Audio Recordings

First-week sales of U2's "No Line on the Horizon" brought the superstar rock band back down to Earth. The album, given the band's stature and sales history, was essentially preordained to debut atop the U.S. pop charts. The only question was how many it would sell. The Interscope album sold a brisk 484,000 copies in the U.S., according to data from Nielsen SoundScan, which tracks album sales.

Steve Martin has a reputation as one of the toughest interviews in the entertainment business. He's known for clipped yes-no responses to questions about the making of his latest film, his thoughts on the art of comedy or, especially, his personal life. But bring up a subject that's near and dear to his heart -- like, say, the banjo -- and he's a different guy.

Digital music downloads reached a milestone in 2008, exceeding 1 billion songs purchased online, according to a newly released report from Nielsen SoundScan, which tracks music sales. That represents a 27% gain over the previous year. But the soaring popularity of the 99-cent download is not enough to offset continued declines in CD sales, which still account for the bulk of the music industry's revenue. Physical disc sales fell nearly 20% to 362.

A federal jury in Los Angeles ruled Friday that Eminem's music royalties don't change just because a song has been sold online. The decision prevents, at least for now, an upending of the music industry that could have greatly changed the financial relationship between record labels and artists, in which labels have long commanded most of the proceeds from album sales.

A new album from "Hannah Montana" star Miley Cyrus fell short of No. 1 on the U.S. pop charts in its first week of release, raising the question: Are the tween star's fans ready for her to go a little bit country? Only a year ago, Cyrus' 3-D concert film set records, and scalpers were charging thousands for tickets to her live concerts. Her last three major releases debuted at the top of the charts. But the new record's sales were a fraction of her previous studio albums' first-week sales.

Iran on Wednesday accused the United States of fabricating video and audio released by the Pentagon that shows Iranian boats confronting U.S. warships near the Persian Gulf. Defense Department spokesman Bryan Whitman said that the "allegation is absurd, factually incorrect and reflects the lack of seriousness with which they take this serious incident." The video from Sunday's incident shows small Iranian boats swarming around the U.S. ships in the Strait of Hormuz.

Sony BMG Music Entertainment plans to sell digital music without copyright protection through Amazon.com Inc., stepping up competition between the Internet retailer and Apple Inc.'s iTunes. Sony BMG is the last of the four major record companies to sell music without piracy protection through Amazon.com, the world's largest online retailer.

As children lofted soccer balls in MacArthur Park and ice cream vendors passed with bells ringing, a dozen Latino parents and the Real Madrid girls' soccer team crowded around an unfamiliar silver Airstream trailer earlier this week, full of questions. A Honduran immigrant, Miguel Velasquez, emerged and explained in Spanish to the group that the trailer is part of StoryCorps, a Brooklyn, N.Y.

The executives behind a new music service called Qtrax wanted to get the industry talking. They did -- for the wrong reasons. Brilliant Technologies Corp., the publicly traded parent company of Qtrax, said Sunday that it had opened the first Napster-like network to feature free music from the four major record labels with their permission.

In March 2002, a former Cook County police officer and his wife were convicted of bilking the government by submitting billings for security work that was never performed at one of the nation's most dangerous housing projects, the Robert Taylor Homes in Chicago. And ever since their convictions, James and Janice Skrzypek have waged a fight from behind bars to prove they were set up.