Napster, the music-industry scourge that blazed a trail that led to modern digital music services, is about to head off into its final good night.
Streaming music service Spotify wants to be more than a music app: It's aiming to be a platform for everything you would ever want to read, see, do or share around the music that fills your days.
Google opened an online music store and a free Web storage locker on Wednesday for listening to tracks from computers, tablets and phones, the company announced at a news conference in Los Angeles.
iTunes 10.5.1 is now available, and with it comes iTunes Match, Apple's cloud-based music subscription service.
Streaming music service Rhapsody will buy Napster subscribers and other assets in a bid to boost its user base.
At 31, Sean Parker has a lot more going for him than Justin Timberlake.
Facebook's first president and the co-founder of Napster, Sean Parker, discusses his next move. CNN's Dan Simon reports.
When Spotify debuted in the U.S. two months ago, the streaming-music service was starkly different from its competitors.
First, some perspective: Even after yesterday's big Facebook f8 hullabaloo, people will still listen to and discover music without Facebook, as hard as that might be to believe right now, given all the attention paid to the social network's shift into media sharing, which suddenly made Twitter look like the stripped-down communications protocol it has always been.
A court ruling this week clears up some gray areas in cloud music.
The disk drives powering Dropbox, Amazon's Cloud Drive, and Google Music likely issued a small sigh of relief Monday, after a federal court judge found that the MP3tunes cloud music service didn't violate copyright laws when it used only a single copy of a MP3 on its servers, rather than storing 50 copies for 50 users.
Ever since online music service Spotify launched in the United States last month, it has caused about as much confusion as it has excitement.
Would you rather buy or rent your music? With 15 million songs, Spotify's digital music service could rival iTunes.
Spotify founder Daniel Ek said Thursday he has been "overwhelmed" by the response to the U.S. debut of his music-streaming service and hopes to attract 50 million users stateside within a year.
Spotify launches the much-hyped U.S. version of its music-streaming service after years of delays and negotiations.
The hottest music venue in Europe opened its doors on Thursday morning to a select group in the United States.
Ken Parks, Chief Content Officer for Spotify on the U.S. launch for Europe's most popular music streaming service.
It's hard to escape buzz about Spotify this week -- especially since Britney Spears and others are "so excited" about it.
The folks at Amazon and Google must have been wringing their hands on Monday when Apple CEO Steve Jobs showed off a new service called iTunes Match.
Apple chief executive Steve Jobs' announcement today at the Worldwide Developers Conference that Apple's new iCloud service will allow music fans to reproduce their entire digital collections on locker-style servers accessible via 10 devices -- including iPhones, iPads and computers -- may not save the ravaged record industry, but it could provide a crucial new revenue stream while allowing consumers to easily consolidate their music libraries in the cloud.
There was a surprising news tidbit buried in the fine print of Apple's splashy iTunes in the Cloud announcement on Monday: You can't get it right now if you have a Verizon iPhone.
Apple took the unusual step Tuesday of pre-announcing what it would discuss at next week's Worldwide Developers Conference, but it made an even more out-of-character move by revealing a new product before Steve Jobs had a chance to unveil it.
During Saturday's White House correspondents dinner, "Saturday Night Live's" Seth Meyers jokingly scolded members of Congress for passing legislation they might never ever read. And he did so using a tech metaphor.
Apple and other digital music retailers are in discussions with record labels to improve the quality of the song files they sell, executives involved in the talks say.
With MTV now focused less on music and more on hard-partying Italian-Americans from New Jersey beaches, Sony sees an opportunity to bring music back into the living room.
Before the rise of online radio station Pandora and music video sites such as Vevo -- and years before Apple launched its iTunes music store -- Eric Garland reckoned that the Internet was going to transform the music industry. Back in 2000, when a lot of online listening activity involved illegal peer-to-peer file sharing via services such as Napster, Garland believed that all the online activity could actually help lesser-known bands and artists market themselves, if they could just quantify their successes. So he and Tom Allison, a former Coca-Cola marketing executive, formed BigChampagne to catalogue file sharing and MP3 downloads.
For King Midas, as the Greek legend goes, everything he touches turns to gold. Yahoo's stroke is decidedly less effective.
Spotify, a music streaming service that's making waves in Europe, continues to face hurdles with its oft-delayed U.S. launch.
Fans of the Beatles on iTunes want it all and they want it now.
It's been a long and winding road, but Apple finally began selling Beatles songs on iTunes on Tuesday.
