Report to industry insists on less business, more music.

If you’ve got a spare $500 lying about, and you want to hear how one leading research firm thinks the music industry should remake itself, by all means purchase and download Music Product Manifesto: The Product Features That Will Save Recorded Music, by Mark Mulligan.

Mulligan points out several issues he thinks are critical to the continued relevance of the music industry, among them the de-emphasis of the “business” part of the music business, and a greater focus on the consumer/listener.

The report suggests that each music listener has a “right” to things like “unique music experiences,” file sharing, mash-ups, and more. The point, the report insists, is to remake the music business model in a way that will win over apathetic listeners and file-sharers, and will still make money for the creators by allowing the public to share in the creative process, by offering “excitement and uniqueness.”

Future of mobile music still unsettled; latest numbers, research suggest a different play may better please U.S. ears.

The world of online music offerings continues to churn, with news this week that social networking site MySpace, currently in the throes of losing share to rival FaceBook, would acquire music recommendation service iLike in a deal rumored to be worth around $20 million.

MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta said on a conference call with the media that “iLike is an important part of a lot of different social networking experiences, and we’re excited to extend that experience to other areas of entertainment that MySpace has assets in.” Speculation among investors is that MySpace will use the site, which Van Natta said would remain autonomous, to further leverage their own music-related offerings in a bid to directly involve their users in a richer, end-to-end music experience.

But it's unclear right now what that experience might entail, and how MySpace will extend its focus to appeal to what is seen as a faltering user base, which FaceBook (already closely tied to many of iLike's reported 50 million users) has been gobbling up.

That uncertainty goes hand-in-hand with the murky picture of online music that continues to emerge from market reports and research, which would seem to indicate that online music users in the United States, which appear to have an entirely different set of behaviors from those who access music on the Internet worldwide, are not too keen on the uptake for much of what is offered.

In recognition of Prevention of Animal Cruelty Month in April, It’s All About Music.tv published this story about Sarah McLachlan’s efforts to heighten awareness of the issue by donating her song “Angel” and her efforts as a spokesperson to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA).

As a result, for the next week, Chartbuster Karaoke has declared their support in the ongoing effort to fight animal cruelty by offering a special combo pack of Sarah McLachlan karaoke discs, and committing one dollar from each of those two-pack sales as a donation to the Tennessee chapter of the SPCA.

“At Chartbuster Karaoke, we are as touched as the rest of the world by Sarah’s commercials for the SCPA,” said Chartbuster Karaoke CEO Norbert Stovall. “It’s difficult to imagine why some individuals would choose to treat animals in a cruel manner, but we hope that by making this donation to the Tennessee chapter of the SPCA we can help raise awareness of this important issue.”