A Russian digital-music site offering high-quality song downloads for just pennies apiece is the target of a criminal copyright investigation by the local police, recording industry groups said Tuesday. AllofMP3.com has been operating for several years, asking consumers to pay just 2 cents per megabyte of downloads–usually between 4 cents and 10 cents per song. …

America Online is disabling a feature of its popular music software that had been used to evade copy-prevention features of digital music services, the company said Friday. The company’s Winamp software was identified by bloggers this week as part of a process that transformed copy-protected music downloads into songs that could be burned by the thousand to CD. The tool …

For more than six months, Israel’s iMesh has been the strangest of beasts in the file-swapping world: a fully functioning peer-to-peer network operating with the blessing, albeit temporary, of the recording industry. That status is coming slowly to an end. The company is working to build a record-label-approved peer-to-peer service, using song-filtering company Audible Magic’s technology to help turn unauthorized …

It’s like the old Napster all over again: all the music you want for free, as long as you’re willing to get a little geeky. Blogs were buzzing Tuesday about the resurgence of an old technique for recording music on a computer, reapplied to Napster’s all-you-can-eat subscription music plan. Using software freely available from America Online’s Winamp division, it’s possible …

Online storage company Xdrive is setting its sights on the multimedia market, offering streaming music capabilities to its subscribers for the first time. The company, which allows subscribers to store gigabytes of data online, said its customers can now upload MP3 files, create playlists, and stream that music to PCs or smart phones that support Web surfing and music playback. …

The difference between Napster and Apple Computer music offerings was made clear during Sunday’s Super Bowl: Apple is a high-end fashion statement, while Napster is about value shopping. That may be an extreme take, but it isn’t far from the advertising messages the two companies are now sending as they square off at different poles of the digital-music markets. Napster’s …

Michael Robertson, the outspoken entrepreneur who helped set off the early digital music wars with his MP3.com site, said Wednesday that he is getting back in the online music business. Robertson, now chief executive both of Linux software company Linspire and Net-calling service SIPphone, said he wanted to give consumers–particularly those who use Linux-based computers–a broader choice of stores. His …

After years of reluctantly treating music videos as free promotional tools, record label Universal Music Group is planning to charge Internet and satellite companies whenever they play. The change, which is likely to be followed by other record labels, marks a potentially substantial shift in the economics of the online-entertainment world. Some of the most popular entertainment services, such as …

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) said Thursday that it had filed 717 new lawsuits against alleged file-swappers, including 68 unnamed people at universities. The suits come several days after the record label group filed its arguments with the Supreme Court in a case examining the broader legal liability of file-swapping software companies. Movie studios also filed their own …

By any measure, Napster Chief Executive Chris Gorog is one of the world’s biggest believers in digital music. Eighteen months ago, his company, Roxio, was a successful, if unspectacular, player in the CD-burning software market. Then, in a rapid-fire corporate transformation, he purchased the Napster brand name at a bankruptcy auction, bought the record-label-backed Pressplay subscription service and relaunched the …