itunes

Atlantic is the first major label to report getting a majority of its revenue from digital sales, like downloads on iTunes and ring tones, rather than from sales of compact discs.

The other day I downloaded the latest version of iTunes and discovered the much-heralded Genius feature is a not-so subtle way to sell content on iTunes.

When I heard about the Genius feature, I mistakenly thought it was like Peter Gabriel's Filter tool, a very cool utility for iTunes, which enabled you to select some songs in your library, then build a playlist of other songs in your library automatically based on your selections, and while it does do that it, it's a bit more insidious.

(The Filter tool, by the way appears to no longer be available as a download.) When you turn on the...

Here's another big download record this week. Apple announced yesterday that iTunes sold its 5 billionth song.

The five-year-old MP3 store took a while to get going, but as of February has become the biggest music retailer in the US – even surpassing Wal-Mart.

Kid Rock, The Beatles, AC/DC and Garth Brooks would make for a bizarre and unlikely concert line up, yet they share something in common: they are the last men standing as far as making their music available on iTunes.

In the case of Kid Rock, he is apparently refusing to put those albums over which he has control onto iTunes as a matter of principle.

According to the BBC the Rock 'n' Roll Jesus, real name Robert Ritchie, is holding firm simply because performers are not getting paid their fair dues for material downloaded from the market leading Apple music store.

A Democrat in the California State Assembly has introduced a plan that would tap into the lucrative flow of money on the Internet, and apply what amounts to a sales tax on every download of a digital file, such as songs from the popular iTunes website.

It's been a year-and-a-half since Amazon launched Unbox, its movie download service that competes with Netflix and iTunes.

Amazon has a partnership with TiVo to allow people to download movies straight to their TV set-top boxes.