The New York Post is reporting that Sony BMG and Warner Music Group are gearing up to sign an agreement with MySpace to launch its upcoming digital-music joint venture: MySpace Music.

The agreements could be signed as soon as this week. The service is expected to launch later this year. The labels don't want any upfront money either, they're instead trading content rights in exchange for minority equity stakes in MySpace Music and a revenue-share that News Corp. hopes to generate from the service.

"Everybody's operating with a sense of urgency to try to close it out," said one industry insider to The Post.

The business model? Ad-supported audio mixed with good ol' fashion pay-per-download music.

Silicon Alley Insider points out that the creation of MySpace Music would give the labels their own competitor to iTunes that they so desire. That, no doubt, adds to the "sense of urgency" as the music labels would prefer to control their own digital destiny, rather than have Apple dictate it to them.

"The concept of the joint venture is to bring in all forms of [making money from digital music] and much more tightly integrate them," said another person familiar with the negotiations.

[New York Post via Silicon Alley Insider]
Photo: MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe and News Corp Chairman Rupert Murdoch speak at the Web 2.0 summit... caption contest anyone?

Remember when I said internet in your car may come sooner than you think? Well guess what, Chrysler is saying it will be the first car company to provide in-car Internet access - availability will come later this year.

The third-largest U.S. automaker will have the capability added to existing vehicles by dealers beginning this year, and later will be factory-installed on the assembly line.

The Washington Post is reporting that Chrysler will use a cellular signal and a mobile phone account to give passengers access to the web.

"We want to make the radio itself a WiFi port," said Frank Klegon, Chrysler's product development chief.

And this is just the beginning of Chrysler's connectivity plans. Hey DOJ, are you watching this?

[Washington Post via Autoblog, Engadget]

Here's a teaser video introducing a new system called StreamSmart. The project is still in the very early stages, but Orbitcast has learned some details behind the StreamSmart system and what's to come.

Essentially, the goal of StreamSmart is to allow streaming of Sirius, XM and Internet Radio to multiple platforms on various devices.

Platforms being targeted are Apple iPhone, Windows Mobile, BlackBerry, Nokia, Windows, Mac OSX, Linux, XBox360, Web-based and more. StreamSmart acts as the backend, while each platform would have its own client to serve up the Sirius and XM streams.

More on this soon...

Facebook has approached the major music labels about launching its own music service, according to a Financial Times report yesterday, citing those famous "people familiar with the matter."

This news comes on the heals of a similar effort by social networking rival MySpace, which reportedly has approached The Big Four music labels to launch a "MySpace Music" service.

Both MySpace, and more recently Facebook, have served as excellent promotional platforms for artists (wait... isn't that what radio is supposed to be doing?). Facebook, in November, introduced a way for artists to create their own home pages similar to MySpace. The service also links to iTunes and offers applications from online music services such as iLike, Last.FM and Pandora.

The move to transform social networking sites from promotional platforms to revenue generators, some would say, is most definitely at the forefront of thought for record label executives.

Social networking sites let users share playlists and recommend artists to their circle of friends. And as marketing/sales goes, nothing beats recommendations. Satellite radio (and most broadcast media) is still only serve as a one-way communication, lacking the interactivity and personalization that a new generation of music listeners have become accustomed to.

This level of engagement is something that satellite radio desperately needs. The question is, how?

[Financial Times, chart courtesy of WSJ]

Side note: If you want to link up on Facebook and actually (gasp) see what I look like, go ahead and check out my page here.