• Jessica Simpson has moved to Epic from Columbia. An album is expected before the all-important Christmas shopping season, and producers to contribute to the album include Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis, Cory Rooney and Scott Storch. (Billboard.com)

• Rumors are circulating in Grand Rapids, Michigan about the involvement of Interscope Records in a development of a "large-scale mixed-use riverfront project." (Grand Rapids Press)

• Indie record stores in Baltiore and beyond are succeeding and expanding in the MP3 era. (Baltimore Business Journal)

• A post at The Velvet Rope lists indie label market shares for the first quarter of 2006. Top three: Wind-Up (0.74%), Razor & Tie (0.72%) and Victory (0.67%). (The Velvet Rope)

• Study predicts a digital music download explosion in the UK. (Monsters and Critics)

• A London department store will offer a service, called Speedpod, that records customers' vinyl and converts the songs to digital files. (Virgin.net)

• Shades of Sony BMG's rootkit problem: A report that EMI Brazil released the new Marisa Monte CD with an end user license agreement that, if accepted, will install programs and files that cannot be uninstalled. One person declined the EULA but the software was installed anyway. (Boing Boing)

• Stanford law proffesor and Creative Commons board member/proselytizer Lawrence Lessig is for open-source DRM. (The Register)