Additionally, within hours of the takedown of megaupload.com, the internet “hacktivist” group Anonymous claimed responsibility for attacking and temporarily shutting down websites for the Department of Justice, the FBI, the Recording Industry of America, The Motion Picture Association of America, BMI, Warner Music Group and – the largest record label in the world – Universal Music Group. As of press time, all sites except Universal were back up and running. A spokesman for Anonymous said the takedowns were the largest attack in the history of the group.

A version of Megaupload.com is currently on a server at the address http://109.236.83.66 and does not have a domain name. According to ABC News, a search of the website www.urlquery.net indicates that the server currently is based in the Netherlands.

The Department of Justice claims that the takedown was not associated with web protests of the SOPA and PIPA acts that took place on Wednesday as sites like Wikipedia and Reddit removed all content to display opposition to the bills. Those protests ended just hours before the takedown commenced. It was announced Friday that both those bills have been taken off the respective calendars of the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate for revisions.

Website rt.com posted comments Friday from Barrett Brown, speaking as a spokesperson for Anonymous.

“Obviously, this couldn’t have come at a worse time in terms of the government’s standpoint,” he told the site. “It [the web attacks against the sites that were shut down] was in retaliation for Megaupload.”

Brown also commented on how these attacks could occur again, and possibly be more widespread, if SOPA was passed.

“If this is what can occur without SOPA being passed,” he said, “imagine what can occur after SOPA is passed. “

EMI Publishing filed a copyright infringement suit against Escape Media Group in New York Supreme Court on Wednesday, according to a report by the New York Times. In the suit, EMI claims that Escape Media Group has “made not a single royalty payment to EMI, nor provided a single accounting statement.” Though the actual amount EMI was singing was not revealed, the New York Times article reports the number is probably at least $150,000. Grooveshark responded in a statement that, “This is a contract dispute that we expect to resolve.”

An irony of the case is that EMI is the only one of the four record major labels that has reached a licensing deal with Grooveshark. The two companies entered an agreement in 2009 following another copyright infringement case.

Unlike other popular music streaming subscription services like Spotify and Rhaspody that are fully licensed by the major labels, Grooveshark instead seeks protection of its content under the Digital Music Copyright Act (DMCA). That act protects sites posting copyrighted digital material as long as the site complies with take-down notices. Grooveshark is also different from the other sites since its content is posted by users. It is likely that, if passed, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and PROTECT IP bills currently making their way through U.S. Congress will have an affect on Grooveshark, as well.

Universal Music Group filed a suit against Grooveshark late last year, and Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group joined the suit soon after. All judgments likely will affect future interpretation of the DMCA, an ever evolving and changing protective act for websites.

In November of last year, it was announced that EMI would be split into a publishing division and a record label division, and that the two would be bought by Sony Corporation and Universal Music Group, respectively. However, both of these sales have to first be approved by government regulators.

Born Dwight Arrington Myers, Heavy D had been in London for about six weeks, and returned to his home in Los Angeles about a week before he died. Though his death was initially thought to be a result of complications from pneumonia, this has since been ruled out with the new announcement, as has any connection with drugs. Cough syrup was found in his system, but the coroner has ruled it did not play a part in the death. At 344 pounds, the 44-year-old’s weight also likely played a role in the death, as obesity and air travel are known to be common causes of thrombosis.

Heavy D came to prominence in the late 1980s and throughout the 90s as the leader of Heavy D & the Boyz, a hip-hop group that released five top 40 albums in the United States. Heavy D later became a record label president and was integral in helping the careers of Mary J. Blige and Sean “Puff Daddy” Combs, among others. In October of this year, he returned to the stage after a 15-year hiatus from live performing during the BET Hip-Hop Awards. It was also his final performance.

Three other acts also have been announced as part of the tour: Chelsea Grin, Bayside and Sleeping with Sirens. The Warped Tour website promises that these groups are only the “first of many band announcements rolling out over the next few weeks and months through the end of March.” The next slew of announcements will take place tomorrow, according to the site.

The 2012 festival will mark the 18^th consecutive Warped Tour, which began in 1995 and includes extreme sports as well as music. For the past few years, as many as 100 bands play every all day show, which normally stretch from before noon to after dark. Bands play simultaneously on multiple stages.

Memphis May Fire is a post-hardcore band from Texas, as has seen rising popularity since the release of its debut self-titled CD in 2007. The band’s first full-length, Sleepwalking, was released on Trustkill Records in 2009. A second album, The Hollow, was released in April of this year.

