If modesty were the best policy, Vince Clarke would be the king of tranquility. When asked about his indelible influence on today’s burgeoning electronic music scene, Clarke replies, “Our connection with what’s happening now is the fact that we play synthesizers. And that’s it.” He’s really being way too modest. A forefather of the electronic generation, Clarke helped pioneer synthpop

The music industry has been waging a bitter campaign against song-sharing sites for years and now, for better or worse, the industry is clearly winning. The latest evidence of this came Monday when a New York court ruled that the executives behind Grooveshark, a user-driven streaming site, had violated copyright and destroyed evidence. U.S. District Judge Thomas Griesa found that Grooveshark’s founders had ordered employees to upload thousands of unlicensed songs in order to burnish the site’s popularity.

Grooveshark received some damning news from a New York district court judge yesterday, but it is still trying to swim on. Today the streaming and uploading service shared a blog post with a response to the ruling. “This latest news dealt specifically with an early version of Grooveshark which we dispensed of in 2008 in favor of our current music streaming service,” the company said. “Grooveshark’s service has already provided millions of dollars in revenue to artists and labels all over the world,

Pioneering digital music store eMusic has announced a return to its indie roots, telling members that it will no longer sell releases distributed by major labels Sony, Universal and Warner. The site, which launched in 1998 as an online outlet for independent music, but began selling product from the majors in 2009, will alter its focus as early as this week, according to an email to subscribers.

Blend, a music collaboration platform used by major electronic producers like Moby and Prefuse 73, has teamed up with independent distributor The Orchard to create a new kind of record label. The partnership will allow users to determine what music makes it into the label’s catalogue via an upvoting system (similar to Facebook “likes”), and will help artists sell their music in major digital stores around the world.

It’s gold rush time out there for music industry lawyers, who racked up a major court victory recently against SiriusXM, and have now doubled down with a similar lawsuit against digital radio service Pandora. The latest legal action came as the 1960’s duo Flo and Eddie — who performed hits like “It Ain’t Me Babe” with The Turtles — filed a fresh class action complaint in Los Angeles federal court, demanding that Pandora should pay more for playing pre-1972 sound recordings. The legal details are mind-numbing but, broadly stated, the cases turn on a novel legal theory based on state copyright laws — laws that, in the view of many people, were superseded by 1972 updates to the federal Copyright Act.

The paris-based Spotify competitor announced the launch of its paid streaming service in the U.S. via an exclusive partnership with Bose that will integrate the service with the company’s connected speakers, and also offer Bose owners a discounted subscription rate. Just three weeks ago, Deezer announced its first foray into the U.S. with an exclusive partnership with Sonos. But the Sonos partnership was all about high-definition audio, which Deezer is streaming to Sonos owners for $15 a month for a month-to-month plan. The Bose partnership on the other hand is more about price-conscious mainstream consumers

For those without the space, (or the tools) to put in a full surround sound system, Yamaha has created its “Sound Projector” line of sound bars. Able to create a surprisingly vivid and full sound stage through their use of small directional drivers the company calls “beams”, Yamaha has been steadily expanding its projector technology recently. The new $1,000 YSP-2500 essentially serves as an entry point for Yamaha’s top-tier sound bar systems. Like all of Yamaha’s Sound Projectors, the YSP-2500 uses a blend of directional sound and time delays to bounce sound off the walls of your home theater room in an effort to create a more realistic virtual surround sound effect.

Trevi is a natural reality-show protagonist. In more than three decades as one of Mexico’s most loved (and controversial) celebrities, the flamboyant entertainer has cultivated a life story that borders on urban legend. At15, the Monterrey-born teen left home alone and headed to Mexico City, where she earned money selling gum on street corners and teaching aerobics. By 22, she had not only sold 3 million copies of her debut solo album, but had also nearly been banned from Mexican network Televisa for flashing her underwear on the station’s hugely popular variety show Siempre en Domingo (Always on Sunday). (“I told them I could take my underwear off so you don’t see them,” she recalls. “They said it was too aggressive of an act for a Mexican woman.”)