It may seem a stretch from music to personal finance, but the team behind the MyStrands music recommendation service is now advising on the best way to spend or invest your money.

Strands, which has Spanish roots but has rebased itself in Oregon, has plenty of cash on hand to plan its own investments, having raised $29m last year, $24m coming from Spanish bank BBVA, and $65m in funding overall since it was founded in 2003.

It followed its own recommendations and used some of the money - figures were not disclosed - to acquire NetworthIQ this week, a social personal finance site that allows users to track their net worth and share and compare it anonymously with others.

That follows the recent acquisition of Expensr, a personal finance site that allows users to categorise their expenses and compare their spending habits with their peers.

Last month, Strands launched moneyStrands, its own personal finance site, in private beta. This can aggregate a user’s online accounts and provide a snapshot of their finances along with an anonymous comparison with others.

“Its kind of addictive, you could compare yourself with other journalists in the Bay area and see whether you spend more on your mortgage or have a bigger salary than them,” Gabi Almadiz-echevarria, head of communications at Strands, told me, by way of intriguing example.

All well and good, but sharing music tastes is one thing, making your financial data available to everyone, despite the guarantees of anonymity, may be a social step too far for many.

Strands will also adapt its music-recommendation technology, which learns what users like from their listening habits, to provide personal recommendations for financial products that could save its members money or prove to be a good investment for their situation.

The company clearly has the finances to be a consolidator in this field and mount a challenge to better known sites such as Mint.

“Personal finance was an opportunity that we saw a year ago when we started discussions with BBVA, and we want to lead the explosion of sites in this area,” said Almadiz-echevarria .

Video game publishers seem intent on rocking your world.

In a clear attempt to one-up Activision’s success with Guitar Hero, Electronic Arts has announced it will launch the Rock Band game on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 consoles this November.

Guitar Hero features a plastic guitar accessory that has buttons in place of frets. Gamers can strum with one hand and play the frets with the other while trying to play an on-screen score accurately.

It has sold over 2m copies and boosted Activision’s results in the last holiday season after it acquired Guitar Hero’s publisher Red Octane.

Guitar Hero’s developer is Harmonix, which is partnering with MTV and EA on the new Rock Band game. Players will be able to choose from drum, bass guitar, lead guitar and microphone peripherals and the music they will be playing along to will feature master recordings rather than cover versions of songs like Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Free Bird.  

The official announcement does not mention any online element to the game but this seems sure to be part of it. This would mirror a trend of musicians collaborating online including contributing different parts of songs to sites such as YouTube.

It also follows on from the success of karaoke and dancing video games. In February, EA bought SingShot Media, an online karaoke website it plans to integrate into a number of its online services.

Rock Band is yet another riff on music in games for EA – it announced last month  it was setting up its own real-world record label – Artwerk – and would launch Boogie -a dancing game that would take advantage of the Nintendo Wii’s motion-sensing controller.

"Rumours of iTunes’ death have been greatly exaggerated," according to ComScore, which says iTunes revenues rose 84 per cent in the first three quarters of 2006, compared with the year-ago period.

That fits with a separate analysis by Gene Munster at Piper Jaffray:

Contrary to recent reports suggesting sales on iTunes are declining rapidly, our analysis of Apple company data regarding iTunes sales shows strong growth [year-on-year].

Piper says its analysis showed iTunes sales up 78 per cent year-on-year between January and September.

Both analyses followed a report earlier this week by Forrester analyst Josh Bernoff, which said iTunes sales dropped 65 per cent sequentially between January and June. Piper Jaffray’s figures lend credence to the view that the sequential decline was due to seasonality in iPod sales:

It is clear…that iTunes sales spike upward in January…We attribute this  post-holiday growth to new iPod owners and iTunes gift card users. We expect another uptick in early ‘07.

The Forrester figures still pose vexing questions. In 2005, they show revenues per thousand online households falling sharply from their spike in January, then recovering in May and June. Forrester’s estimates showed that the spike in January this year wasn’t as high. And with the exception of a brief recovery in April, iTunes revenues per household fell steadily between January and July.

With just two years’ worth of iTunes data, it is difficult to draw firm conclusions. But if last year’s second-half recovery in iTunes sales fails to materialise, Apple may have reason to worry.

Guessing about Apple’s next invention is one of the tech world’s favourite parlour games, but Michael Gartenberg at Jupiter Research is starting to rue the onset of December iPhone madness.

While I know that December is the best month for Apple rumors, this is starting to get out of hand as mainstream press and analysts comment about a product that may or may not even be announced at Macworld. […] No doubt we’ll see lots more in terms of rumors before Macworld and probably another note or two from analysts with the “Scoop”. As in the past, almost all of these will be wrong.

He goes on to offer some advice to the journos who keep calling him asking for details on Apple’s rumoured mobile handset:

You must presume one of two things, I either don’t know any details so why ask or if I did know details, I probably couldn’t tell them to you for publication (or tell them to you period) so again, why ask? Please, let’s skip this question for the next few weeks, OK?

Better turn off that ringer on your phone, Michael, because I think we’re all in for a long few weeks until Macworld starts on January 9.

The British music industry’s feathers have already been ruffled by leaks from the soon-to-be released Gowers review of intellectual property  in the UK indicating that it will not, despite the pleading of cash-strapped stars like the millionaire Sir Cliff Richard, extend copyright on music beyond the existing 50 years.  Sir Cliff’s first hits were in the ’50s.

Meanwhile, fears are growing that not only the copyright system but the internet itself could "implode" under the strain of dealing with digital developments. Prof. Roger Wallis of the Stockholm technical university who has been researching this topic for years, told an invited audience in London on Thursday that if measures to prevent illegal down and up loading  under the EU’s i2010 strategy were implemented rigorously, Google, all peer-to-peer networks and every email system would have to be shut down: "In other words" he said "The Net would grind to a halt."  Wallis, a composer himself, believes that if you want creativity in a society sometimes you have to be a bit illegal.  He should know: years ago he co-wrote the winner of the Eurovision song contest.

Alan Cane, London.

First cars, now airplanes. Apple is leaving no stone unturned in its quest to cement the iPod’s dominance of the personal music player market. This morning, the company announced a deal to let passengers of six big airlines play music and video from their iPods over the airlines’ in-flight entertainment systems. Air France, KLM, Emirates, Continental, United and Delta Air Lines will install special iPod connectors that allow passengers to charge their iPods in flight.

The move to lock in captive audiences - and presumably lock out competitors, such as the Microsoft Zune - is nothing new; Apple has already struck similar deals with carmakers.

What is remarkable is that the cash-starved airlines are willing to play along with a new feature that will divert users from existing in-flight entertainment. A United spokeswoman just told me that the iPod deal does not include cash. She said the iPod deal was part of a broader effort to upgrade entertainment options available to international first class and business travelers.

It seems the iPod has become such an important part of the digital culture that airlines believe the very promise of being able to listen to Radiohead or watch Desperate Housewives on their iPods on a transatlantic flight will be enough to draw hordes of high-paying customers.