I'm sure Ultravox will be delighted at the well-positioned advert which appeared in today's G2 Guardian supplement, promoting their UK tour. It had all the dates, clearly listed, complete with contact details. It even had the extra date, added due to audience demand, at the Roundhouse.

Money well spent.

The only slight cloud would be that the Roundhouse date was the final night of the tour, and it took place yesterday evening, so LiveNation probably didn't need to place the advert at all. But still: details, dear boy, details.

Jeff Jarvis has long suggested that, to do well online, you should do what you're good at, and link to the rest.

And yet the Daily Mail online continues to do pop.

First, it tries to cover The Ting Tings filming an Adidas commercial (sorry, "pop video"). Despite having to prod its readers about why they might care about these Thing Things:

The upcoming indie group were seen in their element last month as they performed a duet with Estelle at the Brit Awards.

Bringing their edgy style to the stage, it saw the band and Estelle segway between their hit That's Not My Name with her song American Boy.

The Ting Tings formed in 2004, but burst onto the music scene in May 2008 after their album We Started Nothing claimed the top spot in the UK charts.

So, that's an "indie band" somehow "in their element" playing a mainstream industry event in a mash-up with Estelle; the Ting Tings and Estelle apparently riding a self-balancing personal transportation device between two songs (and what about the third track they played?) and a band reaching number one before "bursting onto the music scene".

You'd think that the Mail might be on safer ground with U2. But not really:

U2 find a street that DOES have a name - it's theirs and it's in Manhattan

The whole point of "Where The Streets Have No Name" is about wanting to go to a place where the streets have no name. Which would suggest that finding streets with no names isn't a problem for them.

It might run in the family, but at least Jessica Simpson's sudden realisation that she's not cut out for singing on stage happened in Michigan rather than on Saturday Night Live. It didn't go well for her:

Simpson is said to have struggled with her in-ear audio monitors throughout the performance and seemed to lose her place in several songs, forgetting the lyrics to her recent single Come on Over.

The star also stopped during the intro to her Pray Out Loud track, asking her band start over, before mouthing the word "sorry" to the crowd, telling the 8,000-strong audience, "My voice is weak tonight."

While introducing her closing song, Do You Know, Simpson admitted wishing she could "walk off the stage" and at the end of the gig, she thanked her band for "having her back", before appearing to walk off in tears.

She did, though, manage to make it through a full thiryt-eight minutes, which is surely great value for money, right?

So, not only did Ticketmaster's magnificent system fail (in everyone bar Ticketmaster's eyes) by not allowing people to buy tickets for Springsteen's US tour.

It seems the clunky organisation not only managed to send people 'page unavailable' messages. Oh, no. it found a way to add money-grubbing insult to poor-service injury:

Countless fans reported technical malfunctions during the onsale, while others complained that Ticketmaster forwarded them to the company’s secondary ticket site, TicketsNow, even though seats were still available through Ticketmaster.

This is what happens when a company is allowed to tout its own products as well, I guess.

The New Jersey Attorney General is going to have an investigation into the mess (which might seem to be a little extreme) and Ticketmaster have apologised to Springsteen, in the face of an official anger-spike from Bruce's people:

“Last Monday, we were informed that Ticketmaster was redirecting your log-in requests for tickets at face value, to their secondary site TicketsNow, which specializes in up-selling tickets at above face value. They did this even when other seats remained available at face value. We condemn this practice,” Springsteen and his tour team said in a letter posted on Bruce’s official site. “We have asked this redirection from Ticketmaster to TicketsNow cease and desist immediately and Ticketmaster has agreed to do so in the future and has removed its unwanted material from their and our site.”

Let's just look at the apology in full:

An Open Letter of Apology to Bruce Springsteen, Jon Landau and the entire Springsteen Tour Team:

While we were genuinely trying to do the right thing for fans in providing more choices when the tickets they requested from the primary on-sale were not available, we clearly missed the mark. Fans are confused and angry, which is the opposite of what we hoped to accomplish. We sincerely apologize to Bruce, his organization and, above all, his fans.

We recognize that we need to change our course. We have committed to Bruce and state publicly here that we have taken down all links for Bruce’s shows directing fans from Ticketmaster to TicketsNow. This redirection only occurred as a choice when we could not satisfy fans’ specific search request for primary ticket inventory, but to make sure there is no misunderstanding in the future, we also publicly state that we will never again link to TicketsNow in a manner that can possibly create any confusion during a high-demand on-sale. Specifically, we will not present an option to go to TicketsNow from Ticketmaster without the consent of the artist and the venue, both of whom work together to bring the joy of live entertainment to millions of fans.

If any fans inadvertently purchased tickets in the resale marketplace believing in error they were purchasing from the initial on-sale, we will refund the difference between the actual purchase price and the face price of the ticket. (Please don’t abuse this good faith gesture - we did not give brokers any preferential access to tickets.)