Chelsea Grin is a deathcore band from Salt Lake City that formed in 2007 and also released a record this year. My Damnation came out in July and peaked at number six on the Billboard Hard Rock Albums Chart. It climbed to number 64 on the overall Billboard 200 album chart.

Comparisons of the store to iTunes and the Amazon store, among other competitors, abound in that all make MP3s available for purchase through many channels, but Google hopes its services will find a special niche in the digital music market. For one, the store is specifically designed to work well on with a new app being offered for Google’s Android smart phone operating system. Additionally, the new store seems to specifically aim its services at both buyers of independent music and toward indie musicians themselves.

Specifically, the store includes a new platform that allows independent musicians to make their songs available for purchase without any middleman. The service is also integrated with Google’s Magnifier blog, which itself promotes more obscure artists and makes MP3s for those artists available for download.

In addition to the store, Google’s cloud service allows users to upload songs they already own to a cloud that is accessible from any music device. Both iTunes and Amazon have similar services, and songs are available to users whether they are using a computer, a smart phone or a tablet. One major difference between the Google cloud and the iTunes cloud is that users must upload the songs the Google’s service. iTunes has its Match service, which matches songs in a user’s library to its iTunes store and let’s the user stream the song from there, eliminating the uploading aspect. All the services have different prices, and Google’s cloud service allows a user to upload 20,000 songs before a paid-subscription is required.

The Google Music store also has the added benefit of offering many songs for free download, giving music fans the ability to find new music without incurring any cost. One downside of the service is that though Google has signed partnerships with two of the remaining three major record labels (until this week there were for major labels, but EMI was recently bought out), artists from the Warner Music Group are missing from its 13 million song library.

EMI was actually sold to two companies, with the record label portion of the company purchased by Vivendi, the company that owns Universal Music Group (UMG). Sony Corp. purchased the publishing aspect of EMI. Since both Universal and Sony are two labels in what was, together with EMI and Warner Music Group, known as the “big four” major record labels, this term will likely come to be known as the big three.

The winning bids for the two aspects of the company have been reported at $1.9 billion by Vivendi for the label and $2.2 billion for the publishing arm by Sony. Because of the nature of the business of the buyers, all deals will face regulatory scrutiny before they are finalized.

EMI was founded in 1931 as Electric and Musical Industries Ltd., and has had a long and varied history in the music industry since that time and is well known as the first label home to the Beatles. Other acts associated with EMI throughout the years have been the Beach Boys, Frank Sinatra and Nat ‘King’ Cole.

EMI was acquire by Terra Firma Capital Partners in August 2007, which was at least in part responsible for many acts departing the label around that time, including Radiohead, Paul McCartney and the Rolling Stones. The company’s current owner, Citigroup purchased the company from Terra Firma in February of this year.

Both sale transactions will have to be approved by regulatory agencies in Europe and the United States. Billboard quoted an anonymous antitrust lawyer experienced with working with major labels as saying that the label sale probably will have an easier time getting past regulators than the publishing sale. The attorney cites the label’s relatively small market share and dire financial situation as reasons for its probable approval, but says the publishing catalog will have a tougher time as it is “tremendously valuable.”

Jobs passed down his job as CEO of the company to his chosen successor, Tim Cook, six weeks ago. Jobs first discovered he had pancreatic cancer in 2004. He had a liver transplant in 2009 and has taken several leaves of absence from Apple to deal with complications from his illness.

Jobs is perhaps best known for making stylish technology products that were easy to use. The music world should recognize him as the man who brought music into the 21st century. In the free for all file sharing haven of the early-2000s, Jobs and company produced the ubiquitous way to cart around those files and listen to them while far away from the computer. The innovation of the iPod made a natural compliment of selling mp3s through the Apple store for a reasonable 99 cents a track. Others had come first, but none presented a model that music lovers would adopt in mass like Apple had.

As hard as the record labels fought the transition to digital media, it is a small miracle Jobs was able to get them to all come to the table and give the customer what they had been clamoring for, for years. As a technology guy, I thank Jobs for emphasizing that user interfaces should be simple, cool and fun. As a music lover, I thank Jobs for throwing a life line the badly ailing music industry before it went under. He is a great man who will be missed.

