Newly crowned “American Idol” David Cook, already topping the iTunes music download charts, said on Friday he hopes to put out a rock album that will “make the hair on your neck stand up.”

Cook, 25, a Missouri guitarist who was tending bar before auditioning for the most watched show on U.S. television, also said his best musical advice came from Frank Sinatra.

Cook won the seventh season of the singing competition and a recording contract on Wednesday, beating 17-year-old crooner David Archuleta by a 12 million-vote margin in the record 97.5 million votes cast by viewers by telephone and text message.

Cook’s first single “The Time of My Life” and the three songs he sang in this week’s “American Idol” finale were the top four downloads on Apple Inc’s iTunes music store on Friday.

Cook said he would not be putting out an album of standards even though he won fans on the show, which is broadcast on the Fox network, a unit of News Corp, with alternative versions of pop classics such as “Billie Jean” and Lionel Richie’s “Hello.”

“I think it’s going to be a mixture of my writing and hopefully writing with other people. I just want to come out of the gate with a solid record,” he told reporters in a telephone conference call.

“It’ll probably be a rock record. I just want to make a record that’s going to make the hair on your neck stand up … Even if it doesn’t do well commercially, as long as I can put out a record I am proud of — that’s the goal right now. And hopefully the success will follow.”

Cook is not likely to start work on the first album until the Top 10 Idols finish a three-month U.S. tour starting in July

Apple is in talks some of the major music labels over a deal that would allow next-generation iPhone owners to purchase music tracks directly from the handset over cellular wireless networks, according to the New York Times.

Owners of the company’s first-generation iPhone can already accomplish this via a mobile version of the iTunes Store that resides on the handset, but they must be connected to the Internet via a high-speed WiFi connection to do so.

The arrival of faster 3G cellular network access alongside the next iPhone, widely expected for an announcement during the second week of June at Apple’s developers conference, would make it more “technically feasible” for Apple to offer the over-the-air route, the Times notes.

However, the paper reports that the music labels are holding their hand out, demanding that in return they be paid more than the 70 cent wholesale price of songs sold over traditional Internet lines.

Apple’s hoping for “a big launch in June,” according to one label executive familiar with the matter, and as such is also looking to expand its inventory of songs that are available for conversion to ringtones at 99 cents.

“The company is also hoping to add answer tones, also known as ringback tones—songs that a caller hears instead of the ‘ring ring’ sound while waiting for someone to answer,” the report says. “In some cases, these command an even higher wholesale price than ringtones.”

Given that the negotiations are only a few weeks young, it’s reported that any deal may not be announced until after June 9th, the most likely day for the introduction of the much-anticipated 3G iPhone.

The fund will be known as iFund, and will be led by Matt Murphy of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, a venture capital firm in Silicon Valley.

The move echoes the $10 million fund created by CEO of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg, which was distributed to startups creating applications for Facebook.com.

According to the Kleiner Perkins website, “KPCB’s iFund is a $100 million investment initiative that will fund market-changing ideas and products that extend the revolutionary new iPhone and iPod touch platform. The iFund is agnostic to size and stage of investment and will invest in companies building applications, services and components.”

Also announced over the weekend was news that Sun Microsystems are currently making use of the iPhone SDK to create a Java variant for the handset, which they say should be finished by Q2 2008.

Yahoo’s change in music offerings comes as Microsoft tries to acquire the company for $44.6 billion.

By K.C. Jones InformationWeek February 5, 2008 03:13 PM 

Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO)’s on-demand music service will be managed by Rhapsody, the company said this week.

Yahoo Music general manager Ian C. Rogers announced the Yahoo Music Unlimited partnership through his blog on Monday.

Rogers said the music service took resources away from other objectives. That includes music.yahoo.com, the company’s music video site, and Launchcast Radio, which allows users to create their own “stations.”

Rogers characterized the decision as a “major strategic shift” and said that Yahoo Music draws 25 million users a month, but the unlimited service accounts for a small portion.

“It wasn’t an easy decision,” he said. “We’re huge fans of Yahoo Music Unlimited and those customers include many of our most loyal and valuable.”

Yahoo Music Unlimited subscribers will be able to migrate easily to Rhapsody, and sometime this year music.yahoo.com will integrate with Rhapsody, allowing customers to use music.yahoo.com, as well as Rhapsody, with no increase in price. The service will work with PCs, Macs, Firefox, Safari, TiVo, and Sonos, Rogers said.

“We sincerely apologize for any hassle and thank you for joining us in the Yahoo Music Unlimited run,” he said. “It was a wild ride for all of us.”

Rogers said the decision does not mean that Yahoo will decrease music investments. He said the company acquired FoxyTunes, a media toolbar for Firefox and Internet Explorer that works with more than 30 media players, allowing users to look up lyrics, bios, and videos while they listen to songs.

The change in music offerings comes as Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) attempts to acquire Yahoo for $44.6 billion. Less than a week ago, Yahoo announced an earnings loss of 23% and plans to cut 1,000 jobs.

The world’s biggest music companies, including Warner Music Group Corp and Sony BMG, denied that they have agreed to license songs for a free download service that was launched by Qtrax on Monday.

Qtrax told Reuters and other media outlets last week that it had deals with the major labels representing about 75 percent of all music sales, to let users download songs for free in a new service to be supported by advertising revenue.

But by Monday, Sony BMG Music Entertainment and Warner had publicly denied that they had agreed to back the new Qtrax service.

A source close to Universal Music, the largest of the group, said it also had not signed a deal for the new Qtrax service and is still in discussions.

And a source close to EMI Group said that while its song publishing unit has an agreement with Qtrax, its recorded music arm, EMI Music, does not.

“Sony BMG can confirm it has not signed a deal with Qtrax for the ad-supported service,” said a spokesman for Sony BMG, a joint venture between Sony Corp and Bertelsmann AG.

EMI Music, Sony BMG and Warner all previously had agreements with Qtrax, which was testing a paid music download service. Sources say those agreements expired in the last year and did not cover the new free, ad-supported model now being promoted by Qtrax.

The first denial came from Warner late on Sunday and appeared to force the startup to backtrack on its earlier claims of having deals with all majors