New startup eMusicBlast.com is offering artists the chance to pay for A&R advice – it smells fishy already doesn’t it. For a paltry USD $49 an ‘A&R Executive or Producer’ from labels including Concord, Bad Boy, Curb and Asylum, will cobble together a minimum of 30 words of written feedback on your demo. Seeing as they could cost over a dollar each, those words better be particularly discerning – here’s a taste of what you get:

Last night saw WMG’s quarterly financial results, and as usual, CEO Edgar Bronfman Jr had plenty to say about industry trends. Here’s the biggest zinger: “Digital growth has slowed following iTunes’ introduction of a variable pricing model in April 2009… It couldn’t have come at a worse time.”

The latter comment was referring to a 30% price hike for the top-priced songs just as the economy tanked. “It’s difficult to know, even today, if it is just consumer resistance to a higher price points or if taking a pricepoint of 30 percent more at such a fragile time [is to blame],” said Bronfman.

However, he also had warm words for new models beyond a la carte downloads. “The subscription models that we are promoting will create much more value over time than the per-play or per-purchase models,” he said. “The number of potential subscribers dwarves the number of people purchasing music on iTunes.”

That said, Bronfman also confirmed that ad-supported streaming is firmly off WMG’s radar again. “Free streaming services are not a positive thing for the industry, and as far as Warner Music Group goes, will not be licensed. It is not the kind of approach that we will be supporting in the future”.

He also had a complaint for Apple, saying that “Book publisher pricing on iPad gives much more flexibility than the music industry has on any Apple devices”. Which is slightly curious – if anything, his comments about variable pricing could be seen as a warning to book publishers about the risks of wrestling stores into a variable pricing model.

And the actual results? WMG posted a $17 million loss for Q4 2009 (its fiscal Q1 2010), although its total revenues rose 3% year-on-year to $918 million. Digital accounted for 20% of the company’s total revenues – $184 million – and while it was up 8% year-on-year, it was flat compared to the previous quarter – hence Bronfman’s comments.

Recorded music digital revenues specifically were $172 million, up 10.3%. The company’s operating income grew 15% year-on-year to $47 million.

How many of you have created your iTunes playlists and feel like your list is never complete unless you’ve got everything you need for every song including album art? If you’re one of those types, then I’m right there with you. Nothing frustrates me more than playing music on my MP3 player and seeing no album art with a song. Perhaps I’m OCD, perhaps it’s just the huge music fan in me, but Album Art Search has been a holy land of sorts for all the album art I need.

The site offers up the album art of some of the most sought after albums, straight from the homepage, but digging deeper you’re able to find what you’re missing after a search for a specific album. The categories give you a broad based idea of what you’ll find, and by clicking on the image you can go to Amazon if you’d like to buy the physical media. You can also bookmark and save the images for your own use.

So now there’s no reason for any of your playlists to be without album art. Dig in, find what you need and let us know what you think. There are other competitors out that I think do it better, but I like the ease of finding what I need on this platform.

• iTouch Acting as Gateway Drug to iPhone
• Organise Your iPhone and iPod Touch Apps into Folders
• Apple Hits The 500 Million Download Mark for Apps Store
• iPod Shuffle In New Vibrant Colours
• iTunes Avoids Shutting Down

*Money: Since the grand dame of pop looks so much like George Washington, Craig Gleason made a series of Lady Gaga Dollars. [notcot]

*Music biz: Are iTunes music sales slowing due to high prices? I buy all my music from Amazon. Or Hype Machine.

*Art: Smokey Robinson gets the Shepard Fairey treatment. Which is not to say that he has his work pirated, then reused. But is rather to inform you that Fairey did a Hope-style portrait of Mr. Robinson. [notcot]

*Safety: If you’re always breaking your sunglasses, you should wear disposable ones.

*Crafting: Meat; knitted and packaged. [coudal]

*Writing: Timothy McSweeney – after whom McSweeney’s Internet Tendency is named – was a real man. He passed away.

*Food: Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl revisits the question of who in the world makes the best Juicy Lucy. An episode of Food Wars will be filmed tomorrow at the Cardinal Bar to settle things. Temporarily. This is one of the only matters about which I am a local, and will hereby publicly place myself in the Blue Door camp. Goodbye.

