is not only bringing his awe inspiring Shadowsphere show to The Great Escape this May, we’ve even managed to persuade him to give a rare interview as part of our In Conversation programme in the TGE convention which, of course, we are organising this year. We’ll talk to Shadow about his inspirational career to date, and find out how the Shadowsphere show (which you get a glimpse of here) was conceived and created.

Shadow joins BRIT Award winning producer Paul Epworth in our In Conversation programme this year, and we’re close to confirming the next addition to that bit of the proceedings, so watch this space. Meanwhile the panels are coming together very nicely and hopefully next week I’ll be able to give you details of a few more of the people who will be taking part. Meanwhile you should probably get online to www.escapegreat.com and book your delegates pass, a steal at just £125. And now, your week in five…

01: Warner Music’s owners started accepting offers from possible bidders interested in buying the whole company, or its publishing division Warner/Chappell, this week. It’s thought there is most interest in the latter deal, and that Warner chief Edgar Bronfman Jr favours that option also. KKR-backed BMG remain favourites to buy Warner/Chappell and they appointed bankers Deutsche Bank and JP Morgan to advise on a possible bid this week. Russian billionaire Len Blavatnik, already a minority shareholder in Warner, is also thought to be preparing a bid. CMU report | FMQB report

02: Reuters reported that Universal is close to signing up to Spotify USA. EMI and Sony Music are already on board, and while Warner is still holding out, it is thought that if and when Spotify secures Universal’s catalogue it could conceivably launch Stateside. The arrival of the Swedish streaming platform in the US has been a long time coming because of concerns by many American label execs over the free version of the service. Meanwhile, Russian firm Digital Sky Technologies invested in the region of $100 million into Spotify this week, meaning the company is now valued at about $1 billion. CMU report | Reuters report

03: American record industry types ranted about the Grammys. The ranting was started by Steve Stoute, Nas’s business manager, who took out a forty grand ad in the New York Times to express his outrage that big name acts, especially from the urban genre, are nominated for awards and invited to perform, helping secure TV ratings, but often don’t win on the night. He seemed most annoyed that Arcade Fire had beaten Eminem in the Best Album category this year. He encouraged big name urban and pop acts to boycott the event, though producer Jermaine Dupri – one of many execs to respond to Stout’s open letter – suggested instead that the urban community get more actively involved in the Grammy organising Recording Academy so that more people from that genre took part in the voting. CMU report | Billboard report

04: BMG announced its new UK structure bringing together its existing companies over here with the recently acquired music publisher Chrysalis. The all new BMG Chrysalis UK will be run by recent recruit Alexi Cory-Smith, with BMG Europe COO John Dobinson overseeing operations and Ben Bodie of Chrysalis and Alan Pell of previous BMG acquisition Stage Three leading A&R. The combined business will be based out of Chrysalis’s HQ in West London. CMU report

05: MySpace Music’s chief quit. Courtney Holt will stop working for the web firm full time, but continue to advise in a consultancy role. There have reportedly been growing tensions between him and overall MySpace boss Mike Jones, while the uncertain future of the web operation presumably has also played a part in Holt’s decision making. Owners News Corp are currently trying to offload the company, and according to Reuters will start considering offers for it from potential bidders in mid-March. CMU report | Reuters report

And that’s your lot, though for more retrospective chatter do download the CMU Weekly podcast this afternoon - sign up here.

Chris Cooke
Business Editor, CMU

Sign up to the CMU Daily here.

So, it was BRITs week this week which, as usual, meant increased exposure for the UK music industry in the mainstream media, which is part of the reason for the big awards bash existing in the first place of course, so job done.

Though interestingly this year, alongside all the articles on the big winners and celebrity turns, there were more articles than usual – I think – pondering the state of the music business. With the doom and gloom surrounding both EMI and HMV so much in the news at the moment, and the hangover of last year’s Digital Economy Act still rumbling on, that’s probably no surprise. Most of those articles seemed to focus on the ongoing piracy debate and the potential of Spotify-style streaming services to put everything right again.

