Web giant Yahoo is poised to launch a new digital store and music player, aiming to compete more directly with Apple Computer’s successful iTunes service, according to sources familiar with the project. As previously reported, Yahoo has been working on the project along with digital-music wholesaler MusicNet since before the $160 million purchase of rival music company Musicmatch. Sources familiar …

Moscow prosecutors have declined to press criminal charges against a popular Internet site that sells MP3s for just pennies, according to Russian news reports. Record industry groups in the United States and Europe are trying to close the Russian AllofMP3.com, which offers downloads of MP3s–including songs from The Beatles and other groups that have not authorized digital distribution–for just a …

A new generation of start-ups is taking a page from Apple Computer’s iTunes playbook, allowing Net radio listeners to draw their programming at will from one another’s hard drives. At the head of a movement that could transform online radio, Live365 and start-up Grouper are the latest to blur these lines between Internet radio and online song-swapping, with an alliance …