According to figures from IE Market Research, there are currently 832 million paid users of digital music worldwide, with that number expected to rise to 1.6 billion by 2014. Today, announcements from streamed entertainment provider Aspiro and the music download service 7digital point—respectively announcing a new white-label distribution deal and…

After years of effort and speculation, Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) has pieced together nearly 40 broadcast services from around the world to boost the on-demand programming available through Xbox Live. It took a shift in strategy to make room for broadcasters like the BBC, the trend toward authentication to bring on…

Many consumers were never completely sure of the correct way to pronounce it, and it has had mixed success as a household name synonymous with cloud-based entertainment, so it comes as not too much of a surprise to hear that Sony (NYSE: SNE) has now dropped the Qriocity brand. Instead,…

Today’s deadline day. Member states of the European Union are all supposed to have plans in place to change their laws so that most kinds of online data collection—including the simple placement of an electronic ‘cookie’—become ‘opt-in’ for consumers. But only two countries—Denmark and Estonia—have solid plans to create such…

Despite the big stories about the iPad 2 selling out in the U.S., and the question marks over how events in Japan might affect consumer electronics supplies, Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) is going ahead with its scheduled launch of the iPad 2 outside the U.S.

:Micropayments in Denmark have not taken off, despite major Danish news websites rallying behind a single micro-payment system named Valus. Since then, two other micro-payment systems—Coinclick and Ewire—have taken up competition. But, despite heavy backing by the industry and heavy press coverage, the three systems have attracted fewer than 10,000,…