The lawsuit that EMI personally served on the CEO of MP3Tunes, Michael Robertson, has been dismissed by a New York District Judge. William H. Pauley III ruled that EMI's lawsuit, detailing copyright infringement by the CEO, be dismissed and that the case against the actual company, MP3tunes, would proceed in the court.

Last November, EMI started proceedings against MP3Tunes for copyright infringement. Their objection was, and still is, the digital music lockers that it provides for its users to store music online. In Michael Robertson's blog he says, "Increasingly, media companies are suing CEOs of companies as individuals. This intimidation tactic has permeated cases involving Limewire, Multiply, isoHunt, Usenet.com and others. At MP3tunes, I had the same personal pressures, but decided to stand up to their threats and was, fortunately, successful. I believe consumers should have rights with their music libraries, and that this is a worthy cause to stand up for."

MySpace's parent company, News Corp., has launched its long awaited free music service. The new service, named MySpace Music, is backed by the big four record labels (Sony BMG, Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, EMI) and will provide its users with free streaming music. The business model is based on revenue from advertisements that will be displayed to its 120 million users.

As we see continued growth of digital music being delivered via streaming, MySpace's new service could deliver a sizeable blow to Apple's dominant iTunes Store. According to MySpace statistics, approximately two-thirds of users host playlists on their social Web space to stream music.

The executive vice-president of Universal Music, Rio Caraeff, said, "We're not sure how big this will be, but it's exactly where we need to be. We need to diversify our sales away from just physical sales, and that means selling music any place a consumer wants to get it."

The struggling Napster digital music service has agreed to a $121 million takeover deal with Best Buy Inc. The all-cash deal which recently boosted Napster's shares to $2.65 will help Best Buy to strengthen its digital music business. At present, Napster has approximately 700,000 subscribers who pay a monthly fee to access unlimited music downloads.

Chris Gorog, chief executive and chairman of Napster, said, "We believe Best Buy will be an ideal partner for Napster and are very excited by the benefits that this transaction delivers to our shareholders, partners and employees."

If you are a Napster customer, you will be pleased to know that Best Buy won't be making any big changes in the short term, and Napster will be remaining in Los Angeles under the present team. In the longer term, Best Buy are looking to extend its online services to include videos, Photos, and video games.

The deal is expected to be completed by the end of the year.

The British rock band, Marillion, have pre-released their new album by giving it away for free on P2P file sharing networks. Their new double-album, Happiness is the Road, is set to be released on CD, October 20th. For file-sharers though, the good news is that the 19-track album can be legally downloaded now from certain BitTorrent sites, such as The Pirate Bay, Mininova, ISOHunt, etc. When the songs are played for the first time, a pop-up screen will ask for your email address. The band hopes that they can generate money from the sale of CDs, merchandise that it sells, and gig ticket offers via email promotions.

The rock group's Keyboard player, Mark Kelly, told BBC news, "We're willing to try new things and we want to see what happens. Everybody's aware of the effect of peer-to-peer file-sharing on CD sales and the music industry in general."

Following on from the likes of Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails, Marillion have now raised the bar in the way that music is offered to the masses. This move is likely to annoy representatives of the music recording industry, like the RIAA and BPI, who have targeted P2P file sharing networks in particular as the biggest source of music piracy. What makes Marillion remarkable is that it has bypassed record companies since the 90s and has used the Internet to great effect for its promotion and revenue.

In an interview with BBC news, Mark Kelly commented about Radiohead's Internet experiment, "People forget Radiohead were still number one in the album charts. They also say they weren't very successful because they only got an average of £2 per download. But they wouldn't have got £2 per sale from EMI, so in those terms it was actually a big success, and they still sold CDs."