Openwave Systems has acquired Musiwave for euro 99.5 million with an additional euro 15 million payable if the division meets certain targets.

Musicwave, which provides entertainment services to mobile operators, will help to fill out Openwave’s software and service product lines. Link to full press release.

A Michigan court has just dismissed a RIAA lawsuit brought against a mother for the downloading of music by her child. While the court did not provide the mother with legal fees, it did dismiss the case “with prejudice” which means it cannot be brought again.

Attorney Ray Beckerman has posted a great summary of the judgment with links to the actual court decision. The follow-up comments provide a good bit of additional analysis, including a post by the attorney representing the mother.

In continuing our recent coverage of the mobile music sector, we found a truly interesting article from MobileMentalism (MM).

MM makes some great points about how device convergence is different for the mobile phone is different for the camera than for the portable music player. In the case of digital cameras, stand-alone cameras still offer an advantage over their camera-phone counterparts at the same price. This leaves a place for both combined and stand-alone cameras in the market.

Music capable cellphones though offer almost the same functionality as stand-alone music players such as iPods and Mp3 players. While this is true, battery life is still a major concern for consumers in the phone market. The devices may have the same capabilities, but the functionalities are very different.

PC Pro has compiled data from 1,085 respondents on their desires for mobile music. The first part of these results are offered in a new article.

Key findings include:

The technology of Shazam Entertainment has been bought out by BMI for an undisclosed sum. Shazam’s recognition technology, called BlueArrows, uses pattern recognition to identify music titles from any source containing audio.

Shazam had implemented the technology into a service that allows cellphone users to call a number when listening to a song to identify the title, track and album, in as little as 2 seconds.

BMI also announced the formation of a wholly owned subsidiary, Landmark Digital Service, which will own, deploy and exploit this new technology. Landmark will integrate the pattern recognition technology into BMI’s royalty distribution systems. BMI/Landmark’s immediate usage will be to improve BMI’s radio airplay measurement system that monitors what music is played on stations.

From the press release, “As part of the agreement, Shazam will continue to pursue business activities aimed at the mobile consumer use of the BlueArrow technology under a worldwide exclusive license to be provided by Landmark..”

D&M, who also owns the Denon, Marantz and McIntosh brands, announced that it will no longer make Rio products after September 30th, 2005. The company cited increased competition in the mass-market portable digital audio player market.

The closing of the Rio lines, purchased from SonicBlue in early 2003, will allow D&M to focus on the more profitable premium consumer electronics brands.

Analysts are viewing this decision as a blow to companies like Microsoft, RealNetworks, Napster and other Apple rivals that operate online music services based on Microsoft and/or open standards. The exit of Rio leaves Creative Technology (maker of the Nomad and Zen music players), Samsung and a handful of other music players that operate on these other standards.

A new study from Parks Associates suggests that online music subscriptions will need to drop below $10 per month in order to attract a significant number of consumers worldwide. Although, the results for the study are questionable when looked at from a more complete business perspective

The study finds that 41% of people with digital music players in the U.S. are not willing to pay more than $10 per month for listening to their favorite music. For comparable prices, 62% of people in the U.K. with digital music players, 49% in France, 52 % in Germany and 56% in China are also unwilling to pay more than the $10 level.