MySpace is working on a digital music store, striking a deal with three of the big four music companies to start a music Web site.
The New York Times reports that MySpace will spin out its MySpace Music service as an independent joint venture, in partnership with Universal Music, Sony BMG and Warner Music Group. EMI [...]

BusinessWeek’s Stephen Wildstrom is asking “Can Doug Merrill Save Music?”
Merrill is leaving a cushy CIO job at Google to be the President of Digital Business at EMI, one of the biggest music companies in the world.
BusinessWeek wonders:
Could the surprising departure of Google Chief Information Officer Douglas Merrill be the salvation of the music industry?
Merrill was [...]

It looks like the recording industry has learned that the promotional value of music videos is worth more than revenue from digital music video sales. Both EMI and Warner have announced plans to offer free Internet music videos.
EMI Music, Google and YouTube Announce Partnership
EMI Music, Google and YouTube today announced an agreement which will give [...]

Apple today launched iTunes Plus, offering DRM-free music tracks with 256 kbps AAC encoding, for audio quality almost as good as the original recordings, for just $1.29 per song.
iTunes Plus is launching with EMI’s digital catalog of recordings, including singles and albums from Coldplay, The Rolling Stones, Norah Jones, Frank Sinatra, Joss Stone, Pink Floyd, [...]

London-based social networking/music website Last.fm has announced that it will be using its connections with major and independent record labels to bring video recommendations to the site this week.
This new offering enables users to create their own personalised video “channels” filtered according to their musical tastes - much like the way that users can already [...]

Apple CEO Steve Jobs indicated Wednesday that he’s unlikely to give in to calls from the music industry to add a subscription-based model to iTunes.
“Never say never, but customers don’t seem to be interested in it,” Jobs told Reuters in an interview after Apple reported blow-out quarterly results. “The subscription model has failed so far.”
Many [...]

Apple’s recently announced that they would sell unencrypted audio files from EMI artists in a higher-quality digital audio format - 256 kbps AAC encoding, compared to 128 kbps AAC encoding with DRM. The higher quality will come at a premium, though, as Apple plans to charge about 30% more for the higher quality tracks.
The announcement [...]

Microsoft is changing its tune on DRM-free music. The company is now planning to follow Apple’s lead, selling music from EMI DRM-free.
“The EMI announcement on Monday was not exclusive to Apple,” said Katy Asher, a Microsoft spokeswoman on the Zune team. “Consumers have made it clear that unprotected music is something they want. We plan [...]

EMI has beat Apple to the punch, releasing The Good, The Bad & The Queen, an album by Gorillaz’ Damon Albarn’s latest supergroup as a DRM-free download.
It’s the first EMI album to be offered for legal download in mp3 format, free of copy protection.
For the first time, downloads by EMI artists purchased from any online [...]

Consumer Electronics Association President and CEO Gary Shapiro offered his support today for an announcement from Apple and EMI Music that Apple will offer the entire digital music catalog of EMI Music DRM-free in a high quality format.
“CEA applauds Apple and EMI Music for recognizing what consumers really want out of their digital music [...]