Los Angeles - The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors this week expanded the ordinance that allows for the county to shutter a property that becomes a "public nuisance," such as in gang or drug-related instances, to include properties used to illegally manufacture and sell recordings and audiovisual works. "This ordinance is an important milestone in our efforts to curb piracy in Los Angeles," said Dan Glickman, chairman and CEO of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). "In its approval of this ordinance, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors have officially recognized that piracy isn't just an industry problem, but one that has a significant impact on the local economy as well."

San Francisco - Project Playlist, a service that aggregates streaming music links into playlists, and has been sued for copyright infringement by three of the four major record labels, has hired former Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) CEO Jay Berman as a consultant, CNET News.com reports. Project Playlist CEO Jeremy Riney told News.com that he will shut his site down if he is not able to license music legally from the labels; the sole major not party to the lawsuit against the company, Sony BMG, is reportedly negotiating with Project Playlist.

Tokyo - Chaku-Uta Full, a Japanese mobile music download service owned by a group of Japanese record labels and operated by Label Mobile, has now served over 200 million full-track song downloads since its inception in November 2004, Billboard reports. The service passed the 100 million download mark in May 2007.

New York - Last.fm, the social music discovery service owned by CBS (NYSE: CBS), on Friday launched a new original video programming section, featuring interviews with artists including Moby, Santogold and Spoon. The videos will also be made available through CBS Audience Network partners, which include AOL, Comcast, Microsoft, Joost, Bebo and Veoh.

Los Angeles - Microsoft (NASD: MSFT) recently doled out one-time bonus checks to independent digital music distributors including The Orchard (NASD: ORCD) and IODA, apparently to balance out the reported $1 per Zune sold it has granted to major labels including Universal Music Group, Hypebot reported. Both distributors plan to share the revenue with their label and artist partners.

Los Angeles - Warner Music Group (NYSE: WMG) has added DRM-free songs to Wal-Mart's online music store, which dropped songs from Warner as well as Sony BMG and Universal Music when it decided to offer only MP3s, Hypebot reports. Wal-Mart's MP3 store now offers Warner Music MP3s alongside tracks from EMI and independent labels.

New York - Last.fm, the social music discovery service owned by CBS, has signed a deal to power AOL Europe's online radio service, beginning in the U.K., France and Germany. The company signed a similar deal earlier this year to power AOL Radio in the U.S.

Somerville, Mass. - The Echo Nest, a developer of enhanced music search, recommendation and interactivity technology, on Thursday launched Recommend, an API that can be used to offer a music discovery and recommendation tool n ay website, blog, social network or retail site. The API is powered by The Echo Nest's Musical Brain, "an automated machine learning platform with an in-depth understanding of the cultural and acoustic factors that inform music preference."

New York - Digital music service eMusic has been forced to remove early Rolling Stones albums and other repertoire from ABKCO Records it has been offering since early April, due to legal issues, Hypebot reported. In a post on its forums, the company said it "triple and quadruple-checked" the licensing issues involved before going ahead and offering the ABKCO catalog. "But this was not enough. Due to events outside of our control, we are being forced to remove the entire ABKCO catalog from eMusic."

New York - Former hedge fund operator turned music manager Steven Nowack has launched SOS Records, a record label that promises to offer all of its music as free MP3s at WeLoveFreeMusic.com. The venture was announced at a press event in New York yesterday that featured the support of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who called the idea of an online portal for free music "incredibly powerful" during a chance meeting with Nowack. The label aims to offer one new free song each day, but will also distribute physical products. Initial SOS Records artists include Naomi Striemer, Idrissa Diop and Mario Winans.

San Jose, Calif. - Qtrax, the developer of a free, ad-supported music download service, has reached a deal to license Universal Music Group's catalog, the company's first major label signing.

San Francisco - Neil Young said on Tuesday that he will release his entire repertoire on Sony's (NYSE: SNE) Blu-ray Disc format, the Associated Press reported. The veteran rocker announced the plans at a conference for Sun Microsystems, whose Java platform powers the interactive features on Blu-ray discs. The first 10-disc set, covering 1963-1972 and set for release in the fall, will include songs, videos, handwritten manuscripts and other content that users will be able to download directly to the discs over the Internet as it become available.

Hollywood, Calif. - Buzznet, a music-focused social media community, on Tuesday announced that it has acquired yet another music site, this time purchasing alternative music Web zine Absolute Punk for an undisclosed sum. The deal follows Hollywood-based Buzznet's recent acquisitions of music blogs Stereogum and Idolator, and a $25 million round of financing earlier this year from investors that included Universal Music Group.

San Francisco - Digital music distributor IODA is set to announce tomorrow the launch of IODA Label Stores, a white label download storefront that will allow labels and artists to sell digital music directly to consumers. The company partnered with DownloadCentric on the offering, which at launch will be used by partners including Six Degrees Records, Paper Bag Records, Om Records, ABB Records, Birdman Records, and the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra. IODA said it will eventually also offer customizable store widgets that can be embedded on any site.

Beaverton, Ore. - Digital watermarking technology developer Digimarc (NASD: DMRC) said on Monday that it has licensed its patents to Media Sciences International (MSI), which provides forensic tracking services for secure distribution of promotional content to the major record labels. MSI's technology is currently used on over 5 million major label tracks to identify and track leaks of promotional, pre-release music.

Woburn, Mass. - Universal Music Group announced on Monday that it has signed a broad license agreement with Gotuit, a provider of metadata technologies. Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed. Under the license, Universal said it will develop a variety of new personalized music offerings that will be available over satellite radio, HD radios and the Internet.