New Music Industry Briefing For Monday May 22, 2006

– Just as with Jazz and a growing number of other niches, Classical music is garnering a larger percentage of download sales than in traditional records stores.  This has the classical music industry  rushing to keep up. (NY Times. Free sign-up may be required.)

The Electronic Frontier Foundations says recent court filings make it clear that the RIAA is gunning not just for XM but for all innovators. Here is a PDF of the court filings. (R.A.I.N.)

– In a positive move for both indie musicians and music retail, CD Baby has announced details of a deal with one-stop/distributor Super D to make all 130,000 indie CD Baby titles available to retailers as non-returnable special orders.

– Apple has filed a counter-suit against Creative Labs claiming mp3 player related patent infringement.  Creative had sued Apple on similar grounds just days earlier. (FT.com/MSNBC)

– Analysts are split on the value and likelihood of an EMI / Warner Music Group match-up. (The Business, UK)

– Yahoo! has added both video sharing and search. (Yahoo! Video)