McIntyre says Last.fm has paying subscribers in the “high tens of thousands”, and that it will be launching new features for these paying users in Q2 this year. Apparently the US is now a quarter of Last.fm’s audience too – although we suspect that’s not just about organic growth in the US, but about European users moving to other services like Spotify.

Last.fm is in a strange position right now, flying under the media radar in comparison with newer rivals like Spotify and MOG. Yet it’s still live and kicking: 2010 should prove whether CBS really does have the commitment to its streaming music subsidiary to get it back into the limelight.

“We’re about 44% of internet radio,” founder Tim Westergren tells Digital Music News. He goes on to say that Pandora paid SoundExchange $28 million in royalties alone last year – a figure that doesn’t include publishing.

And there’s more context: “We’re a shade over 1 percent of the overall radio marketplace. Multiply that by 100, and you get the found revenue flowing to labels and artists if we were in an internet radio world instead of a broadcast world.”

Viacom’s submission includes evidence of emails between YouTube’s team in 2005 and 2006, which appear to show the site’s co-founders admitting that 80% of user traffic depended on infringing videos, and that some of these videos had even been uploaded by co-founder Jawed Karim.

However, YouTube chief counsel Zahavah Levine has hit back with a blog post claiming that Viacom “continuously and secretly uploaded its content to YouTube, evven while publicly complaining about its presence there”. He also reiterates that Viacom tried to buy YouTube before it was acquired by Google.

“All media is going to go on to the iPad, whether it be music or books or newspapers or movies, you’ll be able to get on your iPad… they’ll get better and better and you’ll be able to do more tricks with it.”

He also returned to his criticisms of search engines from Google and Microsoft, for the way they supposedly cannibalise News Corp’s content.

Anyone want to place a bet now on Murdoch falling out with Apple in a year or two’s time over Apple’s controls on iPad content?

It suggests that piracy could cost more than €240 billion of revenues from the music, film, TV, software and other creative industries by 2015.

The survey also indicates that the UK could be the worst hit, with a quarter of a million jobs at risk. BPI boss Geoff Taylor has backed the findings: “We’re approaching a tipping point where investment in our talent will dry up due to mass illegal downloading”.

There may be criticism of the research’s methodology if it turns out that the €240bn figure is based on the assumption that every illegal download is a lost sale, though.

Details on how the partnership will work exactly – not to mention the terms of the deal – are thin on the ground. Yahoo’s business development and commercial relations director Phil Macauley resorts to branding buzzwords when explaining the deal’s potential: “The deal will allow us to leverage Yahoo!’s unique combination of Science – our insights and knowledge, Art – Yahoo!’s ability to design creative ad solutions and Scale – the wide consumer reach this deal will enable.”

However, the implication is that the deal will help we7 to get more big brands on board – something which will presumably be welcomed by its label partners. “We believe that this partnership will offer large impact campaigns to brands, eventually making us one of the top five music destinations in the UK,” says CEO Steve Purdham.

There’s also a quote from Sony Music’s Nicola Tuer in the press release, saying that “Companies like we7 have always focused on the specific challenge of making ad-funded music add up economically, and partnering with Yahoo to market and sell its inventory seems an extremely positive step towards this goal”.

Her positivity contrasts with recent comments from WMG boss Edgar Bronfman, who slammed ad-supported streaming models in favour of paid subscriptions. Which, of course, we7 now offers in the UK too.

The government says it will correct the bill’s flaws during the ‘wash-up’ process in the House of Commons, but critics say it’s being hurried into law before the upcoming General Election.

“Our elected MPs will have spent a whole two hours on this bill… before they disappear back to constituencies to ask for our vote,” says Jim Killock of the Open Rights Group. “Meanwhile, a ‘rump parliament’ made up of retiring MPs and party whips will pass disconnection measures – with no actual debate.”

UK ISP TalkTalk has ramped up its campaign against the bill, releasing research claiming that 80% of 18-34 year-olds will switch to ‘undetectable’ ways of downloading music for free if the bill becomes law.

They include apps to scrape music from online radio broadcasts, and virtual private networks to conceal their identities when using P2P services. Meanwhile, 66% of people surveyed by TalkTalk said they would buy legally 2% or less of the songs they’d already illegally downloaded. Er.. which isn’t a surprise – they’ve already downloaded them!

Meanwhile, TalkTalk has also commissioned a spoof song and video from musician Dan Bull to support its anti-DEB campaign. Home Taping Is Killing Music went live on YouTube this week, although it’s not exactly gone viral yet: at the time of writing, it’s had a mere 2,597 views. The video is embedded below:

MOG’s current web service costs $5 a month, but users wanting access via mobile too will pay $10. The app includes local cacheing to listen to music when a user loses their connection. The apps will launch in the second quarter of this year, and CEO David Hyman has revealed that in the UK, the service will cost £5 and £10 without or with mobile access.

The pricing may have implications for Spotify’s upcoming US launch – in Europe it charges £9.99 / €9.99 a month for its premium service, including mobile access. Spotify boss Daniel Ek gives his SXSW keynote tonight…

The revised version would require copyright owners to pay legal costs and compensation for such requests, and also to inform site owners before requesting a block, with a list of infringing works. Sites would also be able to appeal against being blocked.

Equally controversially, Billboard says that the original amendment is “almost identical” to a draft written by the BPI – implying that it was cut’n'pasted into the amendment by Liberal Democrat peer Lord Clement-Jones.

The bill has faced strenuous lobbying from both sides of the debate – ISPs and the music industry. The question now is whether it will have time to become legislation before the UK’s upcoming General Election, and what kind of shape it will be in by that point after the barrage of recent amendments.

“This growth reflects in particular our increased efforts to license those benefiting from the use of British music overseas, our continued pursuit of legitimate alternatives to online piracy and, as always, the creative talent of our authors, composers and publishers,” says CEO Robert Ashcroft

“2009 was the first year in which the growth in revenues from the legal digital market compensated for the decline in revenues from traditional CDs and DVDs, though we remain cautious as to whether this represents a true turning point. The next decade does however promise further growth in earnings from the legal digital market as well as the use of British music overseas.”