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As CD sales sink, Sony BMG and Warner open their art archives • Photo Gallery: Rare Photos Taken at Columbia's Famed 30th Street Studio Amid drastic drop-offs in CD sales, the major labels have discovered new sources of revenue — by looking in their basements. Sony BMG recently launched Icon [...]

NEW YORK Free downloads and the chance to meet a rock star are the main draws of MasterCard's "Roots of Rock" sweepstakes, which also marks the first major entertainment sponsorship that lets consumers access the entire Universal Music Group catalog.[...]

Just how cheap do music downloads need to be before listeners will buy them rather than pull 'em from P2P? About three cents, reckons one new Chinese platform. That's how much a track costs at Wawawa, a new offering started by ringtone firm R2G with repertoire from San Fran-based indie [...]

The booming success of the Guitar Hero and Rock Band franchises has dropped a bomb on the music biz. Record labels and rock stars alike are eyeing new revenue streams as gamemakers compete for musical talent, scramble to secure rights to original master tapes and bring in aging artists to [...]

It was easy to scoff two years ago when word leaked out that Amazon was launching its own digital music service. The Seattle-based online retailer wasn't just mulling an iTunes-like download store - it was supposedly drawing up plans for a branded iPod-like device.[...]

Filed under: Handsets, Apple, OS X We're not sure how this one got past Apple's App Store censors, but the clever kids at Nullriver have released what appears to be the first tethering solution for the iPhone. The $10 NetShare app is just a SOCKS proxy that links an ad-hoc [...]

In 10 years, which company will own the cloud computing space? That question has been the subject of long and contentious funding debates over the past year, especially here on Sand Hill Road. And while I know that predicting the future is an inaccurate science, I think that when it [...]

The author a study of Radiohead's last album release, issued on a 'pay-what-you-want' basis last October, is urging record companies to accept that file-sharing sites are here to stay[...]

The Recording Industry Association of America will argue before a federal judge on Monday that it doesn't need to prove there was a transfer of files in file sharing lawsuits. The RIAA is to make that argument in Duluth, Minnesota, in the Jammie Thomas case. The RIAA has sued more [...]

Ray Beckerman, as you may already know, is a lawyer in New York who not only has defended numerous people against RIAA lawsuits, but also runs the Recording Industry vs. The People blog, where he chronicles what's going on in these cases. While I believe he sometimes pushes the envelope [...]

Zubican, a new business search site, recently launched, and has announced investors including Athenaeum Capital, Pasadena Angels, Tech Coast Angels, along with founders and executives of JAMDAT Mobile, mp3.com, NTI Group, Overture Services Rent.com, Tickets.com and Vivendi (EPA: VIV) Universal Net USA. The LA-based startup bears similarity to Hoovers or [...]

Peter Shapiro Executive Producer Green Apple Festival New York, New York The Connector PETER SHAPIRO, 35, who produced the movie U23D, organized the largest Earth Day event in the United States, this year's Green Apple Festival, which spanned eight cities including Washington, D.C. (pictured).[...]

The news that The Rolling Stones have ditched EMI for rival Universal Music is being painted in the press as the latest blow to EMI since it was taken over by a private equity firm. It's already lost Radiohead and Paul McCartney, and other artists like Coldplay have complained about [...]

With the UK heading down the slippery slope of making ISPs into copyright cops, the folks over at TorrentFreak are pointing out what might be the most troublesome part: the decision as to who deserves a threat letter comes from the recording industry. Yes, BPI (the UK version of the [...]

Despite suing the wrong person multiple times, the RIAA has always pushed back when asked to pay for the legal fees of those wrongfully sued. Tanya Andersen has fought back pretty hard on that claim (and then sued the RIAA separately on other charges as well). Despite multiple tries, the [...]

A new defense to a Recording Industry Association of America lawsuit emerged on Monday. The new tactic: Admit guilt and challenge the constitutionality of the Copyright Act. The fines range from $750 to $150,000 per violation for each song. The lawsuit claims the act's fines are excessive.[...]