Bertelsmann and EMI finally settle over Napster

Also: BBC bolsters digital division | Microsoft and Piczo tie-up | Eyeblaster nets $30m funding | EU law fails to boost digital growth | NatMags launches digital mag Jellyfish | New mobile advertising measurement tool

After four years of legal wrangling music giants Bertelsmann and EMI have come to an agreement over a copyright infringement law suit relating to Napster.

Bertelsmann, which provided backing to Napster when it was an illegal file-sharing service, found itself on the end of a swathe of lawsuits from the likes of Universal Music, EMI and others back in 2003 accusing it of contributing to illegal filesharing.

According to the New York Times, Bertelsmann has settled paying an undisclosed sum but has not admitted any liability.

Late last year, Bertelsmann agreed to pay the Universal Music Group, the world's biggest music corporation, $60 million to settle that company's portion of the lawsuit.

Separately in the UK Napster has struck a deal with Channel 4 Radio that will allow listeners to access a five-part series of live music shows recorded under the brand Napster Live.

The shows are fronted by T4 presenter Alex Zane and include artists such as Mika, James Morrison and Amy Winehouse.

The BBC bolsters digital operation with two new hirings

The BBC has announced two new appoints to its Future Media and Technology division, hirings born out of last year's Creative Future review that saw Ashley Highfield's role significantly bumped up to include the BBC's technology and archive operation.

Nic Newman, head of product development and technology for News, has been given the additional role of Future Media and Technology Controller, Journalism.

Colin Whitbread, a former group operations director at Telewest Broadband and ex-Ntl group director, has been appointed Future Media and Technology Controller, Service Delivery.

Part of his remit will be to lead and manage the BBC's technology partnership with Siemens. The BBC is still searching for three more positions in the FM&T division including an audio and music controller.

Piczo and Microsoft strike UK ad deal

Microsoft's third-party ad sales arm, Digital Advertising Solutions, has struck its first UK deal with teen social networking website Piczo.

Piczo, which has previously used Ad2One, said it wants to capitalise on the bigger muscle that DAS can provide.

"The market is set to grow exponentially this year," said Chris Seth, UK managing director at Piczo. "Teens are becoming harder to reach through traditional channels and we want to deliver more rich-media and display ads".

A quick call to research firm ComScore puts Piczo's Unique UK monthly user audience at a healthy 5m.

The initial one-year deal does not include search, but Mr Seth did not rule out the possibility the deal could be extended at a later date.

Rival Bebo has adopted a different strategy. It recently announced it was to take its ad sales inhouse after previously using eType.

Eyeblaster nets $30m in investment

Eyeblaster, the digital marketing and advertising firm, has secured $30m in investment to drive the global expansion of the company.

These guys have been around since the early days originally offering a similar rich-media advertising service similar to Tangozebra, but without perhaps the headlines James Booth successfully cornered.

These days Eyeblaster has developed into more of a full-service ad house similar to a DoubleClick rival with a host of services such as search, video and banners.

Investment has come from a range of private investors.

EU law fails to boost online growth

And now for something legal.

Apparently a new report published by the European Commission has found that the EU's copyright directive has largely failed in its aim of boosting the growth of online and digital services.

Mobile advertising gets measured

To drive the measurability of mobile advertising M:Metrics has launched MeterDirect, a research service that monitors how, when and how often consumers engage with mobile websites.

For example in the UK it identifies the mobile domains of Google UK, 02, Orange the BBC and mobile operator Three as the most visited by consumers in February.

"Direct media measurement is critical to programmers, media planners and advertisers as they come to rely on the mobile channel as a component of their traditional and new media campaigns," said Andy Brown, chief executive WPP's media research business KMR Group.

MeterDirect also monitors specific website audience demographics such as age and gender and when mobile sites are most often accessed.

The service found, for example, that in February Tuesday was the most popular day of the week that UK consumers accessed mobile websites.

NatMags launches digital girls mag Jellyfish

NatMags has launched the first issue of its new digital magazine Jellyfish as part of a 14 week-test.

It works in a similar fashion to Dennis' much-publicised digital-only mens weekly Monkeymag

In NatMags case Jellyfish is being delivered as part of a "three-pronged" strategy supporting CosmoGirl! That ties the magazine, website and digital edition together.

Look out for it on Tuesday's at 3pm for the next 14 weeks, apparently.