New York - TuneCore, a digital music distribution service that provides artists with low-cost distribution through iTunes and other retailers, has announced that it will now offer a $10 flat-rate fee for distribution of songs to seven retailers. The company lets artists retain all rights as well as 100% of the revenues it receives back from retailers -- which equates to about 62 cents per track on iTunes, according to the Wall Street Journal. TuneCore, which is majority-owned by Guitar Center, says it has so far delivered 400,000 songs on behalf of artists that have earned a combined over $7 million.

Philadelphia - Comcast (NASD: CMCSA), the nation's largest cable TV provider that also counts 14 million broadband subscribers, said this week that it expects to offer 100 Mbps download speeds to Internet access subscribers in most of its markets by 2010, the Associated Press reported. The 100 Mbps connections -- which the company expects to offer 20% of its markets by year's end -- will be able to download an HD movie in just minutes.

London - The British Phonographic Institute (BPI), a record label trade group, announced on Friday that it has partnered with U.K. broadband provider Virgin Media on a public anti-piracy campaign. Customers whose accounts appear to have been used to illegally distribute music will receive "informative letters" from both Virgin and BPI. While BPI investigators will identify IP addresses of suspected infringers, Virgin will deliver both letters -- without disclosing subscribers' identities to BPI. BPI estimates over 6.5 million U.K. broadband accounts are used to illegally download music.

London - Omnifone announced on Friday that its MusicStation unlimited mobile music download service on Vodafone's (NYSE: VOD) network is now the largest digital music subscription service in the U.K., overtaking even PC-centric services in terms of subscriber numbers. The company did not break out subscriber tallies for the service, which allows subscribers to download an unlimited number of tracks to their mobile phones for about $3.92 per week.

Los Angeles - Universal Motown recording artist Lil Wayne's new album, "Tha Carter III," will be made available for purchase and download directly from his website, social network pages and other sites using the Musicane widget, the label said. Downloads sold via the commerce-enabled widget will be delivered as 320 Kbps, DRM-free MP3s.

San Bruno, Calif. - Google's (NASD: GOOG) YouTube on Friday debuted a new channel category for citizen journalists on its site, as "Reporter" became an option alongside other channel tags such as Comedian, Guru, Musician and YouTuber. The Reporter channel designation is intended for users who upload "on-the-scene" coverage of local news and events, students producing newscasts, and also professional journalists using YouTube as an additional outlet for their work.

San Francisco - GoFish, an online youth entertainment and media network that draws about 66 million unique visitors a month, on Friday named Matt Freeman as its new CEO. Freeman, the founder and former CEO of interactive agency DDB Worldwide, succeeds Michael Downing, who is leaving the company for unspecified reasons. Tabreez Verjee, the president of GoFish, said that the hiring comes at a time when the company is in the midst of expanding its vertical advertising business and establishing ourselves as a digital entertainment media company.

San Francisco - Greystripe, a distributor of free, ad-supported mobile games that to date counts 65 million downloads, on Friday released new demographic data on its users that shows mobile games now reach a wider audience than middle-aged women. The company said 68% of its users in the U.S., and 75% worldwide, are between the ages of 18 and 34. In the U.S., 60% are men and 40% female, "confirming that mobile gaming does reach both men and women," the company said. Greystripe added that the ads associated with its games have a click-through rate of 10.1% worldwide.

Boston - 2K Sports, the sports publishing label of Take-Two Interactive (NASD: TTWO), announced on Friday that 11-time NBA All-Star and 2008 Defensive Player of the Year Kevin Garnett of the Boston Celtics will be featured as the cover athlete and spokesman for the company's new basketball video game, NBA 2K9.

Washington - With Barack Obama the presumptive Democratic nominee, Congressional Quarterly has launched the Democratic edition of its CQ Politics' "VP Madness" online game. VP Madness pits a field of 32 potential running mates against one another in an NCAA basketball-style tournament bracket. Site visitors will vote on first-round match-ups starting June 5, and then return to make additional picks based on the results of each of the four subsequent rounds. Candidates include Democratic Party heavyweights like Al Gore and Hillary Clinton, as well as newer arrivals to the national scene, such as Jim Webb and Kathleen Sebelius.

Durham, N.C. - Video game publisher Funcom announced on Friday that its "Age of Conan" massively multiplayer online PC game has now sold a million copies in less than three weeks, topping PC game charts in the U.S., Germany, France and the U.K. "Sales data shows that Age of Conan is the biggest MMO launch since World of Warcraft," said Morten Larssen, Funcom VP of sales and marketing. "The numbers are very promising, and we are very proud to be one of the fastest selling PC games ever in a launch month and the biggest simultaneous Europe/US MMO launch in history."

Los Angeles - George Lucas' LucasArts game publishing unit this week laid off 75 to 100 of its employees, including VP of product development Peter Hirschmann and Shawn Storc, producer of its LEGO-themed "Star Wars" and "Indiana Jones" titles, Kotaku reported.

Los Angeles - Despite launching what it calls a "platform agnostic" bandwidth management system this week, broadband and cable TV provider Comcast (NASD: CMCSA) was served with class-action lawsuits this week in three states over its practice of throttling the BitTorrent file transfers of some of its users, Ars Technica reported.

Sunnyvale, Calif. - Billionaire financier Carl Icahn on Friday laid out his plans should he gain control of Yahoo (NASD: YHOO), including disposing of an employee severance plan that he called "perverse," replacing CEO Jerry Yang and offering publicly to sell Yahoo to Microsoft (NASD: MSFT) in a "friendly and cooperative transaction."

Atlanta - Time Warner (NYSE: TWX) is competing with a rival group led by NBC Universal (NYSE: GE), Blackstone Group and Bain Capital to acquire Atlanta-based Weather Channel from Landmark Communications, according to a report by Reuters on Friday.

Seattle - The investigations being conducted by copyright holders on file-sharing networks to discover instances of infringement are flawed, and can mistakenly identify innocent parties, according to a new study from researchers at the University of Washington. The researchers monitored file-sharing activity on the BitTorrent network last year, and in the course of their study received 206 complaints of infringement under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) -- even though their machines transferred no illegal files.

New York - After announcing that it had hired Goldman Sachs to help explore a sale of the company in January, restaurant and nightlife guide publisher Zagat announced on Friday that it has discontinued its search for suitors and will instead pursue an "organic growth strategy."

New York - CBS (NYSE: CBS) plans to launch a digital record label in January that will seek to place its artists' music in CBS TV and digital programming, as well as distribute through digital retailers like iTunes, Variety reports. The new Los Angeles-based CBS Records unit will utilize resources from CBS Entertainment and CBS Interactive, and be headed by current CBS Paramount Network Television Entertainment Group president Nancy Tellem.

New York - IAC (NASD: IACI), the conglomerate of Internet businesses, has sold its Entertainment Publications Inc. (EPI) subsidiary, a provider of discounts and promotions, to MH Equity Investors for $135 million.