Netflix held a conference call in the US on Tuesday to discuss its less-than-stellar Q3 earnings. CEO Reed Hastings acknowledged that it failed to meet a quarterly goal for signing up new customers to its streaming service, and will now miss its full-year target of 7 million new streaming customers. According to its revised subscriber …

A correction was made to this story. Read below for details. Trent Reznor of the band Nine Inch Nails walked into the Santa Monica, Calif., headquarters of Musicane last month and stunned the start-up’s employees with his tech knowledge and fierce attention to detail. Typically, when artists sign on with Musicane, a company that helps musicians distribute their music online, …

A correction was made to this story. Read below for details. news analysis Apple has plunged into uncharted waters by stripping security software off some of its music. Never before has Apple sold songs without attaching antipiracy software–the digital rights management systems that prevent file sharing and are hated by many music fans. If successful, Apple’s bold gamble to do …

A correction was made to this story. Read below for details. It used to be that music fans believed cryptic messages about Satan or the death of a band member were hidden within rock albums. Nowadays, the secrets buried in digital music are way too easy to find, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). The consumer watchdog group, which …

Critics of digital rights management have long insisted that record labels could boost sagging sales by offering music unencumbered by copy-protection schemes. Apple’s iTunes and e-tailer Amazon.com are in position to test this hypothesis in the coming months. On Wednesday, Amazon announced that it plans to sell digital songs from record label EMI Group that will be DRM-free. Amazon’s unprotected …

Michael Robertson, one of Silicon Valley’s most prolific company creators, continues to plug along with so-called music lockers. His most recent music company, MP3tunes, began offering the lockers for free last week in an apparent attempt to draw interest from consumers. Music lockers enable a customer to store music on a company’s servers and later retrieve songs by having them …

The music industry’s educational video about copyright law is full of baloney, according to several trade and public interest groups. The Consumer Electronics Association and Public Knowledge are among the groups to issue a joint statement condemning some statements on the Recording Industry Association of America’s video, which the RIAA has plans to distribute to the nation’s universities. The RIAA’s …

An analyst report calls La La a savvy new music site for helping people swap CDs via the U.S. Postal Service. But, the report notes, the company is also a highly effective way to pirate music. La La allows music lovers to find used CDs on the company’s Web site and then order them from their owners, other La La …

When it comes to music, mighty Microsoft is the underdog. For the company that dominates PC operating systems, desktop software suites and e-mail software and has a darn good business in everything from databases to video games, it’s an unaccustomed label. Can the latest version of Microsoft’s music software, Windows Media Player 11, be the first in many steps to …

As Microsoft continues to enjoy mostly favorable reviews of its new Windows Media Player 11 jukebox software, analysts say the real boost for the company’s latest foray into music is a partnership with MTV Networks. As expected, Microsoft officially rolled out a test version of Windows Media Player 11 for XP on Wednesday, two days after the free software could …