A New York judge ordered LimeWire to stop distributing its file-sharing software, agreeing with the plaintiffs that LimeWire's service is used "overwhelmingly for infringement."
Long before the iPhone, the iPod was the device that helped transform Apple from computer company into a consumer electronics company.
In a move that could further popularize online and mobile video, Apple's iTunes store this fall may begin renting TV programming to viewers for 99 cents per episode, according to a report from Bloomberg News.
The RIAA has asked the federal judge overseeing the LimeWire case to slap a permanent injunction on LimeWire until it can clean up its copyright troubles to the labels' satisfaction.
Investigators for the Department of Justice began asking questions about Apple's business practices involving digital music at least three weeks ago, multiple music industry sources told CNET.
Just as every smart phone claiming to be an "iPhone killer" has failed to dethrone Apple's iPhone, every so-called "iTunes killer" has so far fallen short of expectations.
If you watched the Grammy Awards Sunday night, it would appear all is well in the recording industry. But at the end of last year, the music business was worth half of what it was ten years ago and the decline doesn't look like it will be slowing anytime soon.
Kyle Aevermann of Seattle, Washington, is a young, tech-savvy, Apple product-consuming kind of guy. Despite his love of his iPhone and everything else "i," the iReporter says he won't be picking up an iPad.
Apple executives have spoken to the top four recording companies about plans to offer a streaming music service free of charge to consumers, multiple music industry sources told CNET.
Google plans to launch a music service, Wired.com has confirmed with sources familiar with the situation. Next to nothing is known about the service at this point, rumored to be called "Google Music," "Google Audio," or "One Box," although we have confirmed that it will be announced next Wednesday, and that it will link out to two music services: Lala and iLike.
Online music is confusing these days.
A torrent of bad economic news is pouring down on Web 2.0 music sites, just like everywhere else. What's surprising is that even amid the horror story that is our economy, some online record stores have impressed music-industry poobahs, say insiders.
Back in my day (a day not long ago, as it turns out), you could go down to the local record shop and plunk down your paper-route money for little disks of plastic that were embedded with the latest sounds of your favorite musical performers.
Recently, Nat Hays, chairman of Brooklyn's independent +1 Records, wanted to break a record by one of his label's new bands, The Morning Benders. So he went straight to Apple's iTunes Music Store.
For five years, Apple's iTunes Music Store has been the Internet's most successful music store. But as music publishers have sought a higher share of its proceeds, Apple has threatened to shutter iTunes.
Back in April, MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe vowed to create a groundbreaking new digital music service offering everything from ad-supported free songs to iTunes-like downloads to monthly subscriptions. But DeWolfe ended up jettisoning part of that plan.
Poor Chris Gorog. He's the guy who predicted he could make a hit out of a legal version of Napster, the renegade Internet music file-sharing service that attracted 26 million monthly users until it was driven into bankruptcy by record industry lawsuits.
Jeff Price likes to say he can get anybody's album on iTunes for "the price of a six pack and a pizza." Now the founder of TuneCore, a Brooklyn-based digital music distributor, is offering his customers something more: the chance to be on the Billboard chart with a bullet.
When eMusic launched 10 years ago, the online music subscription service faced some long odds. It refused to protect songs from illegal copying, which ruled out major label acts like Britney Spears.
RealNetworks' Rhapsody music service is launching a full-scale assault on iTunes.
Two Chinese and one U.S. company face charges in a toxic pet food scandal. CNN's Eunice Yoon reports.
SpiralFrog.com, an ad-supported Web site that allows visitors to download music and videos free of charge, launched Monday in the U.S. and Canada after months of "beta" testing.
Acknowledging its proprietary audio technology was a marketplace flop, Sony Corp. is shuttering its Connect digital music store and will open its portable media players to other formats.
Circuit City announced Friday that it is teaming up with online music service Napster to offer consumers a new digital music service, Circuit City + Napster.
The music industry is rife with infighting. But for years the biggest record companies agreed on one thing: They refused to sell songs in the popular MP3 format, arguing that it might hasten their ...
Steve Jobs Tuesday called on music companies to abandon digital rights management software, which restricts how digital song downloads can be used. This message from the Apple CEO was posted on Apple's Web site on Tuesday:
Online music store Napster put itself on the shopping block back in September. But to paraphrase music legends Simon and Garfunkel, Napster investors hoping for news of a takeover have been forced to listen to the sounds of silence.
