From the Facebook's new site redesign to Pandora explaining why it's capping usage, there will be plenty of news moving the markets in the coming days. Let's go over some of the items that will help shape the week that lies ahead on Wall Street.
Here's news the music industry should be singing about: Global recorded music revenue rose an estimated 0.3 percent last year to $16.5 billion. That tiny uptick may not seem like much, the last time music industry revenue rose at all, it was 1999.
The death of Whitney Houston found nostalgic fans rushing to buy the music icon's catalog of digital works, which means a bittersweet payday for her label Sony Music. But a gaffe overseas is making Sony out to look like a greedy opportunist.
On Monday, Apple unveiled iCloud, which will allow users to store digital files on remote servers, and access them through smartphones, PCs or tablets. This should give a boost to iTunes, but that accounts for only about 2% of Apple's value. The real gain will be in how iCloud adds to the appeal of Apple's more lucrative devices.
Recorded music sales in America plunged another 7% last year as the sharp 16% drop in CD revenue more than offset gains in digital-media sales, according to new report. Overall sales fell despite the fact that illegal downloads of music have declined markedly since LimeWire was shut down.
Bowing to reality, Best Buy will slash the floor space it devotes to compact discs and DVDs this holiday season. It's a reflection of the record industry's grinding digital transformation. Meanwhile, Google is getting ready to challenge Apple, the digital music king.
The Lala purchase and an iTunes overhaul could tighten Apple's already dominant stranglehold on the music industry's digital-downloading segment. Apple may see a fundamental shift in technology, and it's trying to get out in front.
