Ready to toss dirt on the old, unloved CD? You’re going to have to wait a while. Compact discs are increasingly hard to find (at least in physical stores), but someone out there keeps buying them: The ancient format still makes up the majority of music sales in the U.S. And since album-length CDs are a whole lot more lucrative for the industry than iTunes singles, expect to see the industry cling to them as long it can get away with it.

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Earlier this year, an online publishing trade group promised to get its members to start running new, bigger, harder-to-ignore ads by July. So here they are: The Online Publishers Association says 37 sites, including the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and CNN.com, will start selling the plus-sized ads this week. Now we’ll see if they work.

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I actually got to fondle Amazon’s newest Kindle DX at its unveiling earlier this month. So I can confirm that it really isn’t that big. But you can see where these guys are going with this.

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Want to watch nerd-favorite “The Fifth Element” via Netflix’s awesome streaming service? OK, but hurry up–the movie will disappear from the service on New Year’s Day. Want to rent the excellent George Clooney corporate thriller “Michael Clayton” via iTunes? Too late! The movie was there, but now it’s not. Wait a minute: Hadn’t big media finally gotten religion and agreed to give us, the demanding consumers, everything we want, whenever we want it? Nope.

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That’s the offer, sort of, being made by something called Datz Music Lounge. Are there catches? You bet–this is the music business, after all. But it’s a potentially intriguing idea that could work both for music fans and the industry.

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