The owners of the popular Kazaa file-swapping software have withstood assaults from the record industry for years, but now they’re facing a new enemy that may be even harder to fight: competition. When a federal judge shut down Napster in 2001, Kazaa parent Sharman Networks quickly stepped in as the replacement of choice, signing up millions of users and even …

The Recording Industry Association of America said Thursday that it will add sales of digitally downloaded singles to its longstanding gold and platinum sales certification program. Under the program, artists who sell 100,000 downloads of a song will receive a gold award; songs that sell 200,000 downloads will be certified as platinum; and multi-platinum awards will be given out for …

Apple Computer on Thursday announced plans to celebrate its iTunes Music Store by giving away songs and other prizes, as the service nears the 100 million download mark. Apple will give away fifty 20GB iPods, one to the purchaser of each 100,000th song downloaded between 95 million and 100 million songs. The number of songs downloaded from the online music …