Seattle - Amazon.com on Monday announced the launch of a new online Classical Music Blowout Store, which will showcase a hand-picked selection of more than 2,000 affordable classical titles from Amazon's catalog of 100,000 classical releases. "The demand from our customers for classical music continues to outpace other music categories," said Thomas May, Amazon.com senior music editor and classical music expert. "But the disappearance of prominent brick and mortar music stores and the fact that most music retailers are scaling back their selection of classical music means that more and more classical music lovers are relying on Amazon to continue offering the deep selection and low prices that they are looking for."

London - Major record label Universal Music Group on Wednesday launched ClassicsandJazz.co.uk, which it says is the largest online retail site for classical and jazz music on the Internet, Reuters reported.

Las Vegas - Gracenote, a provider of CD identification and music database technologies, announced that it has developed a new standard for classical music display on digital media devices. The company worked with classical music experts, labels and several prestigious orchestras on the CMI format, which expands typical album, track and artist information to include composer, conductor, ensemble, soloist, work, movement and catalog number elements. Gracenote said it has already converted more than 10,000 of the most popular classical music albums into the CMI format, and will work with labels going forward to input new albums into its database using the standard.