Real Networks and Viacom are reorganizing Rhapsody, their joint-venture music service, and will be spinning it off into an independent company, they told the Securities and Exchange Commission today. Rhapsody, along with Best Buy’s Napster, sell music via monthly subscription, as opposed to Apple’s a la carte download offering. But neither service has been able to gain much traction, despite years of effort. More shortly.

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Book publishers itching to raise the prices on their e-books should pay attention to the music labels, which raised the prices on their downloads last spring. Consumers, it turns out, like paying less for stuff.

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A former Universal Music executive, now headed to Yahoo, explains concisely why his former employer and the other big guys are just playing out the string: CD sales are wasting away, and the digital boost they were counting on simply isn’t big enough.

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Barnes & Noble’s e-reader entry was supposed to have one big advantage over the Kindle–you could buy one at the retailer’s stores. But it has been a long time coming, and in the meantime, you may have heard about another compelling e-reader heading to market.

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Apple has some 140,000 apps for its iPhone users. People who use phones with Google’s Android operating system have much less choice.

But here’s a consolation prize: Android users do get to use the coolest app in New York City. At least, according to the NYC Big App competition, which awarded its Grand Prize last night to WayFinder NYC, an Android-only app.

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Here’s another publisher publicly throwing its weight behind Apple–and against Amazon–in the e-book pricing war. Hachette Book Group says it will pursue the “agency model” for pricing e-books: It sets retail prices and the retailer gets a 30 percent cut. In more practical terms, this means Hachette’s titles will be getting more expensive, and the rest of the industry will be following suit.

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It’s a pretty standard chain of events: New platform opens up, investors try to attach themselves to developers who want to exploit it. Thus, the AppFund, which says it will invest up to $500,000 in iPad-specific apps.

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So, when’s that Hulu Premium service we heard about last fall going to show up?

If Disney EVP Kevin Mayer knows, he’s not telling. But for the record, he says, “no decisions have been made” about a pay service. Still, the site’s visitors will be asked to pay for something at some point.

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If you’re waiting for Apple’s iPad to rescue the magazine business, you may have to wait a very long time indeed. But the present-tense magazine industry–the ink-and-paper version everyone has left for dead–may be limping its way to a recovery.

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Venture capital firms are getting hammered, but a select few have been able to raise more money to start new funds. Today’s example: Greycroft’s Alan Patricof, whose new fund required much more work than he expected, but is just about done now.

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Amazon caved to Macmillan’s demands on e-book pricing, and now the online retailer is set to give News Corp.’s HarperCollins a new deal too, says Rupert Murdoch. Meanwhile, don’t hold your breath waiting for Conan O’Brien on Fox.

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Condense a Steve Jobs pitch into 180 seconds and he sounds a lot like Billy Mays. Nothing wrong with that, of course.

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Amazon caves after two days, agreeing to Macmillan’s demands to sell its e-books at a higher price–otherwise known as the Apple iPad pricing plan. In doing so, the world’s biggest e-commerce player has made a tacit admission that e-book prices will rise across the board.

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Apple has yet to sell its first e-book, but it is already engaged in a bruising battle with Amazon for control of the market. The most recent salvo: Amazon has stopped selling all books from MacMillan, apparently in response to the publisher’s plans to sell its books at a higher price point through Apple.

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This excellent deconstruction of TV news, via comedian/writer Charlie Brooker, has been circulating for the past few days, but there’s a good chance you haven’t seen it since it never mentions the word “Apple,” “tablet” or “iPad.” If that’s the case, you should watch it now.

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