Apple has reached an agreement for a class-action lawsuit brought against them regarding older iPods that had poor battery life. Apple has agreed to give customers $50 coupons and extended service warranties in the tentative settlement.

Coding Technologies recently announced the formation of the Internet Surround Music Project with additional charter members including: AOL’s Winamp media player, Cakewalk, recording artists Richard Devine and Amon Tobin, Jazz Mutant, Minnetonka Software, Nasseri Music Business Solutions, Native Instruments, Steinberg and Tuner2.com.

Onkyo has introduced its DS-A1 Remote Interactive Dock to provide seamless integration of iPod audio playback and photo display with the company's home entertainment systems, including the ability to control these functions with the existing Onkyo remote control.

Integra and ReadyToPlay have announced the launch of a joint marketing audio program to promote ReadyToPlay's high speed CD conversion and loading service. Known as ripping, this service converts conventional audio CDs into data files, which can then be stored as a variety of compressed or uncompressed formats, including MP3 and PCM. The company also offers optional backup and restore services to protect customers’ music collections.

Escient recently announced that it has teamed with Get Digital, a provider of CD ripping and high quality data tagging services, to provide retailers who sell Escient FireBall music management systems with a quick and efficient way to upload their clients’ CD collections into a FireBall system’s music library. The new QuickFire Music Loading Service combines CD ripping, encoding and FireBall loading with album and artist information provided by Get Digital’s DataFix process. The service also provides users with extras such as a three-ring bound color catalog of their CD collection and MP3 library backup on DVD-R’s.