Apple to Announce 'iCloud' Service on June 6

In a press release, Apple has announced it will unveil a new servicec called iCloud in a keynote address by Steve Jobs at the company's Worldwide Developers Conference on Monday, June 6.

According to an article in TIME Techland, the idea is that it'll entail online storage and streaming features for Apple's iTunes music service.

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Amazon repeating 99-cent sale on new Gaga album

Saying it's ready this time, Amazon.com is repeating its 99-cent download sale on Lady Gaga's new album Born This Way. USA Today reports.

Demand for the digital album swamped Amazon's servers when it first offered the blockbuster at the same deep discount upon its release on Monday. The album, which the online retailer was selling for 99 cents on its release date. has remained at the top of Amazon's MP3 albums list since then.

Facebook Is Developing Ways to Share Media

Facebook is developing features that will make the sharing of users' favorite music, television shows and other media as much a part of its site as playing games or posting vacation photos.

... Several music services, like Spotify and Pandora, already allow users to log in with their Facebook credentials, and they personalize their sites for users based on the activities of their friends. But Facebook wants to make it easier for users to tap into those activities on its site.

Read full article in The New York Times.

An iPhone App For Spontaneous Singing

Vocal Zap is a music app that strips (or lowers) the vocal track from songs in real-time. It keeps the music intact so you can sing karaoke any time the mood hits you.

[via Gizmodo]

Is Facebook launching a music service with Spotify?

According to The Next Web, there are rumors that Facebook is set to launch a new music service with Spotify.

As reported on Forbes, the music streaming service could be launched in as little as two weeks, and the integrated service is still going through testing.

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Dot.anything to take over internet

So long dot.com. The easy way to consult the internet will soon be via "dot.anything".

In a worldwide internet revolution to be announced next month, web addresses will expand beyond dot.com, with governments and businesses expected to rush to apply for signature domain names. Entrepreneurs are also jumping on the bandwagon with the hope of registering generic domain names such as .music.

Read full article in The Sydney Morning Herald.

Apple Is Said to Secure Music Accords With Labels for ITunes Cloud Service

Apple Inc. as reached agreements with three major record labels to let users of its new music service access their song collections from handheld devices via the Internet, people with knowledge of the deals said, according to Bloomberg.

The new iTunes offering will let users store content on Apple’s servers and access it using the Web, rather than loading songs into a device’s memory.

Read full article.

Apple 'signs up EMI and Warner to digital streaming service'

Apple has reportedly signed two of the four major music labels – EMI and Warner Music – to its long-awaited digital streaming service.

Read full article in The Guardian.

Slacker introduces new music subscription program

Slacker already has 300,000 monthly subscribers to its $3.99 Slacker Radio Plus radio, which offers ad-free online music. Now, hardcore music fans will get access to Slacker Premium's 8 million on-demand songs and listen to them on iPhone, Android and BlackBerry devices.

About half of Slacker's audience comes from mobile. This is because Slacker has deals with the four major wireless carriers, and many of them preload the service on some phones.

Read full article in USA Today.

Canadian copyright collective wants a music tax on memory cards

According to Michael Geist, the Canadian Private Copying Collective, which collects the private copying revenues, would like to establish a new levy on blank memory cards used in a wide range of devices such as smartphones and digital cameras.

[via boingboing]

Major Record Labels Settle Suit With LimeWire

Ending a five-year court battle over music piracy, the major record companies on Thursday settled a copyright infringement lawsuit with LimeWire, a popular file-sharing network, for $105 million, the RIAA announced announced.

[via Media Decoder Blog]

YouTube launches Top 100 Music Chart

Yesterday Google introduced the first YouTube chart to track song popularity in user-generated and professional music videos.

The YouTube 100 measures song traffic across official music videos, user-uploaded videos and viral debuts, and uses this data to provide a holistic view of song popularity. The new chart is published weekly, and shines a new light on the YouTube community's engagement and creativity.

[via YouTube Global Blogspot]

Birdsong applications lure birds into the open

Bird watchers desperate to catch the perfect shot, have been accused of playing birdsong applications to lure birds into the open. The Daily Mail reports.

Nature wardens said yesterday that the practice was confusing mating birds – who think the birdsongs and calls featured on the applications, or ‘apps’, are the sound of rival male birds invading their territory.

As a result, the birds are leaving chicks unattended in their nests and vulnerable to attack from predators, and without food for what can be lengthy periods of time before the parent returns.

Read full article. Image from Ducks.ca.

Lady Gaga to Debut New Songs on FarmVille

Lady Gaga is turning to an unusual method to cultivate her fan base: The pop icon is releasing songs from her new album on a section of online game FarmVille before they can be heard anywhere else.

