(Photo: Outside NYC nightclub Don Hill’s )
Time to take a look at what happened in the music biz – for the week ending April 3: the death of legendary club owner Don Hill, Amazon’s controversial cloud service, and Live Nation’s bid for Warners.

For me this week was about New York City club legend on Don Hill, who passed away March 31 at only 66 years old. I moved to New York City in the early 1990s and his eponymous club Don Hill’s on Greenwich Street in the South Village became my nightlife home. It was my music haven and club salvation. I spend many a night dancing and sweating and Don’s. I was finding out who I was in the early 90s as a person, as a writer, as a music lover and I lost myself in the music there – the packed room filled with sweaty bodies from all walks of life.

In some ways it was my New York. My friends opened a portuguese restaurant called Pao across the street. And Thursday nights (known as BeavHer) at Don Hill’s was our hang – a mix of 80s and punk and you never knew which legends (Iggy Pop, Joan Jett, The Ramones) would show up just to hang out. Don was a fixture there, standing by the bar smiling and stylish with his sliver hair, observing his club.

So thank you Don. You and your club helped shape my youth.

In other news, the past week was filled with more buzz about who is going to by Warner Music Group. A number of outlets reported that Live Nation has emerged as a bidder. Interesting, given that Warner Music Group once had a stake in Front Line Management and was bought out by Ticketmaster. We shall see what happens.

The cloud the cloud the cloud continues to be on everyone’s lips. Of course Amazon just decided to go to the cloud without any licenses from the rights holders beating out Google and Apple with its Cloud Player.

Amazon claims no license is needed to store music because Cloud Player is basically serving as a external hard drive. Of coure the rights holders are not too thrilled about this, and some are considering takeing “action” which is code for a lawsuit. Basically, the Cloud Player lets anyone upload their music to Amazon‘s servers and play them via the web or Android. Apple beware.