June 1 - 1:25pm EDT   Sony Music and online digital music retailer eMusic announced on Monday that music that is more than two years old from the record label will be added to eMusic's online store. While specifics of the deal were not disclosed, a direct result of it will see eMusic raise its prices slightly and reduce the number of downloads in its monthly plans. The classic recordings from Sony Music labels that include Columbia, RCA, and Jive, as well as artists such as Billy Joel, Bruce Springsteen, and Johnny Cash, will be added to eMusic's catalog in the third quarter of the year. [full story]

April 2 - 7:15pm EDT   Verizon this afternoon chose CTIA as the venue to launch MP3 music downloads on its media store. The move brings about 5 million of the unprotected tracks and complements the ringtones that have dominated the company's web store in the past. Buying tracks doesn't require using a Verizon phone and thus lets buyers put songs on iPods or other general media-capable hardware. [full story]

November 20 - 12:30pm EST   Veteran online music store eMusic today said it has registered its 250 millionth download since its subscription service began in 2003. The company is one of the few outside of Apple to reach the milestone and is owed partly to eMusic's business model, which offers unprotected MP3s compatible with Apple and Microsoft players but uses a subscription model which guarantees a certain number of songs at rates that typically fall well below the 99 cents per track found at iTunes and other stores. An entry $12 monthly plan gives users 30 downloads per month, or about 40 cents per song. [full story]

November 18 - 10:35am EST   AT&T today added a second full touchscreen phone in as many weeks through the LG Incite. Unlike the earlier Samsung Eternity, the Incite is a full Windows Mobile 6.1 smartphone and comes with an LG-customized front end that both encourages more use of finger input over a stylus and takes advantage of an accelerometer to provide a landscape keyboard when tilting the phone on its side. [full story]

September 25 - 9:20am EDT   Apple has signed a deal which should see over 1.5 million new songs added to the iTunes Store, reports say. The company has forged an agreement with Pure Play Music, a site which specializes in hosting artists that are otherwise unsigned. The site currently lists a roster of over 6,000 artists from around the world, who operate under a set of non-exclusive rights agreements. [full story]

July 16 - 3:45pm EDT   eMusic will try to improve its standing against iTunes and fellow web-based store Amazon MP3 soon by adding a social component to the music, the music service's chief David Pakman tells Fortune. Taking advantage of the need to buy music through the web portal, eMusic hopes to draw in buyers by providing deeper and constantly changing artist info through Web 2.0 sites. Musicians will frequently have Wikipedia pages for their biographies as well as relevant Flickr photo albums and YouTube videos. [full story]

May 8 - 4:50pm EDT   Regardless of the movement towards permanent unprotected downloads in online music, digital rights management (DRM) is likely to persist and may also thrive in the near future, the Recording Industry Association of America said today at a Los Angeles media conference. The music organization's technology head David Hughes observes that nearly all strategies for offering paid music still require some form of copy protection to enforce the license agreements, which are often dependent on set times or play counts. [full story]

May 5 - 10:40am EDT   Following the debut of the necessary mobile TV service on the weekend, AT&T's LG Vu today became available online and in shops. The handset is AT&T's first primarily touchscreen-driven phone since the iPhone and makes video its focus, with a built-in MediaFLO tuner providing live, over-the-air broadcasts of digital TV similar to Verizon's V CAST TV service. AT&T also stresses media playback support with support for Internet radio streams from XM as well as direct downloads from the company's own music store as well as eMusic and Napster. [full story]

April 30 - 4:50pm EDT   The subscription-based digital music retailer, eMusic, launches today in Canada online and in over 80 Best Buy stores and Avis car rental locations. This marks eMusic's first expansion into other markets, as the service has been in operation in the US since 2003 and recently surpassed 200 million downloads, making it the second biggest online music retailer next to iTunes. eMusic offers 3.5 million DRM-free MP3-format songs and audio books, allowing users to burn them to CDs, transfer them to personal MP3 players and make multiple copies for personal use. [full story]

April 14 - 11:40am EDT   Web-based music service eMusic today celebrated a milestone with its 200 millionth song download. The figure was reached approximately four and a half years after the store's November 2003 launch of its MP3-based subscription service but is touted as having been accomplished without the help of most major labels, relying chiefly on independents for its content. By comparison, Apple is known to have sold more than four billion songs since launching iTunes in April of 2003. [full story]

March 20 - 5:45pm EDT   Despite a lack of official word from Apple in terms of a "Comes with Music"-style unlimited iTunes download plan, the concept is drawing heavy criticism, especially from eMusic CEO David Pakman. Many in the industry are trying to predict Apple's moves before any official announcement [1|2], and Pakman claims that a potential unlimited plan would rank Apple alongside Microsoft in terms of monopolistic behavior, due to the company's market dominance with the venerable iPod, according to Wired. [full story]

January 27 - 3:45pm EST   Amazon today announced early details of an international strategy for its Amazon MP3 direct-download music store. The online retailer says it will unveil versions of the store outside of the US beginning this year; the company declines providing an exact timeframe for when these stores will appear but emphasizes that the stores will remain DRM-free, allowing songs bought from the store to work with most any operating system, software, and portable media player without rights limits. [full story]

January 24 - 3:45pm EST   Yahoo is in talks to revamp its music store to remove copy protection, says a report from the Chinese news agency SINA. Two record label executives have allegedly confirmed that Yahoo is in preliminary negotiations to change its service from its current, Windows Media protected format to an unspecified, unguarded format that would be interchangeable between devices and players. Yahoo spokeswoman Carrie Davis has confirmed that the company has discussed shedding digital rights management (DRM) on its music with labels but has also denied any new escalation in talks. [full story]