A round-up of today's other stories in brief.

Apple in talks with labels

The world's biggest music companies are expected to ask Apple to introduce a music subscription service to its iTunes digital media store as part of negotiations to renew their agreements with the computer company.

Those discussions will begin in earnest next week when Universal Music sits down at the bargaining table with Apple. Universal's competitors - Sony-BMG,Warner Music and EMI - have either started talks with Apple or they are about to.

The talks come amid a continued deterioration in CD sales. One media consultancy, Enders Analysis, predicted this week that global music sales would fall to $23 billion (€17 billion) in 2009, down 16 per cent from last year.

Executives at Universal and other labels believe a subscription service could prove more lucrative than iTunes's model of charging per track. It would also entitle labels to a share of monthly payments, in addition to licensing fees each time their songs are played. - (Financial Times service)

Rents 'killing' small firms

Rising rents are killing small businesses, the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) said yesterday.

The group said accountants were reporting that small business clients were encountering "massive rent increases, which in many cases make their business unviable, uneconomic and unsustainable".

Aidan Clifford of ACCA Ireland said: "Commercial rent increases tend to lag up to five years behind property price increases and it is only now that the increases are starting to filter through to the rents paid by smaller businesses."

World goods trade grows 8%

The volume of world goods trade expanded by a brisk 8 per cent last year, the second highest rate since 2000, according to preliminary figures from the World Trade Organisation (WTO).

WTO economists said world trade growth was likely to see a modest slowdown to 6 per cent in 2007 in line with decelerating global economic activity, but this would still be around the average for the past decade. However, they warned that jittery financial markets, the international property bubble and current account imbalances posed big downside risks. - (Financial Times service)

WestLB draws trading scrutiny

WestLB, the publicly-owned German regional bank, drew further scrutiny of its trading activities yesterday after it said it had become the biggest shareholder in DaimlerChrysler, with a 14 per cent stake in the carmaker worth €9 billion.

The sudden disclosure threw markets into confusion as investors wondered whether WestLB was the front for a new shareholder and how it could affect Daimler's possible sale of the Chrysler division. WestLB would sell nearly all of the 14 per cent stake by the end of the month and its exposure was completely hedged, it said. The bank blamed new disclosure rules in Germany, saying it had had to add up its positions in areas such as trading and market-making activities. - (Financial Times service)