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That the music industry has radically changed in the last decade is a serious understatement, if not too cliche to mention. Technology has altered everything from the creation and distribution of recorded music, upending retailers, studios and business models across the industry. But it's not all bad news. Music isn't dying so much as evolving, and the landscape is already beginning to look quite different.

Not long ago, the professional music industry involved a complex but fixed set of players: artists, labels, managers, promoters and the like. Many of these roles have changed, but none have disappeared. They're joined by a new set of participants: tech giants, streaming services, social music startups and, perhaps most crucially, developers.

It seems like every advance in digital music brings with it a debate about whether the latest format degrades quality in exchange for convenience. This was true when CDs first came onto the scene, and it's probably even more true today with MP3s and their digital audio brethren. Heck, even the advent of the gramophone in 1889 sparked debates over whether its sound quality was worse than Thomas Edison's phonograph.

Last week, rock veteran Neil Young chimed in with his assertion that the digital music files we listen to today are of much lower quality than the original recordings. Speaking at the D: Dive Into Media conference, he said that the technology now exists to deliver much higher-quality audio to music fans, and that he had even talked to Steve Jobs about a possible solution.

In a major victory for record labels and a major bummer for P2P file-sharers, the Gnutella-based download client LimeWire has been ordered to immediately stop distributing and supporting its software. U.S District Judge Kimba Wood handed down a 17-page permanent injunction today, and an announcement on the Limewire site shutters the site and the client no longer functions.

Judge Wood found earlier this year that Limewire had knowingly participated in copyright infringement "on a massive scale" after the RIAA, along with several major record labels, brought suit against the company. And while the RIAA wanted the site shut down then, Limewire was given a reprieve to build a new copyright-friendly technology.

In a surprisingly candid post on Spotify's blog, company co-founder Daniel Ek recently shared his thoughts about where the popular streaming music company stands today and where he hopes it can go in the future. The main point of his post was to clarify that Spotify, despite being a media darling these days, is nowhere near becoming a sustainable company with a stable revenue model. However, that's their end goal, Ek says, and they're in it "for the long haul" with no intention of simply "flipping" the company after the hype reaches its crescendo. But in the meantime, the company struggles with the exorbitant per-play fees enforced by the music industry while not finding success with an ad-supported model.

The "iTunes LP" is just one of the many new iTunes features revealed yesterday during Apple's announcement at their "It's Only Rock and Roll"-themed event. But the iTunes LP, unlike the other new features which get to exist as simple and fun enhancements in iTunes 9, has a heavy burden on its shoulders. It's supposed to revitalize the music industry by encouraging consumers to once again purchase entire albums as opposed to single tracks. With this new digital album format, the idea is to replicate the experience of buying an album, complete with lyrics, liner notes, album art, photos, and more, giving music buyers extra content to peruse while enjoying their new music. The only problem is that this so-called "interactive" format isn't all that interactive. And what's more, innovative artists are already discovering how to monetize their music while engaging fans in new ways that have nothing to do with a re-imagined LP. Instead, the "interactive format" of the future isn't the album, it's the app.

The Republic Project, which offers one of the most interesting ways for artists to monetize their efforts that we have seen recently, is coming out of closed beta this week. The Republic Project gives bands and fans a new way to connect. Fans can pre-order a band's forthcoming album on the site and then watch as the band produces the new album. Once an album is finished, the Republic Project will deliver DRM-free MP3s to its users, and musicians will be free to sell their music on any other service.

After years of wrangling and imminent doom constantly hanging over their heads, Pandora and other webcasters like AOL Radio have finally managed to work out a new deal with the music industry that should ensure the survival of their businesses for the next few years. Under this deal, large webcasters with revenue over $1.25 million will pay the greater of 25% of their revenue, or a fixed price per song, which will increase from 0.08 cents to 0.14 cents in 2015. Services with less than $1.25 million in revenue will have to pay 12 to 14% of their revenue.

eMusic, one of the world's largest subscription-based music retailers, has for the first time added music from Sony's catalog to its store. Most users on eMusic subscribe to the service because of the eclectic selection of independent music it offers, and very few users were excited to hear that eMusic was going to make major changes to its service, including raising the price per song just in order to give its users access to mainstream music that they were not very likely to be interested in. While eMusic did a fine job at communicating the basic changes to the service, it didn't reveal the full extent of the changes until yesterday, and its users are anything but happy about them.

imeem, which describes itself as the "world's largest social music service," just told its community members that it plans to delete all photos and videos that users have uploaded to their profiles and groups on Jun 30th. imeem argues that it is doing this in order to simplify the service and focus on the service's core social music features. According to imeem, user-generated photos and videos weren't very popular on the site and cost a lot to host and stream. In a comment that sounds similar to what we've been hearing from other social media sites, imeem also argues that "there's no ROI for us in UGV," as advertisers just aren't very interested in seeing their content next to amateur videos.

According to research group Ipsos Reid's "Social Networking: 2009" poll, Canadians are flocking to social networking sites. In the last 18 months, the percentage of Canucks with a social networking profile has increased from 39% to 56%. This rapid rise in social networking users has Canadian marketers scratching their heads as to how they can best brand in the space. With more than three quarters of those online owning a Facebook profile, it's not surprising that the blue beast is the main topic of discussion in relation to marketing groups. Says report writer Mark Laver, "Online social networks tend to be extremely personal and this thus creates a dilemma for marketers and businesses - how to communicate in a personalized setting without upsetting the target audience."