With music and content available almost everywhere, how does the radio industry compete? The average person, with little effort, can receive a huge variety of music, talk, and information on their computers, mobile phone, GPS devices, and now through their car stereos. Blaupunkt and miRoamer will be announcing a new car radio that will not only receive AM and FM radio, but also connect to thousands of internet radio stations. Should the radio industry be concerned or are the multitude of devices and technologies too confusing for the average person?

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As if being the No. 1 free iPhone app of 2008 wasn’t enough for Pandora, it has launched version 2.0 of its app just six days into 2009. [MORE]

Source: cnet

Digital music, long the bane of the music industry, may finally be something that record label executives can smile about. [MORE]

Source: cnet

After years of relying on lawsuits to try to stop individuals from illegally sharing music, the recording industry decides to try a new tack. [MORE]

Source: cnet

…a Madison, Wisconsin-based upstart called Networked Insights has issued a report claiming that on social networks and other interactive destinations, listeners prefer a different set of music than they do when listening to the radio or shopping for tunes to purchase. [MORE]

Source: Wired

They are already the world’s largest concert promoters, they’ve branched out to form their own ticketing service and record labels, and now Live Nation will seek to challenge iTunes’ digital music dominance by launching their own music service through their website. [MORE]

Source: Rolling Stone

Steve Jobs decreed the price of digital music to be 99 cents per download over five years ago, but competing with free has been difficult for Apple and others that have followed in its footsteps. Jobs himself admitted that only three percent of the music on iPods was purchased from the iTunes music store. [MORE]

Source: Wired

Chris Anderson’s long tail theory posits that technology has enabled companies to earn significant revenue by selling seemingly insignificant amounts of lots of lesser-known media, in addition to the tried and true method of selling millions of copies of a few hits. While there’s plenty of evidence to support his theory in the music world, attendees of the conference heard one executive claim that the long tail is dead, insofar as mobile music goes. [MORE]

Source: Wired

Pioneer’s XMp3, which begins shipping today, not only plays satellite radio; it also records up to five stations at once. The player also has a 30-minute buffer to rewind and fast forward through live shows. It’s essentially a TiVo for satellite radio. [MORE]

Source: Wired

Transferring large files on the web has always been a hassle, especially when you need to do it frequently. One field especially prone to this problem is the music industry – artists often collaborate with eachother by sending rough versions of tracks, but have to rely on clunky services like YouSendIt or FTP servers. [MORE]

Source: TechCrunch