Surprising reason why Germany and France buys lots of CDs: because classical music sells well. Lots of interesting nuggets from a neat map.

"The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is the tenth film this year to be released in 4K, a new ultra high resolution digital film format that Sony hopes will become the industry standard."

It says it has four times the resolution of previous digital formats: getting closer to film. Of course if Sony can get it adopted then it will at least have one space where it's making money.

"A developer who specializes in the Bitcoin digital currency says he was sent back to China last week after he arrived at Sea-Tac Airport with only $600 in cash and wasn’t able to convince U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agents that he would be able to fund his two-month visit using Bitcoin.<br />
"The developer, who goes by the alias “Doctor Nefario,” identifies himself as the founder of the Global Bitcoin Stock Exchange."<br />
<br />
Would have loved to be a fly on the wall during that interview.

"On the digital front, mobile music sales, which is made up of mostly ringtones, dropped 28% to $527m last year. Sales of individual song downloads grew just 2.1% in 2010 with more than 1.16bn tracks sold, compared with 1.14bn in 2009. But overall digital music revenue grew 10%, in large part because Apple Inc. last year raised the price of top selling tunes to $1.29 from 99 cents.<br />
"The price hike by Apple, which commands roughly 70% of the market for digital music downloads, may have slowed the number of songs people bought, but it resulted in an increase in overall revenue, which last year climbed to $2.24bn, up from $2.03bn in 2009."