No, you still can’t buy the Beatles on iTunes. But next month, you will finally be able to buy the band’s music–legally–in MP3 form. Provided you’re willing to pay way, way up.

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Well look at that: EMI Music Group, which had been working on a licensing deal with music start-up Grooveshark but ended up suing it instead, now has a licensing deal with Grooveshark after all.

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When a big music label sues a scrappy Web music start-up, most people tend to sympathize reflexively with the little guy. But not everyone. Here’s the case against Grooveshark–not from EMI, which has hauled them into court, but from an indie that by all rights ought to be working with Grooveshark: “The service is just ripping off the band.”

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Digital music start-ups seem to come in two flavors these days: Those being sued by the major music labels and those with expensive licensing deals they can’t afford.

But for some reason, plucky Grooveshark, which runs a very nice, free streaming music service, has stayed out of both of those buckets until now. I’ve confirmed that EMI Music Group is suing the site–whose motto is “Play any song in the world, for free!”–for copyright violation.

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Turns out not everyone is convinced that big music is dying: Investors have snapped up $1.1 billion in debt issued by Warner Music Group–double the amount the company had originally planned on issuing when it announced the offering yesterday morning. The fine print gives the label some flexibility in case of a “major music transaction”–say, perhaps, a deal to merge with EMI.

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MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe is likely to be on his way out of the company he helped found, and News Corp., which bought the social network in 2005, has a single potential successor in mind. Sources say that person is former Facebook COO Owen Van Natta, who is currently CEO of music start-up Project Playlist. People familiar with the matter tell me that DeWolfe and News Corp., specifically new digital boss Jon Miller, are discussing a leadership change today.

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Yesterday I noted that Apple and the big music labels had effectively raised prices at iTunes via a tiered system that priced most songs at 99 cents and many at $1.29. The question: Where are the cheap songs–the ones that the labels had promised to start selling for 69 cents? They’re coming, music label execs tell me. Just hold your horses.

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No one wants to pay for music on the Internet. But starting a free music service on the Web takes a whole lot of cash. Just ask the folks at Seeqpod, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last week. The company’s biggest expense: Lawyers to help it fend off copyright lawsuits from the big music labels.

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EMI Music Group, which sued Web music start-up Project Playlist nearly a year ago, has dropped its suit and will start providing its catalog to the site, which offers free streaming music. The settlement, in conjunction with an earlier deal struck with Sony’s Sony Music Entertainment, means that Project Playlist now has deals with two of the big four music labels. But Warner Music Group and Vivendi’s Universal Music Group are still suing the company.

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YouTube lets you repost its clips anywhere you want–unless you’re talking about big music’s videos, which remain trapped on the site. That makes no sense, and the labels know it–or at least some of their employees do.

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A lot of people couldn’t understand why Guy Hands, the private equity guy who bought EMI in the summer of 2007, was willing to pay so much for the music company. Now he says he agrees with them–his Terra Firma buyout firm has written off half the $3.2 billion he paid for the company. He may have to write off more before he’s done.

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At Steve Jobs’s insistence, the iTunes music store proposition to customers has always been simple: You pay us 99 cents, you get a song. But that’s starting to change. Today’s new wrinkle: Pay us a premium, and we’ll give you a bunch of songs and some other stuff.

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Earlier this month the music business got a rare piece of good news: Apple announced that it had posted “record” sales at its iTunes music store around Christmas. Now, back to our regularly scheduled programming: I’m seeing more and more evidence that Apple notwithstanding, the industry’s last few months were bad even by the industry’s own terrible standards.

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In addition to offering songs from iTunes without DRM restrictions, Apple plans on selling songs to iPhone users “over the air”–that is, you can buy them directly from your handset, wherever you are. I’m told that Apple has struck deals with the major labels to start selling songs to iPhone 3G owners sometime this spring.

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Amazon has been selling digital music from all the big music labels for nearly a year now. It hasn’t changed Apple’s grip on that business in any way, and it hasn’t made any money for Amazon. But don’t write it off as a failure just yet.

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