Apple is in discussions with the big music companies about a new "all you can eat" subscription model for its iTunes music service that would give its users free access to the entire iTunes library in exchange for paying a premium for its music enabled devices like the iPod and iPhone. This is the same model as the "comes with music" deal Nokia struck with Universal Music a few months ago, although this would include each of the four biggest recording studios. The plan now hinges on the price the iPod maker is willing to pay for …

New research from M:Metrics shows that iPhone users are much more likely to use (and enjoy) the mobile Web than other cell phone owners. According to a survey of more than 10,000 adults, 84.8 percent of iPhone users report accessing news and information from the handheld device-a dramatic increase over other smartphone users, 58.2 percent, and the overall mobile market, 13.1 percent. The study also finds that 58.6 percent of iPhone users went to a search engine on their phone, compared to 37 percent of smartphone users and 6.1 percent of mobile phone users. IPhone users (30.9 percent) …

In only three weeks, Yahoo's new Digg competitor, Buzz, is catching up to its rival in terms of the amount of traffic it drives to other sites. According to fresh data from Hitwise, Buzz drove just 10 percent less traffic to publishers' sites than Digg on March 17. Salon.com, for example, received more than 1 million visitors from Buzz in one day, while political blog The Huffington Post received 800,000 unique visitors. The stunning results prompted TechCrunch's Michael Arrington to say, "It's clear that a link from Yahoo.com blows away anything Digg or any other competitor can offer." …

Web 2.0 investment reached record levels last year, as venture capital firms poured $1.34 billion into 178 Web 2.0 deals in the U.S., according to a new report from Dow Jones VentureSource. Guess who got the most money? That's right, thanks to Microsoft's $240 million investment, Facebook topped the list with $300 million in venture funding in 2007, or 22 percent of the sector's total haul for the year. Even though the amount invested increased 88 percent (again, thanks in large part to the Microsoft-Facebook deal), the VentureSource report shows that the rate of deal growth actually …

Media mogul Mark Cuban has been calling YouTube "a costly mistake" ever since Google forked over $1.65 billion for the video-sharing site in November 2006. Cuban has said that considerable (and growing) bandwidth costs, uncontrollable copyright violation, and inability to monetize the content add up to a net negative for the search king. But YouTube's API enhancement may have changed all that, he says. The move, which allows Web developers to set up and customize YouTube on their own Web site, lifts the copyright responsibility off YouTube's shoulders by effectively turning the video sharing site into …

Google CEO Eric Schmidt said that Google was "well positioned" to withstand an economic downturn because Google isn't dependent on any one particular market. "It's too early to say if there's (already) been any specific impact, but if there, were I don't think it would be much," Schmidt told reporters on Thursday. "There's not a lot of advertising for any one market over another," he said, adding that direct marketing, the category which online search belongs to, historically performs well during a recession. "There tends to be a flight in a global slowdown to higher quality advertising and higher quality …

In what surely must be its final attempt to stave off a Microsoft acquisition, Yahoo on Tuesday issued a press release dispelling concerns that first-quarter earnings will be a disaster. The company also laid out a long-term growth plan that includes cash flow acceleration in 2009 and 2010 and provided details as to why Yahoo believes it's worth at least $40 per share. The plan provides pundits with a benchmark for evaluating Yahoo's future performance. In the end, Blodget says the plan should help Yahoo extract a few more dollars per share from Microsoft. Yahoo is projecting 2010 …

Financial experts say recession could be very different for Web media companies this time around, because the 2001 downturn was about the dotcom bubble exploding. While the outlook for the overall economy is grim, the tech sector might not take such a direct hit this time. That doesn't mean they'll get a pass, either. "The bust in 2000 was isolated in the dot-com and IT sector," says Brent Goldfarb, an assistant professor of management and entrepreneurship at the University of Maryland Robert H. Smith School of Business. "It didn't reverberate as strongly throughout the economy, in …

In the past year, Yahoo, MSN and AOL have each lost or let go of the person in charge of revenue at their company. Yahoo Chief Sales Officer Wenda Harrris Millard either walked or was pushed out of the struggling Web giant last year, while Curt Viebranz, AOL's Platform A czar, was dumped after just six months. And finally, MSN's Joanne Bradford left Microsoft last week in order to work at a startup. Why prompted their departure? A failure to answer the following questions: "How do we truly create value in the media business?" Do we …