Hypebot: EMI Hires, Circuit City & Napster, Lots of Apple, Social Network Study

Weekly music industry news from Hypebot [a bit tardy on ProHipHop's end but still quite relevant]:

EMI brought in industry veteran Roger Ames to oversea its North American operation and added two senior execs to its digital team.

Circuit City aligned with Napster for a download service but the retail giant will continue to also market eMusic and iTunes.

Apple had a huge week reporting an 88% jump in sales. Hypebot spent much of the week calling on Steve Jobs to walk his talk and go beyond the EMI deal to offer DRM free tracks from indies on iTunes sparking lots of great discussion in our comments sections. On Friday word came that iTunes may drop DRM on many more tracks soon. Details so far are sketchy.

A new study showed shifts in the use of social networking sites like MySpace during a growing average of seven hours each week online.

See ProHipHop's Hypebot Industry News category for past roundups.