Berlin - Licensing talks between Google's (NASD: GOOG) YouTube and GEMA have broken down, leading the German music rightsholder group to demand that 600 videos be removed...

Pretty Lights, the electronic dance artist known to his family as Derek Vincent Smith, has partnered with BitTorrent to distribute a specially created bundle of his music to the platform’s millions of users. As with his previous releases, this year-end package is free of charge.

Today’s Nielsen Company & Billboard’s 2011 Music Industry Report reveals that digital music sales accounted for an eyelash over half (50.3 percent) of all sales, marking the first time digital overtook physical.

Berlin - Authorities in Germany have charged two young hackers with breaking into the personal computers of Lady Gaga, Justin Timberlake and other artists and stealing...

Douglas Merrill grabbed considerable attention for saying that sharing music files might not be a bad thing. This sentiment has been voiced before, but not by someone who had been chief operating officer of New Music and president of Digital Business at EMI Music. Merrill also was chief information officer and vice president of engineering at Google, and now he's CEO of ZestCast, so he's not an easily dismissed firebrand demanding that information wants to be free.

Music licensing is frequently a confusing snarl that can intimidate anyone trying to use music in a responsible manner. Many cowed creators therefore may welcome today’s announcement that RightsFlow has been acquired by Google and will become part of the YouTube business unit.

Amsterdam - A Dutch court last week upheld copyright infringement-related convictions of the operators of file-sharing hub The Pirate Bay, who had claimed they no longer...