Napster, once synonymous with illegal file sharing, is now legit: a public company that plays nice with the music industry and is experiencing healthy revenue growth as a result.
Napster, the online music service company, said Monday it would offer listeners the chance to listen to more than two 2 million songs for free through a new, ad-supported Web site.
It's no secret that Apple rules the digital music world.
Steve Jobs has had much to celebrate lately. But the Apple CEO was particularly happy in February when he announced that the iTunes Music Store had sold its billionth song, to a teenager in Michiga...
At its height, before the music industry won the legal victory that shut it down, Shawn Fanning's Napster had 70 million users swapping billions of files.
Internet search firm Google denied earlier reports that it is weighing a possible purchase of Napster, company representatives told Reuters Tuesday.
In an effort to expand the reach of its flagship subscription music service Rhapsody, RealNetworks Inc. is rolling out a new Web- based version and introducing compatibility with Macs and Linux-based devices.
The news hit me like a John Bonham bass-drum kick to the gut: Record labels want to raise the wholesale prices of songs on downloading sites like iTunes, Napster, and Yahoo! MusicMatch, according to a report in Monday's Financial Times.
Steve Jobs (yes, him again) was working his way methodically through one crowd-pleasing new feature after another at Apple Computer's early January new-product launch in San Francisco when he welco...
Ch-ch-ch-changes. David Bowie sang about them, and Napster is living through them.
Let's assume right off the bat that you don't own an iPod. Let's assume that the phenomenon of that small, sexy, white acrylic music player—the one that can store your entire CD library on its teen...
This Election Day, I'd like to celebrate the people's right to choose...their favorite place to download music.
DON'T YOU HATE IT when a band covers your favorite song with a new version that's inferior to the original? Microsoft's new music service, MSN Music, which makes its debut in mid-October, is not ne...
It has been 25 years since Sony launched the original Walkman, now the portable entertainment scene is going through a energetic renaissance, but this time it is digital.
Twelve months ago, if you wanted to download music from the Internet, the only way to do it was illegally.
Apple and AOL have launched a long-awaited iTunes music store online in France, Germany and the UK.
"Extraordinary how potent cheap music is," Noel Coward wrote. Sure enough, the 99-cent legal song download is having a potent effect on the music industry as we near the first anniversary of the Ap...
You can forgive the chaotic, run-down atmosphere when you walk into Tower Records on Broadway and West Fourth Street in Manhattan. You don't even mind all those SpongeBob action figures and Beatles...
Napster proved that tens of millions of consumers were eager to download digital music from the Internet. They just weren't inclined to pay for it, which led music companies to believe that the Int...
The evil scientist Lex Luthor used his duplicator ray to try to clone Superman, but something went terribly wrong. The result was Bizarro, a good-natured but ugly and backward version of the Man of...
In late February 2002, the users of an online file-sharing service called Morpheus found themselves suddenly cut off from their network. Their mass freezeout, it developed, had been engineered by a...
Alas, there is no morning-after pill for impulsive acts committed in a state of dot-com-bubbleheadedness.
Steve Jobs loves music. But as with a lot of geeks in Silicon Valley, his musical tastes are a little retro. He worships Bob Dylan and is the kind of obsessive Beatles fan who can talk your ear o...
Even though I am a devoted music lover and have long been something of a technophile, I managed to avoid the MP3 digital music revolution for years. When Napster, the music-sharing program that jum...
Party on, record industry executives! Napster is on its last legs. You've won your legal assault. Napster is scrambling to prevent members from freely trading copyrighted songs. So enjoy your trium...
Here's the sad truth about Napster. The company's legal argument is untenable, its business model is terrible, and its software isn't even all that good.
After a federal judge in Manhattan ruled last month that MP3.com must pay Universal Music Group up to $250 million in damages for copyright violations, a lot of people's attention shifted to Napste...
It's the Fourth of July in San Francisco, and big John Hummer, co-founder of the venture capital firm Hummer Winblad, is holding court at the Dolphin Club. The club stands out amid the tony tourist...
Of all the people in all the world you'd expect to find engaged in a debate, one of the unlikeliest duos would have to be rap star Dr.Dre and Intel Chairman Andy Grove. Yet here they are, speaking ...
Early this year officials at Indiana University began noticing a curious thing: A rapidly rising percentage of the university's Internet bandwidth was being consumed by students using a new Web ser...



