» Turns out that more people downloaded Radiohead's In Rainbows illegally than legally, even though people could grab it free and legal straight from the Radiohead website. My guess is that it's a combination of torrents being easier and faster for some, and that people could download it from torrent sites without any conscience problems.

» Yahoo! has announced that it will give customers coupons for tracks lost to the previously-reported closing of the Yahoo! music store. Yahoo! will give the customers coupons to redeem from Rhapsody the tracks they had in the Yahoo! DRM system. It will still, of course, be a hassle for Yahoo! customers to completely change over their music collection to a new system.

» For the Children!: Alicia Keys said "I am an unyielding advocate for the well-being of children around the world and do not condone or endorse smoking" after she had learned that a show of hers in Indonesia was heavily sponsored by a cigarette company. She was notified by relentless do-gooders The Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, who wanted to shield Indonesian children from smoking advertising, you know, for their own good. Also: Alicia Keys and Jack White are set to record the Theme song for the upcoming James Bond film.

» Ludacrass: Ludacris has released a new song entitled "Politics (Obama is Here)" which expresses Ludacris' support of Obama and ridicules Bush, McCain and Hillary Clinton. The song calls Clinton an "irrelevant bitch" and calls Bush "mentally handicapped."

» Best Buy is set to introduce sections in its stores which will sell musical instruments. Although each store will not have a section, each store that does is going to be setting aside roughly 2,500 square feet to sell brand name instruments from the likes of Fender and Gibson. The choice is partly influenced by the slowing sales of CD's and DVD's, which for a while have been a mainstay in Best Buy's books.

» The Rest, in short: Bob Dylan has announced he and Columbia will release the 8th volume of his Bootleg Series, a triple-disc affair called Tell Tale Signs, which features tracks from the last 20 years or so; Iran will host its first western pop concert in 30 years; Sony BMG has holes in its pockets; An organist rents out Radio City to play its badass Wurlitzer; TorrentFreak chronicles the fall of their nemesis, MediaDefender; Mexican Authorities have closed down a file-sharing server used with DirectConnect; Daman Albarn makes backstage requests quite charming as he requests a ping pong table in exchange for a longer set.