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Lady Gaga's new album "Born This Way" sold more than 1.1 million digital and physical copies in its first week and set a new record for digital sales, thanks in part to a pricing scheme from Amazon.com.

Testing the waters of digital music prices, the retail giant offered the pop singer's new album for a mere 99 cents for one day on Monday, May 23. Hoping to lure more than the usual Lady Gaga fans, Amazon threw in 20GB of cloud storage as part of the deal. After technical problems due to overwhelming demand on that day, Amazon tried once more last Thursday, offering the 99-cent MP3 version of the album for a single day.

Boosted by Amazon's retail push, "Born This Way" hit No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart, selling 1,108,000 copies altogether and making it the 17th album to sell a million in a single week since 1991 when Nielsen's SoundScan started tracking such data, according to Billboard.

Amazon itself accounted for more than 440,000 of the total 662,000 digital downloads of "Born This Way," according to Billboard.… Read more

I would like to install a swing set in my backyard. And I want it to be the SkyScreamer. At 236-feet in height, it may run afoul of my local zoning laws, but I don't care. I want to feel the 43 mph wind in my face as I rocket through the air.

Most extreme amusement park rides wrap you up in a cocoon of carts with cushioned safety accessories for an encapsulated experience. The just-opened SkyScreamer at Six Flags St. Louis strips a lot of that away and just dangles you out there with the clouds and birds. It's like a ski lift with a lot more adrenaline.

This is what you have been training for since those early days on the playground with your momma pushing you on a swing. It makes the swing ride at the state fair blush and tuck itself back into its trailer. It would have completely changed the feel of Hitchcock's "Vertigo," had it been around in 1958.

SkyScreamer's manufacturer, Australia-based Funtime Group, already claims the title for the world's tallest tower swing ride, the 384-foot StarFlyer in Vienna, Austria. The Six Flags version may be shorter, but it is still high enough up to scare the pants off of you. Just remember, you must be at least 48-inches tall to ride.

… Read more

Apple has signed a cloud-music licensing agreement with EMI Music and is very near to completing deals with Universal Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment, multiple music industry sources told CNET.

Warner Music Group already had a deal in place with Apple, CNET reported last month. The licensing agreements will enable Apple to launch a fully licensed cloud-music service to rival unlicensed offerings of rivals Amazon and Google.

The negotiations with Sony Music Group and Universal Music Group could be wrapped up as early as next week, the sources said. What this means is that signed contracts with all four … Read more

Fate smiled on Mark Gorton this week.

The founder of file-sharing company Lime Wire agreed on Thursday to pay $105 million to the Recording Industry Association of America to settle a 5-year-old copyright case. Sure, that's a lot, but consider that the settlement figure is equal to only 7 percent of the $1.4 billion the RIAA sought.

This is likely the final chapter for LimeWire, after 10 years in operation. The two sides agreed to settle a year to the day after U.S. District Judge Kimba Wood ruled that Gorton was liable for willful copyright infringement. Later, Wood ordered that the LimeWire peer-to-peer network be shut down. The financial agreement between Gorton and the labels came amid a jury trial to determine how much Gorton would have to pay in damages.

For fans of cheap, easy-to-obtain music, a few modest reasons for hope sprung up during the two-week-long damages trial.

Edgar Bronfman, CEO of Warner Music Group, one of the four largest record companies, said under oath that he supported the unbundling of music. You might be saying to yourself: "So what?" People have had access to unbundled music for a decade now, thanks to services like iTunes and, yes, LimeWire. All I can tell you is that there are plenty of decision makers at the labels who believe the industry won't recover until consumers are buying albums again. … Read more

This past Thursday I attended an informal "summit" hosted by Craig Kallman, Atlantic Records' CEO and Chairman, to learn more about the label's plans to start releasing high-resolution music. Kallman is passionate about improving the sound of music, and I was impressed by his candor about the industry's appalling track record and declining sound quality standards.

I think the widespread overuse of dynamic range compression is far more musically destructive than the low sampling rates used in formats like MP3. I fear that if the new formats are just higher-resolution versions of the dynamically compressed MP3 … Read more

Scuderi Group is one of a handful of companies seeking to break with the traditional design of the internal combustion engine in the name of fuel efficiency.

The company today announced results from a simulation using its namesake engine with a Nissan Sentra sedan that showed a 36 percent reduction in fuel consumption, the equivalent of a 54 percent improvement in miles per gallon. That same level of performance jump can be achieved with other cars, according to president Sal Scuderi.

The efficiency test, done in conjunction with applied research lab Southwest Research Institute, is a step in convincing major … Read more

By the end of this year, people will be able to buy an LED light bulb controllable from an Android device, part of Google's move into home automation.

At the Google I/O conference today, Google demonstrated how Android devices, including tablets and smartphones, can act as a hub for controlling multiple devices in the home, including lighting, appliances, thermostats, and music.

Google concocted a lighting demo system with Lighting Sciences Group, which developed an LED bulb that can talk to Android. It uses a new mesh network wireless protocol rather than Wi-Fi, ZigBee, or the other proprietary home … Read more

NEW YORK--Lawyers representing the four largest music labels tried to convey a message in court here today: Lime Wire founder Mark Gorton was so determined to help people pirate songs that he disregarded copyright law, artists' rights, and even the Supreme Court.

And eventually, Gorton conceded.

The best that he could offer for an excuse was that he misread the law. "I was wrong," Gorton told the court. "I didn't think our behavior was inducing [copyright infringement]. I understand that a court has found otherwise."

In numerous exchanges with Glenn Pomerantz, the labels' lead attorney, … Read more

NEW YORK--Free music is here to stay and punishing Lime Wire founder Mark Gorton for that fact is unjust and won't change a thing, Gorton's lawyers said in court today.

A trial to determine the amount of damages Gorton must pay the top four record companies for infringing their copyrights got under way in a Manhattan federal courtroom. Gorton has a possible $1 billion judgment hanging over his head after the major music labels accused him in a 2006 copyright suit of encouraging music fans to use his company's LimeWire software to illegally swap music files.

Lime … Read more