I don't know if its been posted as I've been in studio and not been around here much lately, however:

Columbia and RCA London have set up blogs (on Vox) to recieve material online as of April 7th. I find this very interesting in a couple of ways. 1. Some form of it is needed and 2. how on earth are they going to filter the deluge sure to come from this.

Deals and finding true talent and real acts/artists is still done on tips from credible people. Then directing a label contact to them on the web, thus dredging out thousands of bad acts.

The fine tuning of this attempt will be quite interesting.

I'd be very interested to have any of my friends from Great Marlborough Street or the Fulham High Street chime in here.

We shoved some of ours over to Parlophone in November GG.
The cynics amongst us suggested it saved A+R puting CDr`s in the bin, but it worked well for the act as we could use the link in posting and it looked like they were signed to a major.
This was most amusing really as it helped in getting airplay!

In answer to your question 2.
They will never filter it, our track is still hosted by EMI six months later, despite it`s independent release.