Music startup doubleTwist today launched a new application, available for Mac and PC, that wants to replace the proprietary world of Apple’s iTunes with one where you can download music and sync it to any player. Here’s how doubleTwist explains what they do: Our vision is simple: to create a unifying media platform that connects […]

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 […]

Ad-supported online music service Spiral Frog suspended operations yesterday, nearly three years after its launch. SpiralFrog launched in Summer 2006 to much media fanfare, painting itself as a free alternative to .99/song iTunes, and as a legal alternative to illegal file-sharing sites. At that time, SpiralFrog CEO Robin Kent said, “Offering young consumers an easy-to-use […]

Yesterday’s article, about the newly-launched Vatican channel on YouTube, reminded us of a favorite Monty Python sketch, “The Pope and Michaelangelo,” which we embed here for your amusement. “Look – I’m the bloody Pope, I am! I may not know much about art, but I know what I like!” Priceless. It got me off on […]

eMusic, the world’s second-largest digital music service after iTunes, today announced that it has sold more than 200 million downloads since establishing its current subscription model in November 2003. The total comprises music downloads sold in the U.S. and the E.U., where eMusic has been available in all 27 E.U. nations since September 2006. The […]

Apple confirmed the rumor we reported earlier, announcing that the iTunes Store had surpassed Wal-Mart to become the number one music retailer in the US. “We launched iTunes less than five years ago, and it has now become the number one music retailer in the world,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s vice president of iTunes. “We […]

Apple Computer today announced that iTunes is now the number two music retailer in the United States, second only to Wal-Mart, based on the latest data from the NPD Group. Apple also disclosed that there are now over 50 million iTunes Store customers, who have bought over four billion songs (20 million songs sold on […]

Good news for Apple: half of all music sold in the US will be digital in 2011. Sales of digitally downloaded music will surpass physical CD sales in 2012, according to a new report by Forrester Research. Digital music sales will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 23 percent over the next five […]

Music subscription services have, by and large, bombed. The idea of renting music hasn’t taken off and, even worse, customers have to worry about the services’ futures. The latest example of this comes with Yahoo’s subscription music service. On Monday, the company announced that it will discontinue its Yahoo Music Unlimited subscription service and has […]

Yesterday, when everybody was hyping the new ad-supported music service Qtrax, we said Qtrax was D.O.A. We noted that “Qtrax wants you to download software to watch ads to get DRM‚Äôd music that probably won‚Äôt work on your media player.” Not something that we really want to do. Others are starting to see through the […]