New York - Classical music label Naxos on Monday announced that its ClassicsOnline.com Web store now offers nearly 22,000 albums for purchase and download as 320 kbps, DRM-free files. The store offers music from more than 100 independent labels, priced at 99 cents per track and between $6.99 and $9.99 per album.

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.

New York - Digital music retailer eMusic on Wednesday said it added the catalogues of classical music labels Chandos Records, Telarc and Harmonia Mundi to its subscription-based service. The company noted that more than half of customers who downloaded recent free classical music samplers from its service went on to purchase more classical music, and that a third of these had never downloaded a classical track before.

London - British violinist Tasmin Little plans to give away her next album, "The Naked Violin," as a free download, in an attempt to help raise interest in classical music, Reuters reported. "I've done this with no intention of making money, but I feel very strongly that classical music suffers from misperceptions, and someone should be doing something real about it," Little told Reuters. "Just the fact that people can listen to it on a computer means that hopefully they won't feel a need to have an education or be from a particular background or a certain sector of society." The album, which in addition to unadorned violin pieces also contains commentary from Little; it will be available for free download from Monday.

Bryn Mawr, Pa. - ArkivMusic, an online retailer of classical music CDs that counts over 82,000 titles, including many formerly out-of-print albums, announced on Wednesday that it bucked the music industry's overall downward trend, reporting record revenues and 30% year-over-year growth in 2007. By contrast, U.S. album sales were down 15% last year, according to SoundScan. " This was the best year overall for our business, and another successive year of accelerated growth," said ArkivMusic president Eric Feidner. The company added that 10% of sales in the fourth quarter came from its ArkivCD program, which offers on-demand printing of nearly 5,000 out-of-print titles.

Los Angeles - Major label Universal Music Group's Deutsche Grammophon classical label on Tuesday announced the impending launch of a new DRM-free download store that will offer the majority of its catalog. From tomorrow, the DG Webshop will offer around 2,500 albums -- including over 600 out-of-print CDs -- as 320kbps downloads for between $10.99 and $11.99 in a total of 42 countries. Individual tracks under seven minutes will also sell for $1.09 and up.

London - A website that offered digital sheet music of classical works has been shut down by its owner, after receiving a cease and desist letter from German music publisher Universal Edition, The Register reported.

Bryn Mawr, Pa. - ArkivMusic, an online store that features over 4,000 out-of-print classical music titles available on-demand, announced on Monday that it has signed a deal with Warner Classics to release the group's out-of-print classical recordings. Included are deleted catalog titles on Warner Classics, Teldec Classics and Erato Disques. ArkivMusic has similar deals with Sony BMG, the Universal labels Decca, Philips and Deutsche Grammophon, the EMI labels EMI Classics, Angel Records and Virgin Classics, and two dozen independent classical labels.