Free Grammy Music, Live365/planetatv.com, Greater Media

FREE NOMINEES: It's Grammy week, and that means the music industry hype machine has kicked into full gear. Topping the list of online music services seeking to capitalize on the annual spike in music interest around Grammy time is Microsoft's MSN Music store.

The service is celebrating the Grammy Awards by giving away one Grammy-nominated song a day from Feb. 8-12. The first day of the promotion will feature two songs, one for best male and female pop vocal performance. MSN Music will then select one best song nominee a day from the rock, rap, R&B, and country categories, based on staff predictions of which will win in their respective categories. The editorial team consists of former musicians, producers, record label executives, journalists, DJs, promoters and managers.

Interested listeners will need to sign up for an MSN Music account and provide a credit card number to access the free downloads.

Continuing with the Grammy theme, Grammy Awards sponsor Heineken is hosting a special Grammy section of the MSN Music site featuring additional Grammy nominated music, news, videos, photos and highlights from last year's Grammy Awards telecast.

LOTSA LATIN: Acknowledging the growing importance of the broadening Hispanic music audience, Internet radio network Live365 has agreed to expand its Latin programming through a partnership with Spanish-language broadband network PlanetaTV.com. Live365 will add some 150 of PlanetaTV's Latin music stations including tropical, salsa and traditional programming via its Internet radio network, and offer free access to listeners of PlanetaTV's network of broadband portals.

PlanetaTV features Latin superstars including Gabriela Spanic, Molotov, Jennifer Lopez, Ricky Martin, Thalia, Paulina Rubio and Dorismar.

ON YOUR RADIO: Boston-based radio broadcaster and media company Greater Media launched online digital music stores on the Web sites of its radio stations in Boston (WKLB) and Philadelphia (WMGK). Listeners visiting the sites can search for music they heard at a specific time of day -- down to the minute -- or browse the station's song database, to sample and buy music at 99 cents per track.

The music is protected in Microsoft's WMA format and the store powered by MusicToGo. Greater Media, which also owns stations in Detroit and New Jersey, says additional stations will open online stores soon.