• U2's No Line On The Horizon entered at #1 on the album chart with sales of 484,000 units. Given the changes in the marketplace and the shift away from the album format over the last four and a quarter years since the band's last album, 484,000 units is about right on target. The 7.02 million units sold last week were down 8.6% versus that same week in 2008. Year to date, album sales are down 11.5%. (Billboard.biz)

• Chinese hackers have reverse engineered iTunes gift cards and are selling them at online auction sites. (Yahoo News)

• Nine more representatives have joined in support for The Local Radio Freedom Act, which opposes the Performance Rights Act. (mi2n.com)

• Through its CreateSpace disc-on-demand site, Amazon.com is offering hundreds of out-of-print and rare albums as ready-made CDRs. (Seattle Tech Report)

• A review of the iTunes 8.1 new iTunes DJ function (formerly the Party Shuffle). "In the settings, when you click on 'Allow guests to request songs with Remote for iPhone or iPod touch,' it will enable all iPhones and iPod touches with the Remote app installed to find your iTunes Library. When those guests set your library of the source, they can then pick any song from your library to play next." (VentureBeat)

• Interesting: Rascall Flatts will stagger four pre-release songs in the month leading up to its new album. It has turned out that the a popular way to preview an upcoming album is to actually release a good portion of the album. (Music Row)

• An interview with MySpace Music president Courtney Holt. On the horizon: tools for DIY artists to add content to MySpace Music, more videos, more video-centric video programming, merchandise, ticketing ("We're going to be doing that in a big way in the near future," said Holt) and international launches. The company is shooting for the stars. Hopefully it can do at least one thing very well and move forward from there. (CNET)

• The State of New York has dropped its plans to tax iTunes downloads. The state legislature will use federal stimulus money to make up for what revenue would have been lost. (CNN.com)