DOT-DOT-DOT-COM: HEY SKRILLEX, SOUNDEXCHANGE HAS $$$ FOR YOU

SoundExchange is looking for 50,000 artists and labels that are owed money, the N.Y. Times’ Ben Sisario reports in His Media Decoder column. The 12-year-old agency, which pays artists and labels when their music is played on services like Sirius XM and Pandora, has struggled to get artists to fill out the necessary paperwork, and it has been criticized within the industry for being slow to sign musicians up. It currently has 70,000 accounts for performers and another 24,000 for labels and other copyright owners, a spokeswoman said. On Wednesday, SoundExchange unveiled a database of artists and labels that are owed these royalties, technically known as a performance right for recordings. As of 2010, the most recent period for which they have audited accounts, the agency was holding $60 million in unclaimed royalties, some of it due to prominent figures like Robin Williams, Broadway star Laura Benanti and Skrillex. Artists and labels must register by Oct. 15 or "risk losing royalties collected three or more years ago," the agency says, although in past years it has often given amnesty to latecomers. SoundExchange didn’t say what the uncollected royalties were worth, but in June the agency announced that since its founding it has paid out $1 billion… Apple’s effort to duplicate its invasion—and subsequent domination—of the music biz in the TV sector is proving difficult, prompting the company to reportedly try to persuade cable operators to use its set-top box. According to All Things D’s Peter Kafka, Tim Cook and Co. have concluded they’re better off playing along than playing a new game. If Apple really wanted to change the way people watched TV, Kafka notes, it would change the way people paid for TV. And that would involve setting up new arrangements with the people who make TV content. But Apple can’t do that—either because the content guys don’t want to change the way their business works, or Apple isn’t willing to pay enough to make them change. Or both. The result is the same: If you want to use a theoretical Apple TV of the future, you’re still going to end up paying someone a monthly fee for a bundle of channels, the majority of which you don’t watch. Depending on how the deal works out, you may end up paying a pay-TV provider, or paying a broadband provider plus a programming provider. But the results will effectively be the same—and your checks will probably end up getting cashed by the same people, regardless, since there’s little to no competition for the pipe that goes into your living room. It’s a model that has proven very hard to dislodge, Kafka argues, and if Apple wants to blow it up, they’re going to have to find a way to get people the stuff they want without paying for everything else… For the last year, digital music services have been racing to establish themselves in markets around the world, Sisario adds. Here are the latest moves: Deezer, the French subscription streaming service whose European growth inspired Len Blavatnik to get in on the action to the tune of anm 11% stake, has been looking to open everywhere around the world except the U.S., which it considers a saturated market dominated by Spotify and Rhapsody. Techcrunch reports that Deezer is expanding to Asia, with its service opening in Thailand this week, and Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines coming soon. Simfy, popular in Germany and available in a few countries in Europe, is opening in South Africa. And VEVO is expanding to Brazil, its sixth country, though we still don’t know what platform the video service will be calling home after this year… Wired said yesterday that Jonah Lehrer, the New Yorker writer forced out for fabricating Bob Dylan quotes in his nonfiction book Imagine, will write for the tech mag, where he spent several years and wrote the Frontal Cortex blog. "Jonah was and remains on a features contract with Wired," spokesman Jon Hammond told BuzzFeed. "We chose to maintain our contract." Lehrer made "a horrible mistake" in fabricating quotes for his book, Hammond said, but Wired continues to stand by a comment he made when Lehrer was first caught in a lesser journalistic sin, re-using writing he'd done for Wired in his new New Yorker blog. The new scandal "does not diminish his work as a valued contributor to the magazine and website," said Hammond, who added that Lehrer's continuing contract with Wired, a Conde Nast sibling of the New Yorker, meant that "a couple of pieces…were already in the works" and that the magazine anticipates future contributions from him. But later in the day, this statement from Managing Editor Jacob Young backed off from Hammond’s commitment/endorsement: “We want to ensure that there is no confusion regarding reports today about writer Jonah Lehrer and Wired. Jonah has not been ‘hired’ by Wired; he’s been a contributing editor at the magazine and the website for years. When allegations surfaced about his work elsewhere, we immediately began a thorough review of his feature stories and columns in the magazine. So far we have found nothing unusual. Jonah also wrote tens of thousands of words for Wired.com, and the process of vetting that work continues. He has no current assignments. After gathering the facts—from our inquiry and elsewhere—we’ll make a decision about whether Jonah’s byline will appear again at Wired.”