In its first press release since February, online music retailer eMusic announced on Monday that it had inked a deal with giant record label Sony Music Entertainment. eMusic, which offers music downloads by subscription (starting at 24 per month for $11.99), will have access to Sony’s immense music catalog — but only tunes that are [...]

IODA, the Independent Online Distribution Alliance, has a nice mix of new independent holiday music on the latest episode of its IODA Promonet Podcast. IODA is a digital distributor of independent music of every genre, from thousands of different record labels, and promotes that music to retailers, distributors, bloggers, and podcasters through its Promonet service. [...]

Fortune reports that Apple is threatening to kill the iTunes Store over music royalties.  The Copyright Royalty Board in Washington, D.C. is expected to rule Thursday on a request by the National Music Publishers’ Association to raise royalty rates on songs purchased from online music stores, like iTunes, from 9 cents to 15 cents per [...]

According to the latest MusicWatch consumer surveys from The NPD Group, Apple is again the top music retailer in the US. The five leading music retailers in the U.S. for the first half of 2008 (January through June, based on purchases of CDs and a-la-carte digital music downloads) are: iTunes Wal-Mart (Walmart, Walmart.com, Walmart Music [...]

Rhapsody is offering 100,000 free album downloads through July 4th to promote its DRM-free digital music service: If you’re one of the first 100,000 to create an account by Independence Day, we’ll automatically apply a $10 credit to your first album purchase. The credit must be used by midnight Pacific time, July 4, 2008. Limit [...]

Nine Inch Nails has announced that it is giving away its latest album, The Slip, for free: as a thank you to our fans for your continued support, we are giving away the new nine inch nails album one hundred percent free, exclusively via nin.com. the music is available in a variety of formats including [...]

Apple today unveiled the iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store, giving users the ability to browse, search, preview, purchase and download songs and albums from the iTunes Music Store over a Wi-Fi network directly onto their iPod touch or iPhone. While more useful Wi-Fi features were a key part of what we expected Apple to introduce today, [...]

Hyatt Hotels & Resorts today announced it was rolling out new guestroom iHome clock radios in its U.S., Canada and Caribbean properties – something that all hotels would do well to imitate. The new in-room stereos feature an iPod docking station. Hyatt also announced a digital download music pilot program. Individual properties will offer unique, [...]