Sony, Warner, Universal, and EMI are banding together to take on Apple’s dominance of digital music downloads with the launch of a new file format that will bundle together an entire album, its liner notes, artwork, videos, and maybe even ringtones.

It’s called “CMX,” and it’s due around November of this year. According to the Times Online, online shoppers haven’t shown much interest in downloading entire albums — only singles. CMX hopes to change that, by enticing customers with loads of extra content if they buy and download full albums. CMX is a unique offering in that when you open it …read more

Dating coach Wayne Elise once said women don’t want an engineer who looks like an engineer, they want an engineer who looks like a record producer. In that case, women will want Douglas Merrill. The eminently progressive CIO of Google is leaving his illustrious post to become President of EMI Digital Business on April 28.
Yes, it’s a shocker: a clueful guy who looks like a surfer dude jumping from a rising company in a rising industry filled with smart people to a troubled company in a troubled industry filled with dumb people. As he said in an interview today, he …read more