Located in Pitman, New Jersey are just under 9,400 residents, a historical museum, the University of Glassboro, and one of two CD manufacturing plants owned and operated by Sony. Come March 31, 2011, you can scratch that last one off the list, CNet reports.

"In light of the current economic environment and challenges facing the physical media industry, Sony DADC is taking additional steps to reduce cost from our supply chain network in order to remain competitive," Lisa Gephart, a Sony spokeswoman, said in a statement earlier this year.

Or, as one employee put it, "the CD is dying." Here's a quick history lesson. Audio CDs have been around in commercial form since 1982, or nearly three decades. Sony at one time operated three CD manufacturing plants, closing one down in 2003 and will shutter a second two months from now.

With all that said, don't take this to mean that CDs are, in fact, dead. They're not, at least not yet, but there's no doubt interest is waning. Citing Nielsen's figures, CNet points out that while digital track sales grew by just 1 percent last year, new CD sales dropped 16 percent.

"Suck it up, buttercup, you're going to have to defend your actions." The Supreme Court didn't word things that it way, but it might as well have when it refused to review a ruling that reinstated an antitrust lawsuit accusing major record labels of conspiring to fix song prices, Reuters reports.

The lawsuit, filed by a group of music buyers, alleges that several record companies (including EMI Group, Sony, Universal Music Group, and Warner) agreed to set a wholesale price floor of around 70 cents per song when competitors started to sell music online for lower prices.

In addition, the suit claims shenanigans on MusicNet and Pressplay, a pair of services the record labels started way back in 2001 to sell songs online.

"All defendants signed distribution agreements with MusicNet or Pressplay," the lawsuit contends. It goes on to say that the labels "sold music directly to consumers over the Internet through these joint ventures. Both the joint ventures and the (RIAA) provided a forum and means through which defendants could communicate about pricing, terms, and use restrictions. To obtain Internet Music from all major record labels, a consumer initially would have had to subscribe to both MusicNet and Pressplay at a cost of approximately $240 per year."

The case was dismissed in 2008, but an appeals court ruled that the federal judge involved erred in doing so, a decision upheld by Supreme Court justices refusing to review the case.

Apple this week released the 10.1.1 update for iTunes which was designed to fix crashing issues, and in an ironic twist, some users report they're unable to open iTunes after applying the update, Apple Insider reports.

Of course, some of you are thinking Apple just went and did you a favor by bricking iTunes, but for those who actually use the program, you may want to avoid the 10.1.1 patch until things get sorted out (in the meantime, check out our recently posted "15 Ways to Make iTunes Rock" article).

Alternately, Apple Insider says several users have been able to resolve the problem by downloading iTunes directly from Apple rather than using the built-in Software Update.