Madrid - Spain-based telecommunications firm Telefonica announced on Wednesday that it will distribute Apple's (NASD: AAPL) iPhone in 12 Latin American countries and the Czech Republic, expanding on previous deals and brining the total number of countries the company will offer the iPhone in to 16. The new Latin American agreement covers Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, Urguay and Venezuela.

Bentonville, Ark. - Retail giant Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT) announced on Wednesday that veteran rock band Journey's new 3-disc CD/DVD album "Revelation" sold more than 104,000 copies in its first week on sale exclusively at Wal-Mart and Sam's Club stores in North America, and via the retailers' websites. Wal-Mart has also been the exclusive retailer for the Eagles, and recently signed a similar deal for AC/DC's forthcoming album on Columbia Records.

Seattle - Delve Networks, formerly known as Pluggd, on Wednesday announced the launch of its Internet TV and online video publishing platform for medium to large-sized publishers. The platform, which will compete with offerings from Brightcove, Maven and others, includes a feature that lets users navigate within a hosted video file to find the exact content they want. Seattle-based Delve is backed by DFJ Frontier, Intel Capital and Labrador Ventures.

Plymouth, Minn. - Primera Technology on Wednesday introduced a new "Rent & Rip" program that will let consumers rent its professional-grade equipment and software for a week for the purpose of ripping their entire CD collections to a computer. For $299 per week, customers can rent a Primera Bravo SE Disc Publisher machine along with the company's PTRip software -- which use built-in robotics to load CDs and rip them to iTunes or Windows Media Player. "Sending 1,000 CDs to a service could easily cost $1,000 before shipping costs. For just $299, our Rent & Rip Program lets you do the same thing yourself -- without the risk of sending away your valuable CD collection," said Mark D. Strobel, Primera's VP of Sales and Marketing.

London - In what is thought will become the first prosecution in the U.K. involving pre-release music, a London-based DJ and music critic has been arrested on suspicion of theft and money laundering in connection with his alleged selling of 150 pre-release albums on eBay, according to a statement from the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), a record label trade group.

New York - Merlin, a new trade body founded a year ago with the aim of representing the rights of independent labels worldwide, announced on Wednesday that its membership has grown to over 12,000 labels, representing over 8% of the U.S. market -- equal to that of major label EMI Music. The group claims to now be in essence a "fifth major label," and said it is currently in discussions with Last.fm (NYSE: CBS) and MySpace (NYSE: NWS), as well as other major digital companies, to ensure competitive remuneration for independents worldwide.

Basking Ridge, N.J. - Expanding on the band's existing extensive library of live recordings, Verizon Wireless (NYSE: VZ) announced on Wednesday that it has partnered with Pearl Jam to distribute mobile "bootleg" recordings from the band's 12-city U.S. tour this summer.

Toronto - The amount of time Americans spend watching TV and other video content each day is expected to nearly triple over the next five years, matching the amount of time they spend sleeping by 2013, according to a report published on Wednesday by Solutions Research Group. The average U.S. consumer over age 12 with Internet access now spends 6.1 hours daily with video entertainment, up from 4.6 hours in 1996; that number is expected to grow nearly 35% to about 8 hours by 2013.

Seattle - More than one in five (20.5%) of players of casual video games have a physical, mental or developmental disability -- compared with 15.1% of the overall U.S. population who are disabled -- according to a survey conducted by Information Solutions Group on behalf of casual games publisher PopCap Games.

Hanhzhou, China - Chinese digital music distributor 5fad.com announced on Wednesday that it has filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against leading Chinese search engine Baidu (NASD: BIDU) in federal court in New York. Baidu has been the target of a number of lawsuits from record labels in its home country of China, but this suit filed by 5fad appears to be the first such action to be accepted for review by a U.S. federal court, in this case the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

Los Angeles - German media conglomerate Bertelsmann is looking to sell its 50% stake in major record label joint venture Sony BMG back to Sony (NYSE: SNE) for $1.5 billion, an unnamed source told Financial Times Deutschland. Bertelsmann is looking to complete the sale within four to six weeks, and the talks are "well advanced," the source told FTD, according to a posting on the FTD article at PaidContent.

Los Angeles - Capzles has announced that it has raised an undisclosed sum in first round funding from unnamed investors, and launched its "social storytelling" network.

Los Angeles - FunnyorDie.com, the comedy site backed by Will Ferrell that offers original video programming, has received an investment from Time Warner's (NYSE: TWX) HBO in exchange for a "small equity stake," Variety reports. The deal will also see FunnyorDie create 10 half-hours of programming for HBO, and the two partnering on live comedy tours and possibly FunnyorDie-branded programming on HBO channels.

San Francisco - Mobile marketing firm 5th Finger announced on Wednesday that it has raised $7 million in first round funding from Australia's Starfish Ventures.

Hulu.com., the joint venture between Fox and NBC that provides streaming video content online, announced a deal this week that The Colbert Report and The Daily Show are now available through the site. Hulu.com came out of beta on March 15 and has seen a steady share of US Internet traffic since, as illustrated in the following chart.