ReadWriteWeb

Some surveys come out and my first response is the people asking the questions obviously weren't talking to me or my friends. A perfect example of this is the latest survey by mobile entertainment company Myxer, which tells us that the CD still reigns supreme, the radio is the top source for music discovery and Pandora - the website designed to play music customized to your expressed taste - ranks second to last in how we find new tunes to add to our collections.

While the survey tries to tell us that things haven't changed as much as we'd like to think, we believe that the scales have tipped and the end of days are near for the old guard.

It's been just over a week now since Apple failed to announce the cloud-based music service many of us hoped would replace Lala. While all remains quiet on this front, CNET's Greg Sandoval is reporting this morning that Google, after years of rumors, is finally getting into the music business this fall.

CNET cites "multiple music industry sources" in its story, saying that Google "first stoked excitement among executives at some of the top four major labels during the Consumer Electronics Show in January".

Fanit is another start-up that has discovered the gospel of game play and is using it to promote their music recommendation experience.

Fans support their favorite artists and bands by purchasing badges. 100% of the money for the badges go to the artists, according to the company's PR representative. As the fan purchases badges and engages in recommendation actions, they earn "rank." That rank gives the fan a chance at "superfan" status and, according to the company, creates opportunities for interactions with the listener's favorite musicians.

Extension.fm, a Chrome browser extension we first wrote about in February, has launched to the public and announced that it's received funding from a group of high-profile investors, including Spark Capital, Betaworks, Founder Collective (Caterina Fake, Chris Dixon and others) and Dave Morgan (founder of Tacoda and Real Media).

Extension sits in your browser and automatically grabs the links to any music files you see around the web, rendering them easy to play later through a special interface. Based in New York, the company is lead by Dan Kantor, the creator of AOL-acquired Streampad and the feature in Yahoo's Delicious that renders links to MP3 files playable.

Spotify, the red-hot European music service that's like iTunes, Pandora, MOG and more combined, released a new version last week that integrates with Facebook last week. I've been hearing about Spotify for months but hadn't actually seen it before - it's not available in the United States yet and no one knows when it will be. Even traveling to Europe, downloading the app and then coming back to the States will get your account shut down after a grace period streaming from a US IP.

Thanks to a friend though, I got a copy of Spotify a few days ago! I can report that it is simply awesome, and I'm just using the free version so far. Here's an annotated screenshot below, in case you're as curious as I was. This may be old news for some uber-hip types, but I'm guessing most readers haven't seen the interface before. I hadn't.

Apple plans to shut down Lala, the cloud-based streaming music service it bought in December 2009. Lala stopped accepting new users today and will close on May 31. Thanks to its unlimited music locker and innovative pricing scheme, Lala had long been a favorite of ours. Rumor is that Apple will revive the service is some form under the iTunes.com label, but as with all things Apple, this is just a rumor until Steve Jobs walks on stage and announces it.

MP3tunes, which was launched by tech entrepreneur Michael Robertson in 2005, allows its users to store their own music in the cloud. Until today, however, the amount of free storage on MP3tunes was limited to a relatively meager 2GB. Now, however, the company has decided to up the ante and plans to give its users 10GB of free storage which can be accessed from virtually anywhere (browser, iPhone, Android, Wii, Playstation, Chumby etc.). MP3tunes already has a backlog of invites, but the company graciously agreed to give 150 of our readers priority access to its expanded music lockers. Read on for more details about how to claim yours.

Spotify, our favorite streaming music browser to talk about that we can't even (legally) use in the U.S., has just announced that it is releasing version 0.4.3, "which includes the largest feature upgrade since our launch in 2008". Are we finally going to (legally) get Spotify here in the U.S.? Not a chance.

Spotify is going social, adding a connection with Facebook, usernames, the ability to publish activity to your blog, and more. It's also going local, adding library features and giving users the ability to import their local library into the Spotify network.

While Spotify CEO Daniel Ek didn't say much about his company's timeline for launching in the U.S. during his SXSW keynote interview, it definitely looks like the popular streaming music services is putting all the pieces for a U.S. launch together. In an interview with Bloomberg earlier today, Spotify's senior vice president Paul Brown noted that the company is "buying server space in random parts of the states and there are licensing discussions too." According to Bloomberg, Spotify its planning to launch in Q3 2010.

Here's an idea for you: instead of slowly amassing followers, like on Twitter, or carefully culling your friends list over time on Facebook, making sure everyone is in their appropriate list and category, collect and dispose of friends like you ask for the time or a spare cigarette on a busy city street.

That's what Lokast, the self-described "disposable" social network lets you do - carry your throw-away lifestyle over into the digital world.