Hard Times
Killiecrankie, Perthshire Highlands – It was during a production meeting for this issue that The Journal of Music learnt of the death of the folk singer Kate McGarrigle. It is perhaps fitting that McGarrigle, who was a musical companion to so many, should be almost invisible in this video, and yet so vital to it. In this performance, from the original Transatlantic Sessions television series, McGarrigle joins her sister Anna, her son Rufus as well as Karen Matheson, Emmylou Harris, Mary Black and Rod Paterson in singing Stephen Foster’s ‘Hard Times Come Again No More’. www.bit.ly/pCG30

The Frost is All Over
Dublin – Dermot Bolger’s poem about the piper Séamus Ennis (see p. 45) was written for The Frost is All Over, a production featuring Tony MacMahon, author of this issue’s article on Ennis. The show combines music, text and images in recalling traditional musicians of the past, suggesting that their lives were lived every bit as deeply as their music. In this video, an excerpt from the show, MacMahon’s accordion is joined by the uilleann piping of David Power, while Éamon Hunt reads Bolger’s poetry. www.bit.ly/df8qBW

MySpace Royalties
Cannes – Independent musicians can now claim royalties for their music on MySpace: the American performance rights agency, SoundExchange has announced a new deal with MySpace that means that artists who are not currently registered with SoundExchange, but whose music is available on MySpace, will be able to to access their share of $14,000 currently held in escrow by the  organisation. Artists based outside the USA can also benefit from the deal if their own performing rights organisation has a reciprocal agreement with SoundExchange. www.soundexchange.com

Mobile Generation
Washington, DC – A new study conducted across the USA has shown a dramatic increase in music listenership in children and teenagers over the past five years. The study, conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation with researchers from Stanford University, surveyed over 2,000 young people from the ages of eight to eighteen, an age group which now spends an average of seven hours and thirty-eight minutes per day using some form of entertainment media – an increase of over an hour per day since 2004 levels. About two and half hours of this is spent listening to music – music is the second most dominant media content after television. Predicatably perhaps, the increase has been mostly driven by the proliferation of mobile devices – those of the surveyed age group now spend more time listening to music, playing games or watching TV on their mobile phones than they do talking on them. www.kff.org