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 [...]

Business news source Bloomberg reports that, according to sources “with knowledge of the discussions,” streaming video powerhouse Hulu.com, is in talks with record labels to offer music videos on the site. Major music companies Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment and EMI Group are rumored to be in discussion with the video [...]

United States District Judge Jeremy Fogel has delivered Prince, and Universal Music a fair use smackdown in a case that may end up reducing the number of nuisance takedown notices filed against people that share videos at sites like YouTube. Universal had sued Stephanie Lenz over the use of Prince’s song Let’s Go Crazy in [...]

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. [...]

Universal Music Group plans to test selling digital music free of digital rights management (DRM)….but not through Apple’s iTunes music store. Tracks from thousands of albums will be available for purchase on the recording artists’ Web sites and through several established online music retailers, but not iTunes. “Clearly the handwriting is on the wall for [...]

Internet television site Veoh has filed an action in Federal court against Universal Music Group (UMG), “to reinforce its rights as a copyright compliant company under the safe harbor provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).” Veoh is preemptively attacking Universal, according to the company, to “create a copyright friendly environment” for Internet video. [...]

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has filed suit against Universal Music Publishing Group (UMPG), asking a federal court to protect the fair use and free speech rights of a mother who posted a short video of her toddler son dancing to a Prince song on the Internet. Stephanie Lenz’s 29-second recording shows her son bouncing [...]

Blender¬†magazine has compiled a list of the players that are reshaping the music industry, the¬†Powergeek 25, and¬†Apple’s Steve Jobs¬†tops the list. ¬† In the last few years, Jobs and Apple have innovated their way to the head of the digital media world, with the company’s iPods, iPhones, iTunes and iTunes Store. “Music fans spend much [...]

The New York Times reports that Universal Music Group, the world‚Äôs largest music company, has¬†notified Apple that it will not renew its annual contract to sell music through iTunes. It’s too early to tell if this is a negotiation tactic or a change in strategy for Universal, but the company said it would market music [...]

MySpace today announced the launch of Take Down Stay Down, a new feature for copyright holders that prevents users from re-posting video content in the MySpace community after that content has been removed at the request of the copyright owner. “We have created this new feature to solve a problem that has long frustrated copyright [...]