Apple recently debuted a Mastered for iTunes section in the iTunes Store, where audiophiles can discover releases that have been optimized for playback within its 256 kbps AAC format. Chris Foresman at Ars Technica delves into what goes into the mastering process for compressed digital audio files, including a discussion with Masterdisk Chief Engineer Andy VanDette (who recently completed a remastering project for Rush’s back catalogue).

Peter Lewis of Stairways Software may be in Australia, but that didn’t stop Chuck Joiner from bringing him together with Adam Engst to talk about their joint release of the Bookle EPUB reader for the Mac. If you want to hear some of the background story about how Bookle came to be, what restrictions are placed on it by the Mac App Store, and how the large companies are using DRM these days, tune into this MacVoices podcast.

Subscribers to Apple’s iTunes Match service are sending copyright holders “magic money,” writes Jeff Price at the blog for the TuneCore online music distribution service. And while not an overwhelming amount ($10,000 in the first two months, spread out across 55,000 TuneCore artists), Price points out that it is more than the null sum that artists were previously receiving.