Los Angeles - The Los Angeles Times reported on Friday that News Corp.'s (NYSE: NWS) MySpace, which has been searching for a chief executive for its forthcoming MySpace Music service for the past six months, has narrowed its search to finalists including Andy Schuon and Owen Van Natta. Shuon was an executive at Universal Music Group, and headed that company's Pressplay digital music joint venture with Universal before heading programming at MTV and Infinity Broadcasting. Van Natta is currently a vice president at Amazon.com, but left Facebook in April, where he was head of business development and strategic partnerships.

London - Passionato this week launched its digital music store offering over 18,000 DRM-free classical music recordings, available as 320 kbps MP3s or in the lossless FLAC format. The company, founded by James Glicker -- former Baltimore Symphony Orchestra president and head of MusicNow -- said it will continue to add more independent and major label content on a weekly basis. In addition to selling songs, the company also offers a community section, and software music player that can be used to rip classical CDs, and identify the composer, date of recording, label, recording location, recording producer, recording engineer and period.

Santa Monica, Calif. - Film studio Lionsgate said on Friday that it has teamed with Spain-based mobile content distributor Zed to co-develop mobile entertainment projects based on its movies, TV programming and music, as well as original properties for mobile. The content will include mobile video, ringtones, games and community applications distributed to Zed's network of 130 mobile operator partners in 50 global territories.

Los Angeles - Viacom's (NYSE: VIA) Paramount Digital Entertainment unit has partnered with Sweden-based Accedo Broadband to offer a range of movie-themed video games on Asian telco TV and IPTV services, Variety reports. The deal includes games based on "Top Gun" and "Saturday Night Fever."

Ft. Lauderdale, Fla. - The National Football League Players Association (NFLPA) has filed a countersuit against CBS (NYSE: CBS), which last week asked a federal judge to issue a ruling stating that its fantasy football games do not infringe on players' rights.

Washington - Following criticism from Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) over the existence of terrorist recruitment videos on the site, Google's (NASD: GOOG) YouTube has taken the step of banning videos that incite others to violence, The Washington Post reported. The company did remove some specific videos when asked by Lieberman back in May, but many in question remained, with YouTube stating at the time that it "encourages free speech and defends everyone's right to express unpopular points of view."

Sunnyvale, Calif. - Yahoo (NASD: YHOO) is planning to open its Yahoo Music section to third-party music service providers including YouTube, Pandora, Last.fm, Amazon and iTunes when the company unveils a redesign in late October, Wired.com reports.

Port Washington, N.Y. - U.S. video game sales were up 9% in August, to $1.08 billion, representing the smallest jump in over two years, according to a report from market research firm NPD Group. "Despite smaller growth this month, the industry is up 32 percent year-to-date and remains on target to achieve annual revenues in the range of $22 billion to $24 billion," said NPD analyst Anita Frazier.

Los Angeles - A consortium of over 20 consumer electronics firms, service providers, retailers and Hollywood studios on Friday announced the creation of the Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem, which aims to define and build a new framework that will enable consumers to acquire and play content across a wide range of services and devices.

Santa Monica, Calif. - Video game publisher Activision (NASD: ATVI) announced on Friday that it has acquired U.K.-based music game developer FreeStyleGames.

Mountain View, Calif. - Google (NASD: GOOG) has acquired Korea-based blogging software platform company TNC for an undisclosed sum.

San Francisco - Envivio, a provider of IP video convergence encoding technology, announced on Friday that it has raised $25 million in new venture capital funding, led by Harbourvest and Atlantic Bridge, as well as Samsung Ventures.

San Diego - Legend Films, a San Diego-based entertainment and digital media company, said on Friday that it has raised $5 million in its fifth round of funding, led by Augustus Ventures with participation from Par Investment Partners.

Seattle - Big Fish Games, a provider of online games and interactive entertainment, announced on Friday that it has landed a new $83.3 million round of funding, from General Catalyst Partners, Balderton Capital and Salmon River Capital.