Musicbank Folds; Scour Revives

In another eventful day for online music services, a company with wide industry backing tanked while a former haven for pirates resurfaced in a new, copyright-friendly form. San Francisco-based Musicbank, which had won licenses from all the major record labels and music publishers, shut down after failing to raise the money needed to launch its online music storage and distribution services. Company officials could not be reached for comment, but critics in the online music industry said Musicbank was doomed by the high prices it agreed to pay the labels and publishers. Meanwhile, CenterSpan Communications Corp. announced that it was relaunching Scour Exchange, the online music and video swapping service that collapsed last year in the wake of a copyright infringement lawsuit. The new service, which starts a free trial today, will allow users to trade only encrypted files authorized for copying by the copyright holders.