Musicians and their labels want Apple to increase the amount they make per digital music download. Apple says they would rather shut down iTunes music store. They are turning down a request for an increase of six more cents per song for music publishers and songwriters.

Apple has insisted on keeping the price at 99 cents per download arguing that any price increase above that will make them unprofitable. The Copyright Royalty Board is scheduled to decide on the proposal by a three-person board appointed by the Librarian of Congress by Thursday. Music publishers want their cut to go from 9 cents to 15 cents per song – a 66 percent increase.

It’s uncommon to see sales increase by double digits. HP had a new laptop called  Dragon. Sales were flat after trying traditional marketing. So they decided to try another way – engaging bloggers. A quick way to do that is to send bloggers an ultralight $5,000 laptop to give away to one of their readers.

Nine months after launch, the 15 pound laptop with a 20.1-inch screen and 500-gigabyte hard drive wasn’t selling that well. HP hired social media marketing firm Buzz Corps Inc. and they brainstormed with bloggers and HP to come up with the campaign.

Scott Ballantyne, vice president and general manager of the personal systems group at HP, said:

Social networks are a great way to raise money for good causes. Just look at Nie Recovery – the family’s plight made national news because bloggers banded to raise money for a family they had never met.

MySpace and PayPal are using a new widget to help nonprofits gather donations on social networks.

To participate, go to www.myspace.com/paypal and create a customized widget that can be virally copied and replicated on anyone’s MySpace page.

MySpace: “We’re proud to work with PayPal to democratize philanthropy and show the power of small donations to drive big results.”

The MySpace IMPACT Channel page is at http://impact.myspace.com.

I’ve been working with uPlej – another company that is helping to democratize philanthropy by getting people to pledge under $5 a month to a wide list of charities.

The Olympics is over and US advertisers should be pleased with the results. Not only did we take home a lot of gold from athletes, this Olympics brought record web site traffic – and an experiment in online video advertising. The two weeks long Olympics was a test in how video advertising would play out.

According to eMarketer – NBC – the lead sponsor of the games, gets a bronze for their work. They brought in $5.75 million for running video ads. The Wall Street Journal reported NBC made only a quarter of what CBS Sports made streaming a college basketball tournament earlier this year.