New York - The first officially released song from Guns 'N Roses fourteen-years-in-the-making "Chinese Democracy" album is set to debut in September, as a track within "Rock Band 2," the sequel to Viacom-owned (NYSE: VIA) MTV Games popular music game, The New York Times reported on Monday, citing anonymous sources. Such a deal underlines the influence that the new crop of music games can have on an artist's sales. A release date for the album -- some of whose tracks were recently leaked by a blogger -- has not yet been announced, but if the "Rock Band" deal pans out, it could signal that the full album will finally be released in the fall.

San Francisco - Millions of Us, an agency specializing in virtual worlds and large online communities, announced on Monday the launch of Virtual Greats, a new company that aims to take advantage of the growing market for virtual goods. The Los Angeles-based company has already acquired the distribution rights for virtual goods associated with celebrities including Elvis Presley, Justin Timberlake, Tila Tequila, Snoop Dogg, Paris Hilton, Raven Symone and Marvel's The Incredible Hulk and She-Hulk. The company says it will sell likenesses, catchphrases, animations, clothing lines and other virtual merchandise across more than 60 different online platforms.

Los Angeles - Veoh Networks, the operator of an Internet TV service, announced on Monday the launch of a new behavioral targeting system, which will allow advertisers to target ads to Veoh's 28 million viewers based their past video viewing interests. The system initially allows targeting to more than nine interest-based audience segments, but Veoh said it will "build custom audience categories around an advertiser's specific marketing objectives."

Ann Arbor, Michigan - Cloudtrade, a developer of mobile social networking applications, on Monday said it has added tracks from labels Ghostly International and A-Squared Management to its free, ad-supported mobile music download service. Other labels participating in a three-month evaluation period for the service include ATO and SCI Fidelity Records. Cloudtrade said that, in exchange for the free downloads, it asks users to interact with audio and video ads, or advergames on their phones.

Shanghai, China - PPLive, a provider of peer-to-peer-based Internet TV broadcasting and online video streaming in China that claims over 100 million users worldwide, said on Monday that it has signed a deal with China Central Television's CCTV.com, to provide live online broadcasts of Olympic sporting events, as well as the opening and closing ceremonies.

Washington - XM Satellite Radio (NASD: XMSR) announced on Monday that it has signed blues legend B.B. King to host a weekly radio show on the service, slated to debut in September. XM's 9.3 million subscribers will be able to hear blues and gospel tracks hand-picked by King, who will also share stories about the artists and other personal anecdotes.

New York - GigMaven on Monday launched a beta test of its Web-based service that lets music artists find and book gigs online, and club owners and music bookers to list availabilities and search for artists to book. The company said over 500 artists have already signed up for the service, which currently covers venues in Brooklyn, Boston, Columbus and New York City. Notable venues participating include New York's Knitting Factory and Boston's Middle East.

Burbank, Calif. - Disney Interactive Studios (NYSE: DIS) on Monday announced a deal with Music for Relief, a nonprofit founded by rock band Linkin Park, that will place in-game Music for Relief content within Disney's upcoming Wii and DS music-based title "Ultimate Band." In turn, the game will be featured in the Music for Relief booth on the band's Projekt Revolution 2008 summer tour.

New York - Media conglomerate Viacom (NYSE: VIA) has issued a statement claiming that it "has not asked for and will not be obtaining any personally identifiable information of any YouTube user" in the course of its $1 billion copyright infringement lawsuit against the site.

New York - Chinese online video site 56.com, which has been down for the past five weeks for what a note on the site said was "system maintenance," but which many believed to because of government action, is now back online and serving video, Silicon Alley Insider reports.

Arlington, Va. - Seventy-one venture capital funds raised $9.1 billion during the second quarter, a 4% raise in dollar value from the same period last year, according to a new report from Thomson Reuters and the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA).

San Francisco - Activision Blizzard (NASD: ATVI), the company recently formed through the merger of Activision and Vivendi's games division, is considering launching an alternative digital music platform to compete with Apple's (NASD: AAPL) iTunes, company CEO Bobby Kotick said in an interview with the Financial Times. "I don't think there have been a lot of credible alternatives to iTunes but Guitar Hero certainly has that potential," Kotick told FT.

Tokyo - Japan has at least temporarily abandoned plans to enact an "iPod tax" that would have provided part of the cost of each device to copyright holders and recording artists, from presumed sales lost to piracy, officials there told the Associated Press.

Redmond, Wash. - Microsoft (NASD: MSFT) announced over the weekend that it has slashed $50 off the price of its basic 20GB Xbox 360 game console, to $299, while also unveiling plans to release a new 60GB model in August that will retail for $349. The company said the price cut on the 20GB model will go on "while supplies last," indicating it will discontinue that version of the device, while continuing to offer the hard drive-free Xbox 360 Arcade model for $280 and 120GB Xbox 360 Elite for $450.

Cupertino, Calif. - Apple (NASD: AAPL) reported on Monday that it sold one million iPhone 3Gs in the device's first weekend on sale in 21 countries, while the new App Store for both the new and first-generation iPhone racked up 10 million downloads. "iPhone 3G had a stunning opening weekend. It took 74 days to sell the first one million original iPhones, so the new iPhone 3G is clearly off to a great start around the world," said Apple CEO Steve Jobs.

San Jose, Calif. - Gaia Online, an online virtual world for teens that claims 5 million unique monthly users, announced on Monday that it has closed an $11 million third round of funding from Institutional Venture Partners.

Paris - Monte Cristo Games, a Paris-based independent game developer, announced that it has raised about $7 million in new funding from Arts Alliance, 360 Capital Partners and Innoven Partenaires.

Busy week coming up for Google's lawyers. On Tuesday, Google's senior legal office Dave Drummond will be on Capitol Hill to answer questions from the Senate Judiciary Committee on his company's proposed search ad partnership with Yahoo. Although Congressional hearings are mostly for tourists, Drummond will need to be careful in answering the committee's questions as the deal is also under investigation by the Department of Justice, which probably isn't just doing it for show and will likely regard anything Drummond says as part of the record. Drummond will be joined at the witness table by Yahoo general counsel Michael Callahan and his counterpart at Microsoft, Brad Smith.

Silver Spring, Md. - Two months after announcing $15 million in new funding, Silicon Valley's Social Gaming Network (SGN) revealed on Monday that it has received an undisclosed amount of additional funding from Bezos Expeditions, the investment fund of Amazon (NASD: AMZN) founder and CEO Jeff Bezos.

There is a lot of money being spent trying to turn internet video into something its not. Its not TV. It's certainly not going to be HDTV. What is shocking about the entire attempt to turn the internet into a tv/HDTV distribution medium is how much people lie to themselves about what is actually happening.