We are committed to helping deliver the most transparent and best live entertainment experience to fans. We will do better going forward.

Sincerely,

Irving Azoff, CEO, Ticketmaster Entertainment

Heartfelt. Touching. Craven. One question, though, Mr. Azoff. You've apologised to Springsteen, and his tour team. How about - it's just a thought - saying sorry to the people who pay your wages? You remember the customers? How about saying sorry to them.

It probably says it all that - while belatedly trying to make ammends - even then, Azoff concludes that you can't really trust the public. "Please don't abuse this good faith gesture" indeed. From a company which has trashed the faith placed in it by Springsteen and his fans, they might want to be a little less swift to talk about their good faith.

They're not going to go as far as to say "sorry" or anything, but Ticketmaster have sort of admitted their system broke down during the sale of Bruce Springsteen's US tour tickets:

“It was an unfortunate computer glitch that happened on our side,” says Ticketmaster spokesperson Albert Lopez. “It wasn’t our finest hour. [The glitch] lasted minutes versus hours. As it was described to me it didn’t have anything to do with high demand. Ticketmaster.com’s network didn’t fail. This was for specific shows. Having said all that, that doesn’t take away from the heartache fans experienced.”

Wow. For a moment there, Lopez nearly actually came out and said that something went wrong. But he couldn't quite.

And if it did, it was only for a few minutes. That those minutes were when people were trying to buy tickets is neither here nor there, is it?

Besides, it was only specific shows. It's just a pity those happened to be the high-profile shows of one of the nation's biggest entertainers which Ticketmaster had only just put on sale, but - hey - there was no problem with selling tickets for Nickelback at the Superpages.com Center, so let's not work this up into a big story, right?

Ticketmaster's network didn't fail. Unless, you know, you want to apply a strict definition of success as "not displaying a 'closed for routine maintenance' screen when people are trying to buy tickets" to the network.

Lopez realises that nothing can take away the heartache of those people who have been waiting years to see Springsteen and might well have missed their chance due to the not-failing Ticketmaster network. Which would be why Ticketmaster won't even bother to try.

You really have to hand it to Microsoft: it might not have managed to make the Zune as popular as the iPod, but it's certainly managed to make it as reliable as Windows. Every 30G model of Zune has stopped working. The reason?

It doesn't believe that today exists:

On Wednesday evening Microsoft said it had traced the problem to a software bug “related to the way the device handles a leap year.” Apparently the Zune was expecting 2008 to have 365 days, not 366.

So, hey, it's only a problem which is going to occur every four years, so where's the drama?

The company said the internal clock on the players should automatically reset by noon Greenwich Mean Time on Thursday (7 a.m. Eastern time). Microsoft is advising Zune owners to allow the player’s battery to fully drain and then turn the devices back on on Thursday.

In other words: Your Zune won't work on the 366th day of a year, so wait until the year ticks back over to day one.

I try not to use Zune as a punchline, I really do. But a music player that won't work on New Year's Eve? It's like it wants to be laughed at.

Obviously, the timing of the collapse of Zavvi has been sped up by the failure of Woolworths' distribution, but it seems that all that has done is sped the inevitable, rather than brought destruction where there was only light. Even Zavvi's management team seem to tacitly accept that:

The group's founding partners Simon Douglas and Steve Peckham said: "We have done all that is possible to keep the business trading, but the problems encountered with EUK, and particularly its recent failure, have been too much for the business to cope with."

- that there was much else to cope with besides is certainly implied.

It's sad - who wouldn't rather buy music in a shop that at least once used to understand it rather than at Tesco? - and, for the staff, you'd have to hope they can salvage something in the New Year. But nobody who's shopped in a Zavvi since the ugly frontage first appeared on the High Street is going to be that surprised by this one.

Mike Baldwin traveled from London to Greater Manchester, bringing with him cunning London know-how about how to make cheap clothes and keep down the proletariat at the same time.

Mancunians have learned those skills well, and now Noel and Liam are embarking on a little bit of the rag trade for themselves. Unfortunately, the forgot the importance of having an Elsie Tanner in the supervisor's office to make sure it all works properly. James P picks up the story:

Oasis have generously offered their US fans a free shirt. All they have to do is install a widget and listen to six new tracks. They'll then be redirected to a form which lets them order their reward.

...and here's what actually happened:

Complaints from hapless fans include;
- 'I can't get in'
- 'The website's broken'
- 'It's telling me I 'may be chosen to win' a shirt'
- 'It said that I wanted 17 of the shirts for $220.83'

Care to wager how many days until Noel Gallagher promises us that the *next* widget-based online giveaway will be loads better?

Even if the crazy plan worked, how bloody brilliant would a t-shirt have to be to make you sit through six Oasis tunes end-to-end?