London - The Orchard (NASD: ORCD), a digital distributor of mainly independent music and video content, announced on Monday that it has signed a deal with Sony/ATV Music Publishing for the marketing and distribution rights to all of the company's owned master recordings. The worldwide deal excludes North America, but covers all of Sony/ATV's affiliates in Europe, Asia, Australia, Japan and South Africa. The deal will initially deliver hundreds of albums by country and R&B artists, on labels including Sony Tree Productions, Masters International, Dial Records, Four Star, Hickory and Challenge Records.

San Francisco - Independent digital music and film distributor IODA announced that it has signed a deal with Chinese digital music distributor R2G to offer the entire IODA catalog on R2G's new Wawawa Music Store. The Wawawa store claims to feature the largest catalog of legal music available in China, and delivers songs in MP3 format via monthly subscription plans.

Emeryville, Calif. - MobiTV, a provider of mobile TV programming and distribution services, said that it now has surpassed 4 million subscribers. The company launched its first mobile television service in late 2003, and has since deployed its offerings on more than 15 carrier networks, including Sprint, AT&T Wireless, Alltel, Telus, Rogers and Bell Canada.

New York - Digital music service eMusic announced on Monday that it now counts over 40,000 record labels on its roster, and a total of over 4 million tracks in its library. The New York-based company sells MP3s from mainly independent artists via a range of subscription plans where individual tracks cost as little as 39 cents each.

Sausalito, Calif. - Federated Media Publishing, a blog advertising network, announced on Monday that it has partnered with Microsoft (NASD: MSFT) to launch CrowdFire, a social media service that focuses on music concerts. The first implementation will be at the Outside Lands Music & Arts Festival later this month in San Francisco, where attendees will be encouraged to upload images, video and text they take at the event to CrowdFire pavilion kiosks, where the content "will be fused into a real-time digital media mashup" displayed both on screens at the festival and online.

Los Angeles - CraveOnline.com, a men's lifestyle destination, announced on Monday that it has acquired MyAnimeList, an anime and manga social networking site that counts over 4.4 million anime and 775,000 manga entries. Financial details of the deal were not disclosed. MyAnimeList was founded in 2006 and currently sees over 10,000 active daily users. CraveOnline's network of sites attracts over 36 million unique monthly users.

Los Angeles - Two venture-funded social media sites, the social news-ranking site Thoof and social music site Social.fm (formerly Mercora) have been shut down, TechCrunch and GigaOM reported, respectively.

Washington - Congress last week approved a reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, a wide-ranging bill covering U.S. universities that includes controversial new provisions governing how schools deal with file-sharing on campus.

Washington - A group of key U.S. House lawmakers last week sent a letter to 33 Internet firms and broadband service providers, pressing them for information about the extent to which they collect information on consumers' Web surfing habits for the purpose of targeting advertising. The letter was sent by Reps. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), chairman of the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet, John D. Dingell (D-Mich.), chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, and ranking members Joe Barton (R-Texas) and Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.) to a group of ISPs and other relevant firms that includes AT&T (NYSE: T), Verizon (NYSE: VZ), Time Warner (NYSE: TWX), Comcast (NASD: CMCSA) and Google (NASD: GOOG).

New York - A federal appeals court has ruled that cable TV provider Cablevision's (NYSE: CVC) proposed network-based digital video recorder does not directly infringe on the copyrights of networks and movie studios, and sent the case back to a lower court for further proceedings, Reuters reported. The device would store the programs a user wants to have recorded on Cablevision's servers -- rather than on a hard drive on the recorder device in the consumer's home, a la TiVo.

Washington - National Public Radio (NPR) announced that it has acquired Public Interactive, the public media Web services company owned by Public Radio International (PRI), for an undisclosed sum.

New York - Media giant Time Warner (NYSE: TWX) has completed the tedious process of separating AOL's dial-up business from its advertising and content business, The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The move, deemed a priority by CEO Jeff Bewkes when he assumed the role seven months ago, seemingly clears the way for Time Warner to potentially deal part or all of AOL.

New York - Time Warner's (NYSE: TWX) AOL has acquired Colorado-based Socialthing, developer of a social networking news feed service designed to help users trace the Internet activity of friends, according to a report in TechCrunch.

Omaha, Nebr. - Proxibid, a provider of live auction webcasting services, announced on Monday that it has secured an undisclosed sum of new funding from Tetrad Corporation.

London - Kerchoonz.com, a music-focused social network that features DRM-free files and no advertising, announced that it has received a $490,000 investment from the Scottish Co-investment Fund.

New York - Tabula Digita, a developer of educational games, announced that it has closed on its second round of venture capital financing, led by Ascend Venture Group.