Yet another in a long line of chilling articles outlining just how mercenary the music business has become. This Salon piece reveals the incredibly tight contract terms that the contestants of American Idol in the US (and presumably Pop Idol over here?) had to sign to be accepted onto the TV show.

The most chilling words are ‘in perpetuity’ and the fact that the contestants have to agree that ‘other parties … may reveal… information about me of a…private, intimate, surprising, defamatory, disparaging, embarrassing or unfavorable nature, that may be factual and/or fictional.”

In other words anyone can say anything about your private life in public – true or false – and you have to lump it.

Not nice.

In a related story, the Office of Fair Trading in the UK has recently revealed that an investigation into the CD market has uncovered evidence of past anti-competitive behaviour across Europe. Not really surprising I suppose, but yet another indication of the seamier side of the commercial music biz.[via The Register]