noah | November 11, 2008 11:45 am

We hear that Juke, the music-news site that employed former Blender editor Craig Marks, ex-Village Voice blogger Tom Breihan, ex-Blender writer Ryan Dombal, and Nothing Feels Good scribe Andy Greenwald, has been shut down by parent company CBS Interactive before it had a chance to launch, and all its employees have been laid off. Marks was hired as editor of music content for the tech-news service CNet in April; CNet was purchased by CBS Interactive for $1.8 billion in May, and the two companies’ operations were merged in June. CBSI also owns the playlist-sharing site Last.fm, which it purchased for an obscene amount of money in 2007 and which is somewhat quaintly pinning its hopes for paying the artists and labels whose music it streams on ad revenue. CBS Interactive didn’t return our requests for comment, but we can definitely say that this news is something like the 543rd bad sign for anyone hoping to get paid for writing about music to cross our transom this year.