Music, Social Networking | featured news

Twitter #Music, a service which'll help you discover tunes based on Twitter activity, doesn't exactly come as a surprise. The social network's been teasing this one for a while and the rumor mill's been steadily churning out its secrets.

Twitter appears to be getting ready to push into the music space with a service that shows users which artists are trending and features emerging artists. Twitter hasn’t officially announced the new service but it is being tested, according to a tweet from “American Idol” host Ryan Seacrest — a message that was subsequently retweeted by Twitter’s vice president of business and corporate development, Kevin Thau.

Myspace, the once dominant social-networking site that faded into obscurity during Facebook's rise to dominance, added 1 million new users over the past month, according to the company.

SoundCloud, a startup focusing on audio-sharing in social media, has announced a new (and reportedly sizable) round of funding. The round, which was led by Silicon Valley venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, may have been as large as $50 million, TechCrunch’s Mike Butcher reports. A SoundCloud rep confirmed all the details except the amount in an email exchange with VentureBeat this afternoon.

With Google incessantly branching out into even more ventures such as music and social networking, its search business could continue to act as a minor Catch-22 situation in future by helping competition in other business lines.

Pandora shares are trading sharply lower Wednesday after CNBC reported that Facebook plans to unveil plans for a rival online music service at the upcoming F8 developers conference on September 22. My colleague Nicole Perlroth notes this morning that Facebook is expected to unveil integration partnerships with the online music services Spotify, MOG and RDIO. ...

She's dipped her hands into country music, made appearances on Glee, and even carved a role for hers.

The Courtney Love Twitter-libel saga has finally come to an end — an ending with six figures. According to the AP, Love will pay $430,000 to settle a libel lawsuit brought against her by designer Dawn Simorangkir, a.k.a. “the Boudoir Queen.”

We used to measure popularity in sales, but with the Facebook generation slowly taking over, it seems that “likes” are just as significant as dollars these days.

Fans who want to keep up with John Mayer will no longer be able to do so via Twitter. The singer-songwriter deleted his account, leaving behind 3.7 million followers.