Apparently the big music labels aren’t too happy about Spotify’s free music streaming service. This article has more.

A big thank you to our customers! Recently we sent out two sets of emails asking some of you to answer a few marketing and product development questions. The responses we received were amazing! We were incredibly surprised and pleased by the number of you who took the time to answer our questions; thoughtfully and carefully. We are so lucky to have such a wonderfully supportive and smart customer base.
You may not realize how small a company Applian is. While it’s true that we sell our software worldwide there are only a handful of us who develop, support and market Applian products. The answers we receive from you are incredibly valuable to us both in understanding how to position our current products but also in guiding us in developing future recording software. It means a lot that you have provided so many smart insights and ideas. Thank you.
We just wanted to let you know how much we appreciate you! And please feel free to keep sharing. We are always happy to hear new and unusual product usage stories or to hear your suggestions for future products and features.
Thanks!
All the best,
Bill & all the folks at Applian

So Google just announced their Google TV. It’s not like this is a surprise, and it’s nothing really revolutionary. It’s essentially a Windows Media Center combined with the ability to play YouTube-like on-demand clips on your TV.
From our perspective, we saw this coming for a long time. We used to advertise heavily on Google Adwords, until one day the criterion for advertisers magically changed and we were blacklisted. Now, you can’t run any Google ad that links to Applian.com. Even our corporate credit cards have been banned. Why did this happen? It’s very likely that Google has been negotiating content relationships with the big studios, who HATE anything having to do with recording media. If Google could show these big guys that they too hated recording, it would help smooth the way towards getting these deals signed. Curiously, some of our competitors still advertise on “record streaming media” and other similar searches.
Legally, Google has the right to refuse to run any ads they deem unfit. However, if they are blacklisting specific advertisers to protect another part of their business, then it’s my understanding that this practice is illegal. Any IP lawyers out there want to chime in?
Despite Google’s efforts, our business is thriving, as we have many different ways of recording streaming videos through our Replay Capture Suite – all of them legal. Our Replay Video Capture will always be able to record Google TV legally, no matter what kind of copy protection scheme they put on top of it.