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EMusic, the popular subscription-based music service, just announced that it has signed a deal with Warner Music, the world's third-largest music company. This is eMusic's second deal with a major record label. In its early days, eMusic mostly focused on featuring music from independent labels. Since the middle of 2009, however, eMusic has worked on expanding its reach by bringing more mainstream music to its catalog. The company announced a deal with Sony Music in June 2008.

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.

European music service Spotify is one of the most highly anticipated applications coming to the U.S. The service, best described as a streaming music version of iTunes, consists of both desktop software as well as complementary mobile applications for Apple's iPhone and the Google Android platform. Already, the service is wildly popular overseas in its current markets which include the United Kingdom, Sweden, France, Spain, Norway and Finland where it has accumulated over 5 million users. There, the company offers two versions of its service - a free application and a premium, ad-free subscription version.

According to recent reports, however, Spotify may do things a little differently when it reaches the States. Says Andres Sehr, Spotify's global community manager, the company is considering going the "freemium" route for the U.S. market.

Rhapsody, the online streaming music service, just launched its iPhone and iPod touch app (iTunes link). While there had been some discussion about whether Apple would actually allow this 'iTunes competitor' on the iPhone, the approval process looks to have been relatively smooth for Rhapsody. The app feels very similar to Apple's own iPod app. From within the app, you can search Rhapsody's library of 8 million tracks, surf genres, create playlists, or find new music released this week. Overall, we came away quite impressed after testing the app out for a while, though the $14.99/month subscription fee (after a free 7-day trial) will surely keep some potential users away.

Spotify CEO Daniel Ek has the Midas touch. In anticipation of the company's US launch, the on-demand music streaming site is finalizing what is rumored to be a $50 million dollar round of investments. According to the Financial Times, if Spotify closes the round with Wellington Partners and Li Ka Shing Foundation, the Swedish company will be valued at $250 million dollars.

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.