Basking Ridge, N.J. - Expanding on the band's existing extensive library of live recordings, Verizon Wireless (NYSE: VZ) announced on Wednesday that it has partnered with Pearl Jam to distribute mobile "bootleg" recordings from the band's 12-city U.S. tour this summer.

Los Angeles - AT&T censored portions of Pearl Jam's performance from its live webcast of the Lollapalooza music festival this weekend, which the company later said was a mistake and promised to repost the performance in its entirety, according to reports. Removed was a portion of one song where the band segued into Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall," when singer Eddie Vedder improvised the lyrics, "George Bush, leave this world alone," and, "George Bush, find yourself another home." AT&T told Billboard the incident was "a mistake by a Webcast vendor," adding, "We have policies in place with respect to editing excessive profanity, but AT&T does not censor performances. We very much regret that this happened in the first place."

After a six years sales decline and negative PR surrounding lawsuits against 15,000 individuals, a recent experiment by Pearl Jam offers a glimmer of hope that major record labels and their customers may be reconciling.

Nielsen SoundScan figures through the week ending July 2 show that sales of digital albums soared 126% during the first half of the year, while digital tracks rose 77%. This does not make up for the decline in physical album sales, but it shows that the prospect of getting paid for music online, despite of P2P? services offering the same pirated albums and tracks for free, is not that far-fetched after all.