Metallica released their long awaited "Download This" CD, and the band declared it Napster-proof. [BBspot]

An industry-backed group of musicians has launched a high-profile ad campaign against online music piracy, hoping to persuade fans not to use Napster and other similar Net tools. [News.com]

The file-swapping service releases a new version of its software that includes an e-commerce component linking to the Bertelsmann-owned retail site. [News.com]

Fans of the online music-swapping company downloaded 1.39 billion songs in September, transforming the hotly contested technology into one of the Internet's most popular applications, according to new studies. [News.com]

Napster is asking its fans to participate in a two-day "buy-cott" this weekend, a plan aimed at winning support for the music-swapping firm. [News.com]

Napster co-founder Jordan Ritter has left the company and joined a San Francisco financial technology start-up, Round1 Private Capital Marketplace. [News.com]

More than 30, 000 of the Metallica fans banned from Napster last week have appealed the move, saying they didn't do anything illegal. [News.com]

More people may be window-shopping at online music retailer CDNow since they started using software from file-swapping service Napster, but fewer people are buying, according to a new report. [News.com]

For faithful Napster members wondering how they'll get free music from now on, solutions are quickly making the rounds. [News.com]

The music-swapping company hires Gracenote, which maintains a massive database identifying recorded music, to help find and block songs from being traded online. [News.com]