• Madonna is reportedly close to signing a $100 million deal with concert promoter LiveNation. The deal would cover touring and recorded music. Expect more established artists to leave the majors and sign similar deals. Madonna is an exception -- at nearly 50 years old she can still sell records -- but most artists in her age range will never see the Top 20 again. (Sunday Mirror)

• MusicNet has a new parnership with Hispanic retailer La Curacao that will promote online music and portable media players to the Latin market. To begin by December, the partnership will have MusicNet provide music to Hispanic-oriented download store Pasito.com. Marketing will happen at the retail level. La Curacao, a chain of eight department stores in Arizona and California, will have "Internet pavillions" that will show consumers how to use the music service. Customers will be offered a discount on a music player if a subscription to Pasito.com is purchased. (Billboard)

• Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore defends his band's decision to put together an album for Starbucks. "It was born of frustration, trying to get our label to sell our records. When you're in a band like Sonic Youth that's not on the radio or on TV, you want to try to get your record out there." (Boston Globe)

• As a result of MediaDefender information that was publicly leaked a few weeks ago, PirateBay, has filed charges with Swedish police against ten MediaDefender clients for hacking and spamming, denial of service attacks and infrastructural sabotage. Universal Music Group , EMI Music Sweden and Sony BMG are two of the companies targeted by PirateBay. (PirateBay Blog)

• The Philadelphia Inquirer looks at how classical music is dealing with the iTunes era. Quite a few articles have been written on the topic, bu this is one of the better ones. (Philadelphia Inquirer)

• AnywhereCD.com will reportedly shut down in a few days when its deal to sell Warner Music Group download and CD bundles expires. The site currently has a "Going Out Of Business Sale" and is selling "thousands of CD and MP3 album" bundles for $7. Good luck finding those sale priced CDs. Users have to search for the bargain prices by way of AnywhereCD's cumbersome way of browsing titles. Most titles are already sold out. (SocialTech.com)

• There are all sorts of reasons the great celestial jukebox won't be realized in commercial download sites. Here's another one. Richard Reinhardt, known as Richie Ramone during his stint as the drummer for the Ramones, has sued Ramones Production, Inc. and the estate of late guitarist Johnny Ramone for selling songs he wrote at WalMart.com and iTunes without his permission. (TMZ.com)