RealNetworks on Tuesday kicked off a high-profile digital music marketing campaign, highlighting the new iPod-compatible technology that has swung the company into conflict with Apple Computer. For a limited time, RealNetworks will offer song downloads from its music store for 49 cents, along with half-price albums. A nationwide print, radio and Web marketing campaign will …

Apple Computer has become the latest in a line of companies licensing patents from the relatively obscure E-Data, a company that claims to hold property rights on the process of selling music online. E-Data said Wednesday that it had reached a European agreement with Apple that gave the company worldwide rights for its iTunes Music Store. It has now launched …

Just hours after eBay announced its new music download site, a handful of songs popped up for sale–a sure sign of intense interest in the company’s plans to take on iTunes and others. It was the wrong sign. The files had been posted by people who were not authorized to sell music in the six-month test and were quickly removed. …

Apple Computer and Motorola announced a deal Monday that will let customers of the iTunes music store transfer songs onto the next generation of MP3-enabled phones from the handset maker. Under the agreement, Apple will create a new version of its iTunes software for cell phones. The software will be the default jukebox on Motorola’s new line of products, slated …

RealNetworks announced Monday that it has unlocked some of Apple Computer’s most tightly held technology secrets, giving its music a way onto the popular iPod digital music player. The announcement is part of a broader release of RealNetworks software, which will let songs sold from the company’s online store play on a variety of portable devices, including the iPod and …

Apple Computer said Wednesday that it had signed deals with three of the United Kingdom’s largest independent labels, partly ending a licensing spat that had kept many popular bands out of the company’s European iTunes service. The deal, with the Beggars Group, Sanctuary Records Group and V2, means that artists such as the Pixies, the White Stripes and Morrissey will …

The Recording Industry Association of America said Tuesday that it had settled its lawsuit against Israeli file-swapping company iMesh, for damages of $4.1 million. The organization had sued iMesh last September, charging–as it has in a half-dozen lawsuits against rival peer-to-peer software developers–that the company was contributing to copyright infringement on a massive scale. As a part of the deal, …

Tired of the confusing mess of copy protection tools that keep some songs and videos from playing on your iPod or Napster player? So is Leonardo Chiariglione. The Italian engineer, who founded the Moving Pictures Experts Group (MPEG), is moving ahead with his new Digital Media Project (DMP), hoping to bridge the gaps between resolutely incompatible copy-proofing technologies from companies …

Napster, in its latest guise as an ambassador for legal music on campus, said Monday that six universities have signed up to offer its digital song services to their students. The company, a division of Roxio, has taken a lead in approaching college administrators to offer cut-rate subscriptions to its legal digital music service in an attempt to entice students …

A federal court has allowed record labels to continue a lawsuit against Bertelsmann and Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, both onetime backers of the defunct Napster file-swapping network. The two companies are being sued for copyright infringement by UMG Recordings and Capital Records, which allege that the Napster backers had substantive control of the file-swapping network during its peak. Judge Marilyn …