• Album sales were down 3% last week and were down 17% against the same week last year. For the year, album sales are down 17%. Digital tracks rose 1% last week and are up 50% against last year.

• Sony/ATV won an auction for the 125,000 song-deep Famous Music publishing catalog for about $370 million. (New York Post)

• iTunes' new unprotected, premium AAC files from EMI embeds the user's account information in the audio file. (Cue the privacy concerns and the debate about what constitutes DRM.) The Unofficial Apple Weblog offers instructions on how to see for yourself. (The Unofficial Apple Weblog)

• Premium music download retailer MusicGiants has partnered with GalleryPlayer to offer the latter's art, entertainment and sports photography to MusicGiants' home theater installations. Basically, the deal will offer MusicGiants customers more HD content through those high-end systems in which MusicGiants is integrated. Should make for a great audio-visual combination. (Press release)

• You may have seen the news about Microsoft's table-top surface device. This Popular Mechanics video shows how the table-top interface allows for wireless file exchanges between portable devices (cameras, music players, mobile phones, PDAs).

• The Toronto flagship store of Canadian music retail chain Sam the Record Man will close on June 30th. The store has been active at that site since 1961. (ChartAttack)