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Today, Universal took the wraps off Lost Tunes: The Home of Rare Music.  This DRM-free music store focuses on rare and unreleased albums. 

The tracks are encoded at 320Kbps MP3 format for maximum quality and compatibility. Great idea-

Lost Tunes is here at last. We’ve only just opened - so please bear with us while we put the finishing touches to the store. But while you’re here please have a look around as we’ve got lots of lovely albums. Think of us as your small local record store, run by a team dedicated to helping you find the very best music. And not only that, but Lost Tunes comes with a secret stash of records you can’t find anywhere else online. So please, before you go any further, read on…

[via Electronista]

More fun from Last.fm data.  This quilt is from the service Last.Fm Personal Wallpaper Generator.  Now, if Apple would just let the Last.fm scrobbler sniff the iPod playing info on my iPhone.

Seems a bit busy for a desktop, but it is fun to look at.

Research in Motion (RIM) launched BlackBerry Media Sync today.  The Windows-only software allows iTunes library sync to the phone.

The utility only supports BlackBerry 8800-series, Curve & Pearl. Boy, this would have been handy before I had my iPhone.  Now, it just seems a bit late to the game.

[via electronista]

Apple & Nike announced The Human Race 10K today- the world’s largest one-day running event.  On August 31st, 25 host cities will be participating via the Nike+iPod sport kit. 

If you register now, you get a free mix.  (makes me wish I had a nano)

Apple started what promises to be a torrent of news and updates last night with the release of iTunes 7.7, the App Store, MobileMe and an AppleTV update. 

iTunes does have the apps available and I’m ready to load some:

Apple claims more than 500 apps online and there sure are loads in there.

As for MobileMe, apparently it won’t go live until later in the day although some users were able to install it late last night.

Girl Talk released the “Feed The Animals” album digitally on June 20th.  This thing is hot! 

The album is available with “pay what you want” pricing at Illegal Art. You can pay what you want for the mp3’s. Paymet of $5 or more gives you a bonus of all of the tracks linked together in one big file (it’s intended to be listened to as a one continuous jam). And $10 or more gets you an advance order for the physical CD, which will be out later.

Ah yes, a new Beck album for the summer. 

Unfortunately “Modern Guilt” won’t be available until just after my summer vacation- July 8th.  iTunes is serving up the single, “Chemtrails” in advance to tide us over.

Today, Apple announced that the iTunes Store has crossed the five billion song barrier.  These sales figures put the Apple digital download service firmly in the number one music retailer space.  iTunes also features the largest music catalog available with more than eight million songs for purchase.

Apple also revealed that the movie and television segments are doing quite well- now renting and purchasing more than 50,000 movies daily,  These figures make iTunes the world’s most popular online movie store.  The video catalog includes more than 20,000 TV episodes and 2,000 films, with approximately 350 in HD.

The New Copyright Era website has finally launched.  The site is a joint venture between BMI and George Washington University.

The site will present a series of papers and related discussion regarding changes in policy, shifts in usage and the control of intellectual property rights in the “digital era.”

Awesome tutorial on getting Firefly Media Server working on the 1.1.4 iPhone by Rupert Gee.

The problem boiled down to the fact that it was built pre-“mobile” user and a simple configuration line needs to be updated.  I’ve got fresh music streaming for the weekend now directly off my iPhone.