Neil Young has been banging on for some time about his dreams for hi-res digital music. Now, appearing on the Late Show with David Letterman, he's unveiled his new music player: Pono.

For the bedroom musician, recording was a pain until software gave them an option that was fast, flexible and sonically indistinguishable to the untrained ear. Then the pros went crazy with all of that power and turned making music into a mad science of sonic construction.

It took longer than I thought it would (because physical music sales still makes the monies) but digital music sales has finally topped physical music sales. According to Nielsen and Billboard, digital music sales accounted for 50.3% of total music sales, more than half the pie. What took so long?

Instead of eulogies for a music industry too slow to adapt to the digital age, its mourners should just print up this chart on huge poster boards. And while digital sales are helping staunch the bleeding, as you can see here it's not nearly enough.

Sony Music Entertainment isn't pulling out of iTunes, according to their COO Shawn Layden. Ad Age reported the other day that Sony was pulling out in retaliation for Apple blocking Sony's Reader app from the App Store, but au contraire claims Layden:

Confession: I still buy my music online instead of torrenting it. And after years of enduring an unfulfilling relationship with iTunes, last month I finally broke things off. I headed over to Amazon. I haven't looked back yet.

No idea which apps Damon Albarn used, but he reckons it's a "completely different kind of record." I'm no fan of Gorillaz (it's certainly not Blur), but I'm interested to hear how "digital" it sounds. [NME via Recombu]

What's Paul McCartney's doomsday scenario? Someone, somewhere, somehow manages to leak the Beatles' music onto the internet, where it will be stolen by everyone, all the time. This must be prevented! Notice a problem there? Yeah, it gets worse.

Symphony, screenshot above, is a game that uses your own music library to generate enemies on the fly. Think of it like a shmup where the soundtrack (presumably) doesn't suck ass.