E-Commerce Blog

Talks to put The Beatles’ catalog on Apple’s iTunes online music store have stalled, former Fab Four member Paul McCartney told the BBC. The Beatles is one of the few big acts left whose music is not available on iTunes, but the settlement of a trademark dispute between Apple and The Beatles’ company Apple Corps last year was seen as finally clearing the way. “We’d like to do it,” McCartney was quoted as telling the BBC on its Web site on Tuesday. “We are very for it, we’ve been pushing it. But there are a couple of sticking points, I understand.

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McCartney: EMI ‘Sticking Points’ Keeping Beatles From iTunes

A month after irking part of the independent recording community by launching its online music service mostly with major labels, MySpace Music has made a deal to almost double the amount of indie tunes available through the service. In an agreement announced Thursday, the San Francisco-based Independent Online Distribution Alliance — a digital distributor of tunes for several thousand labels — will make its library of more than 1 million tracks available through MySpace Music.

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MySpace Music Struggles to Hit the Right Pitch With Indie Labels

Lala.com relaunched its services Tuesday, now billing itself as the first free fully licensed provider of instant, anywhere access to personal music catalogs as well as a full music library with tracks backed from major labels. Cooperating record companies include EMI Music, Sony BMG, Universal Music Group, Warner Music and more than 170,000 independent music labels. Rather than use a CD player or a media player that keeps music data on the physical device, with Lala, users keep their tunes online — in the so-called cloud.

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Lala Starts New Life as Jukebox in the Cloud

Wal-Mart will soon shut down the servers controlling reauthorization of purchased DRM-protected WMA music files, Ryan Halford, the company’s computer buyer, indicated on a Wal-Mart blog. An e-mail sent to Wal-Mart Music customers, a copy of which was posted on the blog BoingBoing, indicates the shutdown will occur Oct. 9. For several months, Wal-Mart’s online music store has sold MP3 files with no DRM restrictions. Before February, however, the service sold protected WMA files.

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Wal-Mart to Cut the Cord on DRM Downloads

Besides working overtime to crank out the $700 billion financial market rescue plan — to little avail as it turned out — the House of Representatives on Sunday also passed a piece of legislation that could rack up significantly more penalties for copyright violation. The Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property Act would give more firepower to the Recording Industry Association of America and other groups that represent content holders.

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Congress Sends Controversial Copyright Bill to Bush’s Desk