Paul McCartney Is Now Pulling His Albums from Spotify...

Paul McCartney is now pulling both solo and Wings content from Spotify and other streaming services, according to details shared by sources this (Tuesday) evening.  Specifically, the takedown is coming from Concord Records, though other McCartney releases also appear unavailable.  In fact, a search this evening produced just a handful of McCartney songs, outside of covers, modified instrumentals and other variations. Spotify has not responded to a pair of inquiries from Digital Music News, though a leaked takedown order lists some of the largest albums released by the post-Beatles McCartney.  The removal request, issued by Universal Music Group Distribution on behalf of Concord (and Hear Music), includes the following:

Good Morning! Clear Channel, Live Nation, Marimba-Gate, AEG, Wikipedia, Beats, Monster, Spotify, Grooveshark, Coachella, Ultra, EMI, LMFAO...

Its charter goes beyond "just our transmitters and towers," according to CEO John Hogan. And with that, Clear Channel Radio has symbolically rebranded itself as 'Clear Channel Media & Entertainment'.   

Live Nation has just hired former Warner Music International executive John Reid as

Facebook+Spotify: An Unfair, Insider, Anti-Competitive Relationship...

If you're a music fan, you probably don't care about this. But if you are not one of Facebooks chosen music partners, its cold on the outside.  Which is the case for Cole Flournoy, the entrepreneur behind LetsListen who's pointing to Facebook+Spotify as an overly-cozy,

Coldplay's Manager: I Am Very Concerned. Spotify Competes With Downloads.

Coldplay's latest album will eventually make it to Spotify, according to the band's manager. But not until most of the juice has been squeezed from iTunes, which is probably months from now. I am very concerned, manager Dave Holmes told BusinessWeek ahead of the weekend.

Why SoundCloud's $50 Million Round Might Actually Make Sense...

If you've been in this space long enough - like, a year - you've probably developed an allergic reaction to huge funding rounds.  It just seems so speculative and disaster-prone!  Case in point: just a few days ago, Beyond Oblivion melted into a bonfire of wasted cash, specifically

Big Deal? iTunes, Rdio, & MOG All Beat Spotify On Radiohead's Latest...

Radiohead's latest release was missing on Spotify until early this (Wednesday) morning, and iTunes had it on Monday. But despite Radioheads penchant for windowing, this doesn't seem like a calculated delay, according to details shared with Digital Music News. But why the two-day lag? This could be a tiny window for a tiny release, but a Spotify executive told Digital Music News that this was merely an ingestion delay.  In fact, the company had both

Ringtones Still Make Four Times As Much Money as Spotify, Rdio, and Rhapsody Combined...

Turns out ringtones are sort of like CDs: sure, they're dying, but it's a slow, drawn-out death. And according to Gartner Research, ringtone revenues in the United States are still four times that of all subscription streaming services - combined. That includes Spotify, Rhapsody, Rdio, MOG, or whoever else you can shake a stick at in 2011. But wait: it gets even crazier. Because it turns out that 'mobile personalization' products account for more than 1/3 of total digital music sales. That mostly includes ringtones, but also more