Los Angeles - Singer Sheryl Crow is offering the first 50,000 people who register three friends to vote a free digital copy of her new album, "Detours," the Associated Press reported. Anyone who logs onto the Rock the Vote website, as well as all the members of the non-profit's mailing list will also be offered a free download of Crow's song "Gasoline." "I hope people wake up and emotionally engage in issues," Crow told AP.

Los Angeles - The developers behind Songbird, a free software media player and Web browser, this week announced the .7 beta release of the application, which includes support for social music service Last.fm and concert ticket sales application Songkick, Webmonkey reported. The Songbird interface is very similar to that of Apple's iTunes.

Atlanta - Time Warner's (NYSE: TWX) CNN has made its online news video embeddable on third-party sites, LostRemote.com reports. Fellow news outlets MSNBC.com, CBSNews.com, FoxNews.com and others already offer such a feature.

Stockholm - Mobile phone maker Sony Ericsson on Friday announced the launch of PlayNow Arena in Scandinavia, a mobile download store offering music, games and applications, Dow Jones reports. The service launches with 1 million tracks from Sony BMG, Warner Music, EMI and others. Sony Ericsson plans to expand the service to other European countries later this year, and make it available globally in 2009, eventually offering a catalog of five million songs.

San Francisco - Pepsi's Mountain Dew soft drink brand has launched a new singles-only digital record label, Green Label Sounds, which this week offered its first exclusive song from the Cool Kids, Wired.com reported. The label next plans to offer a track from Matt & Kim, as well as two additional artists in the fall, according to the website.

Amsterdam - Sellaband, a Netherlands-based company that helps bands raise funds for recording by enabling fans to contribute online, announced on Friday that it has signed a deal with YouLicense.com, to allow bands using the service to make their music available for licensing to producers, filmmakers, marketers and ad agencies. Sellaband will split revenues between the artists, their fan supporters on the service, and the company.

Burbank, Calif. - Time Warner's (NYSE: TWX) Warner Bros. Television Group said on Friday that it plans to launch TheWB.com, the new online business model for the discontinued network, on Aug. 27 with full episodes of series including "Friends," "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "The O.C."

New Delhi and Warsaw - Apple (NASD: AAPL) on Friday launched its iPhone 3G in India and Poland, but while crowds lined up at midnight sales at several locations in India, Apple's Polish iPhone carrier partner, Orange, said it paid actors to create "fake queues" at 20 of its stores in the country, Reuters reported. The iPhone 3G retails for a whopping $700 in India, compared with $199 in the U.S., but Indian carrier partner Airtel told Reuters it counted more than 200,000 pre-bookings before prices were announced.

Tokyo - Digital music sales in Japan during the second quarter grew 28% to $204.8 million, while total unit sales were up 7% to 119 million, Billboard reported, citing data from the Recording Industry Association of Japan (RIAJ).

New York - Verizon is close to signing a deal with Google to provide search technology on its mobile phones, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Beijing - NBC and Yahoo are both claiming to be the top Web destinations for the Olympics, with NBC citing a mix of internal, Nielsen and Hitwise data, and Yahoo looking to comScore to claim the top spot, PaidContent reported.

Long Beach, Calif. - Adisn, an online advertising network, has raised $1 million in its first round of venture capital financing, led by Battery Ventures, PEHub.com reported, citing a regulatory filing.