"The MusicNow transaction allows us to super-serve our AOL members and expanding web audience with a truly best-in-class, full-service, digital music platform -- giving us the opportunity to offer an unparalleled music service," Edmund Fish, AOL's senior vice president, said in a news release. "Combined with leading programming on AOL Music, the easy-to-use features for music browsing, discovering, sharing, and purchasing of MusicNow provide a new level of customization and personalization of online music. AOL's users have been asking for these next-generation features to be a part of their music experience -- and AOL Music Now will deliver them," he added.

Founded in 1999, the Chicago-based MusicNow was purchased by Circuit City in 2004. Under the AOL ownership, the company will remain in Illinois. Financial details of the agreement were not disclosed.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs said in a statement, "Our next challenge is to broaden our content offerings, so that customers can enjoy watching more videos on their computers and new iPods."

Currently, the selection of television shows is limited, but that's likely to change soon. ABC is negotiating to expand its offerings beyond Desperate Housewives, Lost, and Night Stalker. Other networks may show interest, too, now that Apple can show viewers are willing to pay for downloadable programming.

The iTMS is available for Mac and Windows personal computers and works exclusively with Apple's line of iPod digital media devices. iTMS now operates in 21 countries. In the U.S., the service features more than two million songs, and more than 11,000 audiobooks.

Nokia announced CoolZone, their localized content delivery service for retailers today and bFree will take advantage of the same technology. Basically, it would allow your neighborhood coffee shop to install a service point in their store. Once it is in place, customers could come into the shop and download songs while slurping down a latte.

A trial will initially be run in three coffee shops and three record stores in Helsinki. The downloads will be free during the trial, but a cost will obviously be associated if the business is rolled out to customers on a wider scale.

OVERLAND PARK, Kan.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 31, 2005-- Sprint (NYSE:S - News) customers will be the first wireless customers in the U.S. to download full songs over-the-air. Today Sprint announced the opening of the Sprint Music Store(SM) powered by Groove Mobile, the first music store in the U.S. that lets wireless customers browse, preview, download, play and manage high-quality digital music, right from their phone. Sprint customers can now take their music with them on the go and have instant access to purchase and download music when they want to, not just when they are in front of a PC.

The new rates will be $9.99 per month with a one-year subscription and $11.99 month-to-month. However, these new rates only apply to the subscription service for downloading songs to mobile devices; users who only want access to play songs on their computers will still pay the lower prices. Yahoo! also says that it will honor one-year subscriptions made before November 1st at the lower rate.

The company gave no indication why it was increasing its rates, but the move is not a surprise to analysts. Many were saying that Yahoo!'s prices would not be able to stay so low without cutting steeply into the company's profits.

Source: geek.com

For the “do-it-yourself” guys out there, Hi-Fi Music Downloads came across a computer speaker system that should sound great and be a fun project to build on your own. Hi Fidelity Engineering Co. or Decware in Pioria has plans available for a planar speaker. These speakers look interesting, have great specs, and should be easy to build. You can learn more about these speakers at the Decware site. Have some fun with making your personal computer a hi-fi machine.

Will Stapley, Computeract!ve

Downloading music from the internet is a topic fraught with misconceptions. With all the stories about file sharing and illegal music downloads doing the rounds, you would be forgiven for thinking it is best to steer clear of the subject altogether.

Back in the 60’s, our toys were Tonka trucks, lunchbox-sized record players and Barbie. Our parents had large pieces of furniture called HiFi’s and collections of vinyl records. Album play is limited, though and CD technology has improved music production for continual play. Even so, we did learn from these what real music sounded like. Finally there is an opportunity from which we will, just as our parents did, educate our children about real music and true sound.

IFPI has estimated the retail value of the digital music market in order to be consistent with its reporting of physical sales, and to allow year-on-year comparisons. On that basis, digital music sales in the period amounted to approximately $US 790 million, up from $US 220 million in the first half of 20041. This is the equivalent of 6% of total record industry sales.

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 28, 2005-- In a major development for consumers, the recording industry, musicians, and the music download business, MusicGiants today announced the launch of the MusicGiants Network, the first music download service to offer high-definition, digital recordings from top music labels EMI Music, SONY BMG MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group.

"We're highly focused on home audio. There's a number of ways to get portable music and that market's pretty full right now. We're just going down a whole different road," Scott Bahneman, CEO of closely held MusicGiants, told Reuters.

NEW YORK, N.Y.; Sept. 28, 2005 -- In a major development for consumers, the recording industry, musicians, and the music download business, MusicGiants today announced the launch of the MusicGiants Network, the first music download service to offer high-definition, digital recordings from top music labels EMI Music, SONY BMG MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group.