Both are valid issues, and we’ll be dedicating some time to both of them during The Great Escape convention in May. Though for me there are two bigger issues – how can the music industry maximise all of its many potential revenue streams, and how to can ensure that more of those revenue streams pump cash into new talent, rather than relying on just the profits of dwindling record sales.

The good news is that, whereas with piracy and the potential of streaming music, where in many ways it’s too soon to tell how things will turn out, with regards new revenue streams and investment models people are already reinventing the wheel, meaning come May we’ll be able to get some real practical insights and tips into new approaches of developing and monetising new music.

I’m particularly excited in this regard about three of our panellists. Artist manager David Bianchi will be talking about working with investment vehicle Power Amp on Carl Barat’s latest solo work. Cooking Vinyl boss Martin Goldschmidt will run us through how he is reinventing the label/artist relationship. And we’ll have Alan Pell from BMG UK, giving us an insight into possibly the most interesting of the major players in music right now. To hear from these guys, and a load more who we’ll be introducing here in the coming weeks, you need to get yourself a Great Escape delegates pass. It’s just £125 if you buy now from www.escapegreat.com.

Meanwhile, let’s talk a bit more about those awards…

01: The Grammys and BRITS took place, making it a busy week for music industry awards. The main Grammys show got its biggest TV audience in eleven years, though that was probably all the Beliebers tuning in to see their idol win the Best New Artist prize, which he didn’t, so there’ll probably be a mass boycott next year. The all new BRITS show saw its TV audience slide, it transpiring that while Tinie Tempah, Take That and Adele are all pretty cool, it’s much more fun to watch a misguided reality show about Gypsies. At both the Grammys and the BRITS, Arcade Fire got the long-awaited recognition they so rightly deserve, albeit for what is possibly their weakest album to date. Not that the pop fans approved, as this great website shows: whoisarcadefire.tumblr.com. BRITS report | Grammys report

02: There was lots of news in the streaming music domain, as BRITS chief and Universal Music UK boss David Joseph told The Guardian that it was the potential of cloud-based digital services that gave him renewed hope that the record industry can recover. Last night various media reported that EMI have now definitely joined Sony in signing up for a US version of Spotify. Meanwhile Sony’s own streaming service, Music Unlimited power by Qriocity, went live in the US, Australia and New Zealand this week. Elsewhere, long-standing American streaming platform Pandora prepared to float on Nasdaq in a share sale likely to raise $100 million. Pandora report | Qriocity report

03: Apple launched its new app subscription system. It means that anyone providing a subscription-based service via an app on the iPhone or iPad can now charge regular subscription fees via Apple’s app store, rather than requiring their own transactions system. Which is lovely. Except use of Apple’s payment platform will be compulsory for all subscription-based apps (albeit in addition to any existing independent payment systems) and the IT giant will take a 30% commission. Streaming music services with such apps were not impressed. Google, meanwhile, announced the launch of a similar platform which will only charge a 10% commission. CMU report | Mark Mulligan blog

04: There were more reports about a Warner Music sale. Rumour had it that Goldman Sachs, which is currently reviewing all options regarding the US music major, had spoken to over twenty parties interested in buying some or all of the Warner Music empire. The Daily Mail even speculated that one of those interested parties may be Terra Firma’s Guy Hands, who, the paper thought, might be interested in engineering the long awaited EMI/Warner merger. CMU report | Daily Mail report

05: Nick Gatfield joined Sony Music, as President of the major’s UK music division. But why does Sony UK need the former EMI A&R chief to sit between CEO Ged Doherty and the top execs of each of the Sony UK labels? Well, Beehive City reckoned that Doherty would be investing an increasing amount of his time in Simon Cowell’s Syco division – Sony UK’s biggest single earner – which has been without a CEO since December, hence the need for Gatfield to take over some of his duties with the rest of the business. CMU report | Beehive City report

And that’s your week in five. Look out for more retrospective musings in the CMU Weekly bulletin and podcast later today. Hoopla.

