Cannes, France - The Orchard (NASD: ORCD), a digital distributor of independent music and video content, on Tuesday announced a strategic partnership with Japanese independent music company Avex. Under the deal, Avex will market select Orchard clients across Japanese digital stores and mobile services, including the Label Mobile joint venture in which it is a key shareholder. Separately, The Orchard said it has signed deals to add new classical music tracks to its service from the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Wigmore Hall and Classical.com.

Tokyo - Chaku-Uta Full, a Japanese mobile music download service owned by a group of Japanese record labels and operated by Label Mobile, has now served over 200 million full-track song downloads since its inception in November 2004, Billboard reports. The service passed the 100 million download mark in May 2007.