Blu-Ray Never Sleeps

Company aims to have service up before iTunes Match

(NEWSER) - Google is pushing further into the entertainment business with an online music store that it aims to have up and running within weeks, sources tell the New York Times . Music industry execs say the MP3 store will probably be linked to Google's Music Beta cloud service. Google wants to have the store open before Apples iTunes Match service is rolled out, the sources say, although it's not clear whether the company will be able to cut deals with record labels in time. More»

Sells 2.7 million Blu-ray discs in just 4 days

(NEWSER) - Add another record to the books: It took Avatar a whopping four days to sell as many Blu-ray discs as previous record holder The Dark Knight has sold in the past 16 months. But wait, there's more: In addition to the 2.7 million such discs 20th Century Fox has moved in the US and Canada, it also sold 4 million DVDs, taking the "biggest DVD launch" title from Twilight, which sold a measly 4 million DVDs and Blu-rays combined, the LA Times reports. More»

Free All Music is innovative, but still might not work

(NEWSER) - A new site thinks it has the answer the music industry’s woes: Free All Music will allow users to download a high-quality mp3 with no copy restrictions in exchange for watching a 15-second video ad of their choosing. The site then takes a user’s handle and uses it to produce another ad, for third-party sites, that announces what the user downloaded and who sponsored it. Users may download 15 mp3s a month—and perhaps more if Free All Music eventually sells more sponsorships. More»

'The Fixer' is their best song in years, however you come by it

(NEWSER) - Pearl Jam has been proudly iconoclastic for years—releasing records on vinyl, eschewing music videos, “bootlegging” concerts, and fighting Ticketmaster—but they’re getting old. So it surprises Jonah Weiner that The Fixer, the single from the band’s new album Backspacer, is “by far the most exciting track the band has released in years,” he writes for Slate. And the rub: It's sold exclusively at Target, with ringtones available from Verizon. More»

(NEWSER) - In honor of Woodstock—which happened 40 years ago this weekend—and the “seminal documentary” that captured it, John Farr shares his list of the 10 best rock concert/performance films—all of which are “meant to be played loud,” he writes on the Huffington Post. “So crank it!”

• A Hard Day's Night (1964): “The disarming charisma and spontaneous energy of the Beatles made no traditional plot necessary. It was sufficient to portray a day in the life of the world's most talked about rock band.”