New York - Sony Corporation of America announced on Tuesday that it will acquire Gracenote, a provider of digital media identification and recommendation services, for $260 million plus other contingent consideration. [more..]

Port Washington, N.Y. - Thirty-seven percent of Americans believe they will spend less on entertainment products and devices this year, compared to just 18% who anticipate spending more, according to a new survey conducted by market research firm NPD Group. [more..]

Espoo, Finland - Nokia announced on Tuesday that Sony BMG has joined Universal Music Group in licensing its catalog for unlimited access on Nokia phones as part of the company's Comes With Music offering. [more..]

San Francisco - Sonific, a provider of licensed music widgets and free music applications for social media, said on Tuesday that it will take its service offline "as a consequence of the unworkable music licensing situation and the resulting lack of solid revenue modeling," co-founder and CEO Gerd Leonhard wrote in a note on Sonific.com. [more..]

Tokyo - Sony has once again delayed the launch of its "Home" 3D virtual community for the PlayStation 3 console, now saying the service will launch for users in the fall. The service had initially been slated to launch last fall, but pushed the debut until this spring. [more..]

Washington - U.S. mobile media and entertainment revenues are expected to more than double over the next five years, but the strongest growth will not occur until after 2010, as the technical and market environment for such services improves, according to a new report from market research firm Analysys. [more..]

San Francisco - BuzzLogic, a provider of social media marketing services and a social media ad network, announced on Tuesday that it has acquired Activeweave, developers of the BlogRover browser companion application. [more..]

Palo Alto, Calif. - Vysr, a developer of browser technology that lets users "tap their favorite Web services and social networks wherever they go on the Web," announced on Tuesday its emergence from stealth mode and a $2 million round of financing. [more..]

Menlo Park, Calif. - MobiTV, a provider of mobile TV programming and distribution services, has received $5 million in equipment financing from Leader Ventures. [more..]

San Francisco - Mechanical Zoo, a social search start-up founded by a number of ex-Google employees, has raised $750,000 in convertible debt from angel investors and is set to launch a beta test of its service next month, CNET News.com reported. [more..]

The big challenge facing Blockbuster and Netflix is not each other, but the fact that the studios are still clinging to quaint notions like exclusivity, blogs Paul Sweeting. [more..]

Palo Alto, Calif. - Photobucket, the photo-sharing service acquired by News Corp.'s Fox Interactive Media last year, announced on Tuesday the release of the site's application programming interface (API), which will allow developers to build new applications based on Photobucket. [more..]

Los Angeles - Apple has filed a patent application on a universal interface for real-time text chat on touchscreen devices, which could result in the release of a chat application for the iPhone or iPod touch, Apple Insider reported. [more..]

Los Angeles - News Corp.'s MySpace and NBC News on Tuesday launched Decision '08, a new section on MySpace's IMPACT Channel that will feature in-depth election-related news, analysis and discussion. [more..]

Los Angeles - Improv comedy troupe the Groundlings has signed a one-year deal with Sony Pictures Television to create 50 digital shorts for the Web and mobile platforms, Variety reports. [more..]

Suffolk, England - Among the 2,000 or so who have uploaded their own remixes of Radiohead's song "Nude" after the band made stem tracks available for download from iTunes was electronic musician Thomas Dolby, the artist said on Tuesday. [more..]

Los Angeles - The Championship Gaming Series, a worldwide professional video game players' league, has announced a deal with Eurosport and BSkyB that grants Eurosport the exclusive continental European broadcast rights for CGS. [more..]