If we assume that next week’s Apple event will have something to do with The Beatles—and we have to assume that, otherwise this post has no value (not to say that it does, mind you)—then I have to ask: what’s the big deal? Obviously, being the first (and only?) online music store that has The Beatles will be something of a coup, for at least the first day. You can picture the articles and posts now: “Apple meets Apple: Beatles on iTunes,” “iTunes just won my $9.99: Beatles on iTunes,” etc.

Provided Apple and/or AT&T don’t throw a fit, you’ll soon be able to use Rhapsody on your iPhone (and iPod touch). The App works over 3G and EDGE (and Wi-Fi, of course), streaming music from a library of more than 8 million songs.

And now, the 900th note on Internet piracy written in the past week. It would appear that the UK is inching closer to a law that would require ISPs to disconnect people who download music, movies, etc. illegally. The proposal, currently making its way through the back rooms of the British Government, could well be placed before the Parliament during its next session.

There’s a reason why the Zune HD’s interface moves so smoothly. Powering the device is the Nvidia Tegra, which Nvidia recently described as an “an entire computer-on-a-chip,” and one with “eight separate processors, including: a GPU, two video processors, and audio processor, two ARM core processor and more.” (That “and more” bit is a bit ambiguous for my liking, but what are you gonna do?) In any event, the Zune HD looks to have some serious computational power going for it. WILL IT BE AN IPOD KILLER?

Son of a gun-diddily-un. Just as I’m about to leave the house to fix my uncle’s broken computer—doesn’t it suck being “the computer guy” in the family?—I come across this great interview. It’s from The Sound of Young America, a public radio program based in L.A., and is with the music critic of the Chicago Tribune, Greg Kot. It’s basically about the state of music in America today, and how the RIAA screwed itself over the past several years. Good stuff. So good, in fact, that I just bought the guy’s book, Ripped: How the Wired Generation Revolutionized Music, from that Barnes and Noble e-book store.

Oh dear. So not only is Ozzy Osbourne in a World of Warcraft commercial, but he’s also going to close out next week’s Blizzcon with a rock-n-roll concert. Break out your lighter Apps!

For years you’ve been using the well-supported, ubiquitous file format called MP3. It’s an international standard, it works just fine in every media player, and other universally-accepted formats are in place for the album artwork, lyrics, and what have you.

Sounds like you’re ready for a new, unified format that no one has ever heard of and, if introduced five or six years ago, might have been revolutionary!

Universal, Sony, Warner, and EMI are all throwing their weight behind the CMX format, soon to be the laughing stock of the internet. Oh, did I mention that Apple, who makes like 200% of the MP3 players in the USA, is making their own competing format, which pretty much guarantees that CMX will only be usable by things like Windows Media Player?

Truth be told, I actually like the looks of this old-timey speaker very much. And it’d go perfectly with my newfangled “digital” music collection. It’s only $29, too, which may or may not mean that the actual sound quality is poor to quite poor.

If you’ve been enjoying Rock Band but you’ve often thought, “Hmmm. Needs more non-sucky downloadable content,” then you, my friend, are in luck. Unless you hate Weezer, Blink-182, and KISS. If that’s the case, you’ll continue thinking, “Hmmm. Needs more non-sucky downloadable content.”

If you’re like me, you grew up with a Nintendo Entertainment System and then spent your formative years listening to Weezer. Now the best of both worlds is available in true chiptune form with music label Pterodactyl Squad’s Weezer — The 8-bit Album.

Remember yesterday when I noted, by way of TorrentFreak, that the RIAA had all but considered DRM to be dead? Not true! Not true at all.

So it looks like the hot, new trend is to buy the name of old peer-to-peer applications, then “resurrect” said application. Such is the case with Kazaa, which was the biggest P2P application in the post-Napster extravaganza of the early 2000s. Anyhow, someone out there plans to bring Kazaa back—legally, of course.

The chief spokesman for the RIAA, one Jonathan Lamy, has gone on record to say what any normal, not-on-the-RIAA-payroll person has been saying for some time now: “DRM is dead, isn’t it?” Yes. Yes it it.

The enemy of my enemy, right? Pandora, the Internet darling that lets users stream music for a newly nominal fee, has teamed up with record labels to get Congress to pass a law that would require regular radio stations pay the same music rights fee as that it has to pay. The labels want regular radio to pay up to help offset the losses connected with the industry’s transition from a pre-Internet music business to a decidedly post-Internet music business. (Maybe stop employing untold numbers of lawyers to go after mothers, hmm?)

There’s a new study that suggests that teens are moving away from illegally downloading music. Now, that doesn’t necessarily mean that teens are turning to iTunes (or whatever) en masse, but rather is a reflection of the way the Web works in 2009. Music blogs, streaming sites like Imeem and YouTube (note: not all streaming on YouTube is 100 percent legal), applications like Spotify, etc. are increasingly the destination for teens today.

The Telegraph has word that Microsoft will be entering the streaming music market. The plan is to offer free streaming, and the option to purchase music for download. Just what the world needs, another streaming solution. Another boutique music store. Another walled garden from which digital content can be rationed out to the masses, while fatcat music execs wallow in piles of cash.

Oh, how I wanted to hate this video. Yesterday was the thousandth episode of Attack of the Show—how did you celebrate?—and while I only caught about two minutes in between commercials of whatever else I was watching (I think it was a documentary about salt; I’m not joking), I did manage to catch the tail end of this video. It’s “The Girl at the Video Game Store,” a song written by Parry Gripp; the video was directed by Michael W. Shaw, of G4.

Man alive is The Pirate Bay finished! Business Week has an interview with Hans Pandeya, the CEO of Global Gaming Factory, the company that’s set to buy The Pirate Bay for nearly $8 million (provided it can come up with the money). What’s mainly discussed it what type of business plan does this man have in store for The Pirate Bay. It’s safe to say that The Pirate Bay will be all but dead in one year’s time.

How much would you be willing to pay for DJ Hero? The latest news or rumors or whatever you want to call it is that UK retailer ShopTo was apparently told by Activision that the MSRP of the game will be £107.99, or just shy of $180. That includes the turntable, of course.