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In the fast-changing digital music streaming space, it's hard to know which service is best for you. Spotify gets the most hype, but lots of people love Rdio, which has solid backing and a huge library of music. There are also beloved underdogs like MOG and Grooveshark.

When it comes to choosing which option to go for, the most you can do is take each service for a spin, run a couple searches for stuff you like and see what comes up. You can get a general feeling of which one's a better fit and go with your gut, but wouldn't some hard data be nice?

These days, with the traditional structures of the music industry blown wide open by the Internet, artists are constantly looking for new ways to market themselves and, if at all possible, earn money in the process. From streaming services to DIY online marketing tools, there's seemingly no limit to the digital tools available to musicians these days.

One such tool, StageIt, is hoping to put an innovative spin on live performances by bringing them online.

Ever since peer-to-peer file-sharing technology became popularized, it has been a thorn in the side of the companies who have traditionally profited from the distribution of entertainment-related content. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) succeeded in killing off Napster, but has waged war against BitTorrent and others ever since. The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) has waged a similar battle, reportedly costing the film industry more than piracy itself does.

As vilified as file-sharing has historically been, the practice has been gaining favor in somewhat unexpected places lately. The Songwriter's Association of Canada recently threw its support behind the idea of legalizing file-sharing and finding ways to monetize the practice, rather than cracking down on it through legal means.

The first guest at the Web 2.0 Summit was young billionaire Sean Parker of Founders Fund. He also works for an Internet website called Facebook, as well as other quintessential Web 2.0 services.

Host John Battelle spoke with Parker about Napster, Spotify and the future of the music industry, what's wrong with Facebook, and they tiptoed around his mysterious new venture - Airtime - enough to insinuate that it's something like the Spotify of television.

If you were having trouble streaming dubstep remixes hosted on SoundCloud lastnight, you're not the only one. The site fell victim to a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack, the company confirmed on its status blog today.

The social audio-sharing site experienced several hours of intermittent downtime yesterday as SoundCloud's engineers fought off the attack.

For East Coast fans of Radiohead, the news could hardly have been more exciting. The band, multiple news outlets confirmed, would be playing a surprise show in downtown Manhattan on Friday afternoon. The show would coincide with the ongoing Occupy Wall Street protests that had been organized online and with which the band would likely be sympathetic.

Once a few prominent blogs began reporting on it, the news spread like wildfire across Twitter and Facebook, where eager fans posted updates about the show and began making plans to attend.

Pandora, the customized Internet radio streaming service, has pushed out a redesigned interface to all users. The new UI comes with an added bonus: the company has removed its infamous 40 hour listening cap, enabling users to streaming an unlimited amount of music for free.

The Web interface for the popular music service has been totally overhauled, offering a sleeker, cleaner design with simplified controls. The top of the page contains iTunes-esque controls for playing, pausing and skipping songs, as well as voting them up or down. From the same toolbar, users can type in the name of any artist, composer or song to automatically generate a radio station based on their musical preferences.

A federal judge in New York ruled today in the defendant's favor on a copyright infringement case brought EMI and 14 record companies against cloud music locker service MP3tunes. Judge William H. Pauley III found that cloud-based music lockers are, for the most part, legally in the clear. The judge found that "MP3tunes did not promote infringement" by offering an open cloud storage service for music, meaning that it, as well as big-name services like Google Music and Amazon Cloud Drive, are on the right side of the law.

The record companies claimed that services like these duplicate files in ways that violate copyrights, that they don't do enough to stop repeat infringers, and that playing back songs from a locker constitute a "public performance," which would require a license for the material. The judge rejected all these claims, finding that MP3tunes is protected as a service provider under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The plaintiffs also argued that works recorded prior to 1972 were not protected by the DMCA, but the judge overturned this charge as well.

A seemingly minor update that Google is rolling out today should delight music fans. The search giant now includes rich snippets for songs within the results pages when you search for a musician or band.

If this sounds familiar, it's because Google has already implemented rich snippets for things like videos, reviews and event information. This enables people using the search engine to see at a glance whether the pages include the content they're seeking.

The sudden and somewhat explosive popularity of the virtual DJing site Turntable.fm has paved the way for a number of services with similar, or sometimes identical, functionality.

The startup garnered a significant amount of buzz online since launching its service, which lets users take turns selecting and playing songs for a virtual room full of other people. What started out at as an unknown interactive music site quickly became the destination of hundreds of thousands of users, including some well-known, real-world musicians and even a few brands. The startup landed $7.5 million in funding from Union Square Ventures earlier this month, which valued the company at $37.5 million.