The National Music Publishers' Association (NMPA), The Harry Fox Agency and MP3.com recently announced their agreement of a licensing arrangement that -- if approved by individual HFA music publisher principals -- will permit the use of over one million musical compositions on MP3.com's popular My.MP3.com service. The My.MP3.com service allows consumers to listen to music from CDs that they already own or which they purchase from MP3.com's retail partners.

The popular MP3 file swapping service, Napster today began their appeal in front of a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Napster was almost shut down in September but was granted a stay of execution by the court and users have been able to freely use the service in the meantime.

Lenny Kravitz’s new single "Again" from his forthcoming Greatest Hits album (due in stores October 24) will be the first ever downloadable video on MTV.com and VH1.com. Beginning Friday September 22 at 3 PM Eastern Standard Time, fans will be able to log on to MTV.com or VH1.com and download the video free of charge until October 9th. After that date the video will be available only at the official Lenny Kravitz (www.lennykravitz.com) and Virgin Records America websites (www.virginrecords.com). The video will automatically time out thirty days after its original download date. The promotion ends December 31, 2000. In its first week at radio "Again" was the most added song at the Rock format. The video clip, directed by acclaimed video director Paul Hunter was filmed in New York City's TriBeCa neighborhood and stars Lenny and actress Gina Gershon as two-thirds ...

Napster isn’t the only online music site that is in hot water over copyright infringement issues. MP3.com, one of the largest music sites on the Internet was just ordered to pay a hefty fine of approximately $250 million to Universal Music Group. The lawsuit, filed by Seagram’s owned Universal claimed that MP3.com copied 80,000 Compact Discs onto their servers to create their "My MP3.com" system and 5,000 of these CD’s copyrights are owned by Universal Music Group.

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and online giant Yahoo! have just announced an agreement that establishes the terms and conditions for music performances broadcast on Yahoo’s vast network of web properties.