New York - Digital music service eMusic has been forced to remove early Rolling Stones albums and other repertoire from ABKCO Records it has been offering since early April, due to legal issues, Hypebot reported. In a post on its forums, the company said it "triple and quadruple-checked" the licensing issues involved before going ahead and offering the ABKCO catalog. "But this was not enough. Due to events outside of our control, we are being forced to remove the entire ABKCO catalog from eMusic."

New York - Digital music service eMusic has added 25 albums from the Rolling Stones, through a recently signed licensing deal with Abkco. The deal includes albums released between 1964 and 1970, such as "Let It Bleed" and "Beggars Banquet." Along with early Stones, the Abkco deal brings DRM-free tracks from Sam Cooke, the Animals, Marianne Faithful and others to eMusic subscribers.

London - Universal Music Group has launched a new Rolling Stones channel on Google's YouTube, that lets fans upload videos of themselves posting questions to the band, with the band to respond personally to some of them, Reuters reported. The new channel will mainly promote "Shine a Light," the new Stones documentary from director Martin Scorsese.

London - Digital music service 7digital announced on Tuesday that it will be the first to offer DRM-free MP3 downloads of 24 Rolling Stones albums from major label EMI Music. The month-long exclusive for 7digital will see records dating from 1971's "Sticky Fingers" made available as 320 kbps MP3 albums at a promotional price of about $11 each, rising to about $16 after the promotion.