Chris Cooke
Business Editor, CMU

Sign up to the CMU Daily here.

Hello there. So yes, as promised, this week we revealed the first details about The Great Escape convention line up for 2011, and it’s all looking very exciting. If you missed it, you can find out what we announced here, and I’ll be going into more detail about some of the key sessions here at the top of the Friday edition of the Daily in the coming weeks.

But for now, the most important thing to tell you is that the early bird delegates discount runs out on Tuesday. If you buy your pass before then you get it for a mere eighty quid. Now, I’m hugely biased I know, but given that gets you access to the whole convention – which is going to be extra special this year – as well as all the gigs and showcases in The Great Escape festival, I think that’s a marvellously good deal. So much so, that when I was telling someone about it the other day, I started to doubt myself that that really was the price on offer and had to go and double check. So take note, to be part of the most exciting event for the new music business this year for just eighty of your earth pounds, get yourself over to escapegreat.com this weekend.

And here ends the plugging. Now for some end of week news reviewing…

01: ‘Guitar Hero’ was axed. The boss of games giant Activision, Eric Hirshberg, told his investors in a call this week that no new ‘Guitar Hero’ games will be made and that the unit which oversees the franchise is being closed. After a peak eighteen months ago, sales of the ‘Hero’ games, and of their main competitor in the pretend-to-play market ‘Rock Band’, have slumped. Coupled with the high music licensing costs associated with the titles, Hirshberg said, making new versions of the games had just ceased to be commercially viable. CMU report | USA Today report

02: Live Nation took complete control of Front Line, the management firm founded by the live giant’s Executive Chairman Irving Azoff. Although Ticketmaster took majority control of Front Line in 2008, before its merger with Live Nation in 2010, Azoff and the Madison Square Garden company both retained minority stakes. They have now been bought out. As part of the deal Azoff will also become Chairman of the Live Nation board proper, taking over from interim chair John Malone. CMU report | Bloomberg report

03: Warner boss said over half of their artist deals are now multi-stream. Edgar Bronfman Jr was this week trying to convince investors that, despite sliding revenues, including digital and publishing revenues, there was light at the end of the tunnel for the music major. He said he believed the growth of Spotify-style streaming services (though possibly only subscription-based ones) will result in a new era of digital growth, while adding that, long term, new revenue streams from 360 degree style artist contracts will mend his company’s woes. He added that 55% of the company’s current artist deals gave it a stake in revenue other than sound recordings. It’s been known for a while that Warner is, in the main, only signing multi-stream deals these days. CMU report | Reuters report

04: Rumours circulated of an HMV takeover. This is all because of last week’s news that Russian shareholder Alexander Mamut, who owns 6% of the entertainment and retail group, has asked bankers Credit Suisse to review the company’s operations. This has led to speculation Mamut might try to takeover the whole of HMV, and then split it up and sell some of the recently diversified firm off. Some reckon Mamut is only really interested in the Waterstones bit. All idle speculation, but it resulted in HMV’s share price going up for a change. CMU report | Telegraph report

05: We wondered whether the ACS case might impact on the Digital Economy Act. The judge hearing the disastrous anti-file-sharing lawsuits brought to court by the now defunct London law firm ACS:Law said that he was unconvinced that an ISP customer could be held liable for file-sharing done on their net connection by a third party. It provides anyone accused of file-sharing, based on activity via their IP address, a great way to avoid liability (assuming they are either innocent or willing to lie). With little legal precedent in the UK on this, some wonder what will happen if and when net users accused of file-sharing via the DEA’s graduated response anti-piracy system use this excuse. The BPI insist the ACS case is not relevant to three-strikes, but others reckon Judge Birrs’ comments pose even more problems to those trying to get the DEA’s anti-piracy system up and running. CMU report | Telegraph report

And that’s your lot. Though for more week in view chit chat, do check out the CMU Weekly podcast this afternoon. Sign up in iTunes here.

Chris Cooke
Business Editor, CMU

Sign up to the CMU Daily here.