New York - Major record label EMI Group said on Thursday that it will merge its Capitol Records and Virgin Records labels to create The Capitol Music Group. [more..]

Los Angeles - Fox has served Google's YouTube video-sharing service a subpoena demanding the identity of a user who uploaded episodes of the network's "24" and "The Simpsons." [more..]

Tokyo - Sony has announced that the much delayed PlayStation 3 will finally go on sale across Europe on 23 March, 2007. [more..]

Mountain View, Calif. - Two months after closing its $1.65 billion acquisition of YouTube, Google said on Thursday that it plans to continue operating the popular video sharing site as a separate business, while also integrating it somewhat with its Google Video site. [more..]

In June of 2006 consumer agencies in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden charged that Apple was violating contract and copyright laws in those countries by not enabling customers to purchase, download, and play tracks from iTunes on their non-Apple portable players. A Norwegian official today revealed that French and German consumer groups have joined the Scandinavian countries in their efforts to pressure Apple. [more..]

New York - Sweden-based publisher Bonnier announced on Thursday that it will acquire 18 magazines from Time Inc.'s Parenting Group and Time4 Media units. [more..]

San Francisco - News Corp.'s MySpace online social network plans to launch a version of its site in Mexico, Billboard.com reported. [more..]

New York - Payments submitted via next-generation game consoles for in-game virtual items like maps, game add-ons, casual game titles -- and eventually full console games -- will generate over $833 million by 2011, according to a report from market research firm ABI Research. [more..]

Newbury, England - A group of big names in the wireless industry, including Motorola, NEC, NTT DoCoMo and Vodafone, have come together to form the LiMo Foundation, a non-profit that will work to jointly develop a Linux-based mobile platform. [more..]

Los Angeles - Twistbox Entertainment, a developer and publisher of mobile entertainment content, announced on Thursday that it has acquired mobile media firm InfoSpace's mobile game development studio in San Mateo, Calif. for an undisclosed sum. [more..]

New York - Viacom's mtvU campus music TV network announced on Thursday that it has partnered with the Kaiser Family Foundation to launch a contest that seeks the best concept for a Web-based video game that will raise HIV/AIDS awareness among 15-24 year-olds in the U.S. [more..]

San Francisco - Microsoft chairman Bill Gates has been booked for an interview on Comedy Central's "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" on Jan. 29 -- the eve of the launch of the company's Windows Vista operating system -- CNET News.com reported on Thursday. The Gates appearance was confirmed to News.com by Comedy Central executive vice president Tony Fox. [more..]

Palo Alto, Calif. - Avvenu, a developer of technology that allows remote access to PC files, on Thursday introduced the Avvenu Music Player, which allows users to stream their iTunes libraries and other music stored on a PC to any Internet-connected PC or Mac, laptop or Windows Mobile smartphone. The service requires that the user's home PC be online in order to stream music. The beta version of the player also includes a feature that allows users to share playlists or up to 250 songs with friends via e-mail. The feature automatically copies songs in the desired playlist to Avvenu's "secure media center," from where they may be streamed to the recipient of the e-mail's computer. [more..]

Los Angeles - The Los Angeles Times Media Group on Thursday announced the launch of My LATimes, a free, customizable RSS news feed service. My LATimes will allow readers to subscribe to a personalized feed of stories of their choosing from The Times, as well as from "a select group of online news sites recommended by Times editors -- a key differentiator from other customizable news aggregators," the company said. In connection with the launch, the company has added links that allow users to subscribe to My LATimes from every article page on its website. [more..]

Los Angeles - Gemstar-TV Guide International, a provider of electronic program guides for digital TV services, announced on Thursday that it has signed a license agreement with Japan-based Presentcast. Under the deal, Presentcast -- a joint venture of Japanese broadcasters and advertising agencies including Nippon, Fuji and Asahi -- will be able to use Gemstar's listings on its Dogatch online video portal in Japan. [more..]

Los Angeles - Napster announced on Thursday that its Napster Mobile music service has launched with au/KDDI, the second-largest wireless carrier in Japan with over 20 million subscribers. Subscribers will pay about $3 a month for the service, plus additional fees for over-the-air downloads of full-length songs and ringtones. Napster said its mobile service is now available to over 60 million Japanese mobile subscribers, including through NTT DoCoMo's i-Mode. [more..]

Los Angeles - The LA Opera announced on Thursday that it has extended its podcast series through the remainder of its 2006/2007 season, and will produce an additional fourteen episodes of "Behind the Curtain at the LA Opera." The company said that listeners to the first four episodes of the podcast, produced by iPressroom Corporation, outnumbered actual seats at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion by more than five to one in the first four weeks the shows were available online. [more..]

Seattle - Nintendo is slated to launch the Wii News Channel on Saturday, a free service that will deliver Associated Press news stories and photographs over the Internet directly to its next-generation Wii video game console. The AP will provide news in English, French, Spanish, Dutch, German and Swiss-German for the service, which has no immediate plans to sell ad space, Nintendo's Perrin Kaplan told AP. Japanese news agency Goo will supply Japanese-language news for the Wii News Channel. [more..]