In a rare victory for Sony over arch-rival Apple, the Walkman portable music player outsold the iPod in Japan in monthly sales for the first time in August, a survey showed Thursday.

Think 30 seconds isn't enough to decide whether or not you like a song? Sources tell CNET that Apple is making changes.

Long-playing records by Pink Floyd have vanished from the iTunes and Amazon stores, the result of a dispute with record label EMI. The group's first albums, for which EMI owns a license, remain on sale for digital download - up to and including the most popular, Dark Side of the Moon. Subsequent releases have been pulled.

Those hoping for the Beatles catalog to debut on iTunes in the near future got some discouraging news Friday when Reuters reported that Yoko Ono doesn't expect a deal with Apple to be made any time soon.

It appears likely that in addition to a paid on-demand music service, Google Music will include a free music streaming service along the lines of Pandora, to be supported by a peppering of Google's audio ads.

Lawyers for Ministry of Sound and other music labels are seeking compensation, threatening court action unless file sharers pay.

Financial results published by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) show that the pressure group is spending millions in legal fees to recover paltry amounts of damages.

Listening to an iPod or MP3 player for just an hour can significantly damage your hearing, according to new research.

After a thorough pummeling by the music industry, peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing software vendor LimeWire Inc. will launch a subscription-based music service for consumers.

Internet overlord Google hinted at its I/O bash recently that it might have a music service for its Android Market app service up its sleeve.

Skype Technologies founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis opened an online service that sells monthly music subscriptions, taking a second stab at the broadening market for digital songs.

Foxconn appeared to be losing control of its spiralling suicide crisis after another worker tried to take his own life. Measures to inject cheer include the use of "soothing" music on the factory floor, the recruitment of hundreds of dance instructors and the establishment of a suicide hotline.

The company behind the file sharing software LimeWire is considering aggressively filtering out pirated content and is hoping to strike a deal with the music industry in which it would be permitted to live on as a for-pay music download service, a company executive said Monday.

A new music streaming service set to arrive soon, following Google's recent purchase of music streaming specialists Simplify Media, was one of the more interesting announcements made at this week's Google I/O developer event in San Francisco.

Spotify has announced two new levels of service – Spotify Unlimited and Spotify Open, but insists that the Spotify Free model will continue for now.

It turns out that the team at Spotify has spent the last six months coding a mammoth update that takes everything you ever thought you knew about the digital music service, turns it on its head, and sprays squirty cream on the top.

Speaking at the recent South by South West conference, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek talked up the next-generation Spotify player, and said that the company was focussing on that ahead of a Spotify US launch.

Ever since the first MP3 player emerged – sometime around 1996 – the enticing prospect of putting all your music, audio and video on one small system has been dangled in front of consumers.

Spotify CEO Daniel Ek has revealed that the company has been working on a next generation of Spotify for a number of months and that music management is the key to making Spotify even more successful.

An upcoming musical video game lets players strum a real six-string electric guitar instead of tapping buttons on a fake instrument. Power Gig: Rise of the SixString is a game first and foremost. But its maker, Seven45 Studios, said players will be able to plug the guitar that comes with it into a standard amp and play real music.