Players have to complete tasks to hear one exclusive new track per day from May 17 to 19.

On her official website, Lady Gaga writes: “I want to celebrate and share "Born This Way" with my little monsters in a special way that’s never been done before… Zynga has created a magical place in FarmVille where my fans can come play and be the first to listen to the album.”

[via npr]

Veronica Maggio releases new single exclusively as ringbacktone - on one phone number only

Comviq, the biggest Swedish pre-paid mobile provider partnered with Universal Music and singer Veronica Maggio to release her new single, "Lördagen den femtonde mars", exclusively as ringbacktone on one phone number only. Adverblog reports.

For two weeks, the only way to hear her new single was to call +46739 52 50 06, a number belonging to an 18 years old student and great fan of Veronica.

According to Adland:

Firat Delen's phone was ringing off the hook, he had his 15 minutes of fame on facebook, radio talkshows and everywhere else, all the while his phone kept ringing. Radio stations called him just to listen to it, and the single went "gold" before it was even released.

Amazingly 56% of the callers signed up immediately for the ringback tone service, which Comviq's competitor 3 has been offering for years already. Well played.

Google To Bypass Record Companies, Launching Cloud Music Service

Google is going ahead without approval of the major record labels and will unveil its cloud-based music program at the search giant’s I/O event, according to several reports. Paid Content reports.

The Google Music program is similar to the one recently rolled out by Amazon: it allows listeners to store their music on the cloud, using it as a remote hard drive. And like, Amazon, which launched its cloud-based music service at the end of March, Google has not completed agreements with the four major music labels, the WSJ notes, citing unidentified sources.

However, the Google Music plan the company will preview at its conference in San Francisco will not be for a live product; rather, this will be in a private test and not publicly available.

Read full article.

Albums exclusively released through mobile phones create new trend

In the Philippines, a local phone company launched a phone called Music Album Phone which features an artist’s full-length album which pirates cannot download. Thus, fans can only hear the specific albums on their mobile phone units.

MyPhone’s VP for Marketing and Business Development Richie De Quina told Bulletin Entertainment, “We’re serious in supporting the local music industry and this move is a strong indication of our campaign against piracy. Both artists and fans can enjoy bragging rights to the albums we’re releasing considering we cater to recordings you can only hear through our phone units.”

Read full article.

Baidu prepping public launch of legal music service

According to CNet, China's top search engine Baidu is nearing the public launch of a legal music-streaming and download service.

Dubbed Ting, the service will allow people to find tracks they may want to hear and to stream them over the Web. Many of the songs will also be available for download at no charge, according to the Ting Web site (Google Translate version) and media reports. Listeners will be able to pause tracks and skip ones they don't like. The service will also include the ability for people to "find like-minded friends," according to the Ting site.

Read more.

Lime Wire strikes back in court against RIAA

Free music is here to stay and punishing Lime Wire founder Mark Gorton for that fact is unjust and won't change a thing, Gorton's lawyers said in federal court today, reports News.com.

... The RIAA wants Gorton and Lime Wire to pay the maximum amount under the law: $150,000 for each of the 9,715 albums it seeks damages for, or a total of $1.4 billion.

Burdening Gorton with a judgment that's even close to that figure would be wrong, Joseph Baio, one of Gorton's attorneys, said during his opening statement to the jury.

... Earlier in the hearing, the RIAA suggested that LimeWire was largely to blame for the 52 percent decline in music sales during the past 10 years.

Read full article.

Spotify launches Apple iTunes 'rival'

Music streaming service Spotify's new app will synch tracks from computers to iPods, iPhones and Androids. It is also introducing its own music store, which will allow users to buy "bundles" to pay for MP3-encoded songs from the catalogue, in which buying a bigger bundle effectively gives a discount on the songs.

[via The Guardian]

Lime Wire's day of reckoning is here

Mark Gorton and Lime Wire pocketed millions by enabling people to obtain songs online without paying for them. Now, Gorton and his company could end up paying damages of over $1 billion. News.com reports.

In a New York federal court this week, the four largest record companies will try to prove that it was Gorton's own greed that drove him to continue operating Lime Wire, the company behind the highly popular file-sharing service LimeWire, though they warned him years ago to stop and fellow peer-to-peer operators advised him to cut a deal.

Read more.

RIAA figures reveal continuing decline in mobile music sales

A RIAA report reveals the continuing decline in mobile music sales, which fell from 306 million units in 2009 to 221 million in 2010, with ringtones down 41%, ringback tones down 26% and even full-track music downloads down 23%.

[via music :) ally]

Amazon launches 69-cent song store

Amazon.com this week launched a store that sells digital songs for 69 cents. About 200 songs out of the 15 million available have had prices cut to 69 cents. .

[via USA Today]