*Politics: The George Bush “Miss Me Yet?” billboard is located in Wyoming, Minnesota.

*Update: It’s been weeks of dispensing tips, and my abs are no better than they were when this experiment started.

*Today’s links: F.

With Valentine's Day still the better part of a week away, online hearts are already leaping -- but this time, it's equal parts love and political enmity.

The GOPVdayCards meme on Twitter is taking off, as leftward-leaning tweeters are getting excited about mocking their fellow, conservatively inclined citizens. Some of the tweets are less PG than others, but here are a few that are moderately representative.

Let's go make a "real" birth certificate.

U did a heckuva job on my heart.

I don't really know what cloture is but I know I want it with you

You had me at Tort Reform

Roses are red, like REAL Americans.

I'd say that my heart belongs to you, but that'd be Socialism

Dear Wal-Mart, now that corporations are people, will you be my valentine?

Be mined.

My wide stance, your narrow mind! We belong in the same closet!

I don't believe in choice. We must be together.

The New York Times Editorial page is trying to keep us apart.

Will card-carrying Republicans take this lying down? Or will we see a backlash tomorrow, with Red Staters shooting love-tipped arrows back at their Blue counterparts. Hey -- red, blue -- there's got to be a rhyme in there somewhere.

-- David Sarno and Jessica Guynn

Today’s links of interest:

• White Stripes Protest Super Bowl Ad for Air Force Reserve
  Sigh. If the government doesn’t understand copyright, how can they expect the rest of us to do right by artists?
• A Veteran of Big Music Explains Why Big Music Is Doomed
  Not music. Big music.
• The right lesson learned
  Or, blaming digital downloads is focusing on the wrong problem.
• MTV No Longer About ‘Music’
  Or rather, MTV makes what we’ve known for two decades official.
• Music Labels See Slower iTunes Sales Growth in Wake of Price Increases
  Somehow, this is going to be blamed on the pirates, isn’t it? Repercussions, lessons for the book biz and their recent zeal for price increases.
• What’s Alan Watching?: Chuck: Schwartz and Fedak vs. the controversy
  Somehow, an internet furor has erupted over the leads of Chuck hooking up with the wrong people instead of each other. Because some people really are fucking retarded.
• Disney’s Iger Takes Big Swig Of iPad Kool-Aid
  Well, yeah. Consider who one of (if not the) biggest shareholders is.
• Apple Granted a Huge Patent Win for 3D Virtual Apple Store
  I guess the patent office has never heard of Second Life.

Iger told Wall Street investors during Disney's earnings call Tuesday that the Burbank entertainment conglomerate plans to develop casual games and other forms of entertainment for the portable device, including digital books and a new and improved version of ESPN's ScoreCenter app on the iPhone, which provides real-time sores for more than 500 sports leagues around the world.

"We find that the iPad has a lot of potential," Iger said. "We think it's a really compelling device. We think it could be a game-changer in terms of enabling us to create essentially new forms of content."

The iPad is a tablet-style computer that can display movies and television shows and Web videos, playing video games as well as books and newspapers. Iger said the quality of the 10-inch screen and its wireless Internet access open the door to a different kind of content than would be found on a computer or Internet-connected TV. Its speedier processor make it a more technically robust development platform than even the iPhone, he said.

Fans of an ABC program like "Lost" would be able to do more than merely watch the show on the iPad, Iger noted, and a new digital books initiative from Disney's Publishing Group could incorporate features such as singalong songs or simple animations.

"ESPN ScoreCenter, which is a great app on the iPhone and provides relatively rudimentary information scores basically," Iger said. "Suddenly we have an opportunity with a platform where you can make the scores come to life. We’re thinking about it in those terms."

Disney was the first of the major studios to sell television shows through Apple's iTunes store.

-- Dawn C. Chmielewski

Apple Inc. CEO and Disney shareholder Steve Jobs announces the new iPad as he speaks during an Apple Special Event on Jan. 27 in San Francisco. (Credit: Ryan Anson / AFP/Getty Images)