Next week's special Apple press event will be disappointing to Beatles fans — a group that included CEO Steve Jobs. Silicon Alley Insider reports that, despite an homage to the Beatles on the invitation, which reads "The beat goes on," a long-awaited announcement that the Beatles library will be available on iTunes won't be part of the September 5 event. Instead, it will feature, yes, yet more iPods. Are they still making those tired old things?

You've got to applaud those wily Russians behind music download site AllofMP3. They're clearly not afraid to spit in the faces of American copyright lawyers. Shut down by the Russian government so the country could enter the World Trade Organization, AllofMP3 has reportedly continued under the new name MP3sparks.com. But now that the site's owner Denis Kvasov was ruled not guilty of copyright infringement in Russian courts, AllofMP3 is getting ballsy. The site has reopened, and although no downloads are yet available, it's promising to be back in operation soon.

We knew Microsoft had a Herculean — nay, Sisyphean — task when it rolled out its Zune MP3 player last year. It didn't help matters when Microsoft "designers" chose putrid brown as a launch color. Despite Microsoft's pledge of continued support of the product, it looks like it — or a major retailer left with unsold stock — is dumping Zunes on the cheap. Woot, the deal-a-day online retail site, is currently selling white Zunes for $150 apiece, a 50% discount over the retail price. While the site doesn't list available stock, hot items are known to sell out quickly. This obviously doesn't describe Zune, though.

Wal-Mart cut a deal with Universal Music Group and EMI to sell digital songs without digital rights management software, or DRM. They're also rolling back prices to 94 cents a track. The end result for Apple? Increased iPod sales, we bet, since the MP3-format tracks are compatible with its music player. [PaidContent]

How long will it take the corporate suits at Viacom to realize that MTV Networks will never, ever, ever succeed in digital music? The latest move, folding MTV's Urge online music store into RealNetworks' Rhapsody service, is just another example of its fumbling. One could point out that MTV doesn't actually broadcast much in the way of music these days; to the extent it's holding onto its youth demographic, it's doing so with a TV schedule packed with reality shows and teen soap operas. Do its viewers even know that the "M" in "MTV" stands for "music"? But never mind that. The reality of MTV is a decade-long history of complete and utter failure in digital music. The timeline of missed opportunities, botched deals, and general cluelessness, after the jump:

The Recording Industry Association of America just sent out a batch of letters to universities offering to let their students admit to music piracy and settle claims before record labels start suing them. But the RIAA's not the only one capable of mass legal action. A former defendant in a music-copyright lawsuit is hoping to turn her case into a class action lawsuit for all wrongly sued or threatened by the RIAA, claiming that it "conducts illegal, flawed and negligent investigations." [Ars Technica]

Ad-supported music download siteQTrax plans to launch its services by the end of this year — possibly as early as the rapidly fading summer. It's one of several services attempting to redefine digital music and aspiring to move past all these sticky legal wickets with the RIAA. Along with rival Spiral Frog, it also will have to contend with sharing sites like Lala, which subsidizes file sharing in the hopes that users will wind up purchasing music. But for QTrax users, there's a slight caveat.

Patricia Santangelo made headlines as the first person to go to court with the RIAA instead of timidly settling charges of copyright infringement. In April, her lawsuit was dismissed. But instead of quietly forgetting the entanglement, the RIAA decided to go after Patricia's children, Michelle and Robert, for alleged illegal file-sharing. Now for the fun twist. The Santangelos are looking to name Kazaa operator Sharman Networks and AOL, the family's Internet service provider, as third-party defendants in the case Elektra v. Santangelo.

A file-sharing network claims to go legitimate, offering only properly licensed files. Does anyone not see through this tired old ruse, which surely dates back almost a decade to the first incarnation of Napster? For LimeWire, one of the last networks to still keep going, it's a measure to keep the RIAA's legal hounds at bay. How? By launching a LimeWire store that will offer legal music downloads. No doubt this show of good faith is an attempt to sidestep its current legal dispute with the record industry, which is seeking $150,000 for every song downloaded over the network. Scott Gilbertstein of Wired News points out that this "is probably more money than the U.S. GDP." But think of all those starving recording artists!

Granted, I have no taste in music, either. But at least I have the good sense to hang my head in shame and not trumpet this fact, as Arrington's just done on TechCrunch, the tech blog he edits, in the course of writing about Apple's new My iTunes feature, which lets you broadcast your iTunes purchases on the Web. For the record, Arrington is into Gnarls Barkley, OutKast, Green Day, R.E.M., Red Hot Chili Peppers ... and the Pussycat Dolls. (I always wondered about Arrington.) I mean, for me, one of the best things about ripping my music library to iTunes was no longer having a rack of CDs on the wall for houseguests to peruse and mock. This new iTunes widget essentially restores that previous state of affairs, letting even perfect strangers lambaste your musical taste. Speaking of, after the jump, a detailed analysis of Arrington's musical misdeeds from Idolator editor Maura Johnston.

Just because you can do something doesn't make it right. On the one hand, Universal Music is dropping digital-rights management — what we used to call copy-protection software — from its online music library. On the other hand, it's suing online-video site Veoh for violating the same copyrights it's no longer protecting. A contradiction from Universal's earlier stance that iPods are full of "stolen music"? Not at all. The legitimate complaint people have had with DRM software is that it goes farther than U.S. copyright law does in restricting what people can do with music they've paid for. UMG is joining rival label EMI in selling music without the protection afforded by software code. But the rights enshrined in our legal code? They still remain in force. Copier beware.

The National Music Publishers Association, a group which represents songwriters and music publishers, is joining the fray with its own lawsuit against YouTube for copyright infringement. Google says it's "disappointed." Yeah. Disappointed that the music publishers wouldn't take its lowball offer. [Wall Street Journal (paid sub. required)]

Executives at SoundExchange, the much-hated collectors of digital-music royalties, have been caught doing something naughty . Much to the delight of Internet radio stations fighting higher online-music fees, a federal appeals court slapped their wrists for supporting special interest group MusicFirst Coalition. The supposed "coalition," actually an industry front, is lobbying to levy performance royalties on terrestrial radio stations — much like SoundExchange's own mission to collect billions of dollars from Internet radio.