London - The Orchard (NASD: ORCD), a digital distributor of mainly independent music and video content, announced on Monday that it has signed a deal with Sony/ATV Music Publishing for the marketing and distribution rights to all of the company's owned master recordings. The worldwide deal excludes North America, but covers all of Sony/ATV's affiliates in Europe, Asia, Australia, Japan and South Africa. The deal will initially deliver hundreds of albums by country and R&B artists, on labels including Sony Tree Productions, Masters International, Dial Records, Four Star, Hickory and Challenge Records.

New York - SpiralFrog, the operator of a free, ad-supported music download service, said on Monday that it has signed a new licensing agreement with Sony/ATV Music Publishing, which controls over 625,000 copyrights. Currently, SpiralFrog is live in the U.S. and Canada, offering more than 800,000 songs for downloading and 3,500 music videos from Universal Music Group and independent labels.

Los Altos, Calif. - FreeHand Systems, a publisher of digital sheet music, announced on Monday that it has signed a licensing agreement with Sony/ATV Music Publishing, whose catalog spans over 400,000 songs. The deal will add downloadable sheet music from artists including the Beatles, Beck, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix and Willie Nelson to FreeHand's library of over 90,000 titles.