DOT COMEDY

TEAMING FOR STREAMING
Lycos announced today that it has teamed up with BMG Entertainment as the first destination to offer BMG's digital downloads. More than 100 singles and albums from BMG's extensive catalog—including music from Santana, Christina Aguilera, Whitney Houston and Vertical Horizon—are now available at music.lycos.com. "Our alliance with BMG allows Lycos Music to offer its users the broadest and deepest music experience on the Internet," said Ron Sege, executive VP of Lycos. "Or, at least it will be once Napster is shut down."

SPIN THIS!
Four months after laying off about half of its 80-employee staff, online music company SpinRecords.com Friday laid off all of its remaining staffers, according to company sources. SpinRecords informed employees Friday (10/6) that the layoffs were effective immediately. The workers were not paid for the last two weeks of work and were given no severance pay of any kind, a source told Webnoize. "Who would have imagined," an observer said, "that an online music company couldn't make a mint?"

AND IF THAT DOESN'T WORK, BLAME THE MEDIA!
FBI agents are spreading a new gospel to parents and teachers, hoping they'll better educate youths that vandalism in cyberspace can be economically costly and just as criminal as mailbox bashing and graffiti spraying. The Justice Department and the Information Technology Association of America, a trade group, has launched the Cybercitizen Partnership to encourage educators and parents to talk to children in ways that equate computer crimes with old-fashioned wrongdoing. And if that doesn't work, there's always hope that the kids will simply be distracted by the porn. Ah yes, there's always the porn.

MORE WORK FOR MYPLAY
Online MP3 storage company Myplay.com has laid off part of its editorial and marketing staff as it moves away from creating its own content for its Web site, the company confirmed to CNET on Monday (10/9). The total number of layoffs are "in the single digits," a company spokeswoman said, declining to give specific figures. The move comes as Myplay restructures its business model to focus on its music locker technology, which competes with similar services from MP3.com, and on gaining content from partners. Oh yeah, and they wouldn't mind a few users either.