With the advent of advertiser based free models like Pandora and Spotify, paid services will continue to struggle as they swim against the tide. It is ironic that Napster taught consumers that music should be free then the company tried to make it by sticking a hand in our wallets. There will always be a place for paid music subscriptions, but these companies will have to adopt a free ad-based model to cater to a large slice of the public that has stopped paying for music and most likely never will again. Radio has done it for years, and the record labels have put themselves on the brink of bankruptcy fighting technology and battling the will of the consumer. All we have to say for the newly joined Rhapsody-Napster conglomerate is good luck. You’re going to need it.

Rumors of the new music service first started to surface in July when Jeff Rose, a tech blogger, published some code that appeared to be a call for downloading an application named “Facebook Vibes.”

We aren’t sure if that will end up being the real name of the upcoming music platform from Facebook. However, we did discover that the service will enable people to listen to music right on the Facebook website.

According to a report from CNBC, an inside source who is familiar with Facebook’s plan stated that on September 22 the service will be launched at Facebook’s F8 conference.

However, it is unlikely that Facebook will end up being a music retailer. It probably instead will partner with established music streaming services such as Rdio, Spotify and Pandora. CNBC added, if that turns out to be true, instead of threatening the music services already in existence, a music platform from Facebook could potentially offer a traffic boost to services offering ad-supported, free services.

How could this work potentially? A player could be created by music services that was located within Facebook, allowing users to listen to music while still remaining on the Facebook site. The music itself, however, would be delivered still via a third-party service. Users would still need to log into the service before being able to listen to music, according to the Wall Street Journal. According to inside sources, the players would not be mandatory. If someone wanted to hear the Spotify playlist of one of their Facebook friend’s, they may have to switch applications in order to listen.

It appears to be a really awesome idea and would return us to the MySpace good old days when we discovered new music from listening to the personal picks of our friends.

This means that AEG won’t be relying on Ticketmaster any longer, which is the dominant online ticket retailer that every year sells tickets by the hundreds of millions to event goers who are looking to avoid trips to a box office prior to the event.

Lisa Zedelmaier, a concert goer said, I don’t need to go anywhere. It’s so easy. I don’t need to drive anywhere. All I have to do is click my mouse to order and then print my tickets out.

Convenience does have its price though. For example, for a Taylor Swift $79 ticket at Staples Center there is an addition $12.50 convenience fee in addition to another $2.50 for using your own ink and printer to print your ticket out. AXS doesn’t charge fees for office or home printing or for emailing tickets.

The website axs.com is online already. Currently, however, if you try to purchase tickets you are transferred to Ticketmaster or some other ticket selling service online. On Saturday, they began to rolling out their ticket selling out in limited fashion. At first, tickets will only be available for two Denver AEG theaters. Among the first performances to become available through axs will be from the group Social Distortion.

Tim Leiweke, AEG CEO and President said, creating the axs platform allows us to deliver an experience that is more complete for both our brand partners and consumers. He described the development as something that would move the company forward strategically.

Zedelmaier said, not having to pay a fee for the email for printing does appeal to her. However, unless she plans to leave Southern California, it’s going to be some time before she’ll be able to benefit from it. Axs won’t start processing LA Staples Center event tickets until next year year during the second quarter.

However, many from the ticketing industry are expecting that Ticketmaster will soon be feeling pressure.

Donald Vaccaro, TicketNetwork CEO from the ticket resales online market based out of Connecticut said, consumers finally will have some type of competition that AEG provides to benefit from.

Ticketmaster didn’t comment on the AXS roll out announcement. However, they have known this was coming for a long time. Ticketmaster last year, in order for their merger to be allowed with Live Nation Entertainment, was required to agree with conditions that the U.S. Justice Department imposed for fostering new competition. One requirement was that Ticketmaster had to make available their ticket processing software to AEG. However, AEG did ultimately decide to use a system that was developed by Outbox Enterprises, a start up company from Canada. Other clients of theirs are Cirque du Soleil.

There are over 100 AEG venues worldwide. It is expected that their axs roll out will continue thought 2012. However, Outbox is intending to woo other non-AEG theaters, stadiums and arenas, including ones that currently use Ticketmaster. One of the features that the Outbox software allows, is for the ticket purchaser to be able to have interactions with the website from a venue instead of being transferred in order to make their purchase. Outbox’s systems also has the ability to deliver online content. AEG is expecting to add that feature to axs eventually.

Ticketmaster is familiar with Fred Rose, the CEO of Outbox and man who challenged the status quo. During the early 1980s into the late 1990s, Ticketmaster overwhelmed their competition and dominated the ticketing industry online. The company at that time was run by Rosen. Now he is looking to dethrone Ticketmaster.