News

The Napster saga continues. As reported last week, software maker Napster and several colleges were looking at a likely court battle, instigated by music group Metallica and others attempting to prevent their songs from being distributed via MP3 audio files without official consent or payment of royalties. After Metallica announced its suit, rapper Dr. Dre also jumped in, giving Napster until last Friday to remove links to his work.

The healthy trend for the audio market continues: the Consumer Electronics Association reported last week that revenues from factory shipments of audio products to dealers this February increased by 8% over last February, to a total of $542 million. "The fantastic sales in February spurred the year-to-date total for audio sales to more than $1 billion; a 6% increase over the first two months of 1999," said the CEA.

The numbers are looking better for MP3.com, the music-archiving site under attack by the Recording Industries Association of America and its allies. Despite the legal pressure, MP3.com has seen its revenues surge as the popularity of downloadable music continues to grow. On April 20, the San Diego–based company reported that its revenue increased to $17.5 million for the first quarter of 2000 compared to $666,000 for the same period a year earlier. MP3.com now has 10 million registered users, according to CEO Michael Robertson.

After the bungled launch last year of DVD-Audio, where is a digital audiophile to turn? John Atklinson provides some answers in "Talkin' 'Bout a Revolution," from the April 2000 Stereophile. "So while the DVD Forum argues about increasingly arcane aspects of the DVD-Audio medium, and John Lennon's record-industry 'men in suits' retreat further into their lawyer-built fortresses, I have bypassed all they have to offer . . . "

Congress has blocked a controversial plan that might have launched approximately 1000 low-power community radio stations. On Thursday, April 14, the US House of Representatives voted 274-110 in favor of a bill that would effectively kill development of about 80% of the stations. The vote was a blow to Federal Communications Commission chairman William Kennard, who has been a staunch supporter of the community radio movement, and a gift to the National Association of Broadcasters, which has long opposed low-power radio.

For lifelike audio presentation in your living room, what could be better than the real thing? When it comes to putting the sound of a piano in your home, nothing comes close to, well, a real piano. For more than a century, several companies have marketed player pianos, first using rolls of punched paper, and most recently sophisticated MIDI programs. But if a real piano represents the ultimate audio performance in your living room, who has the ultimate real piano?

The struggle for position in the Internet-based audio downloading market continues unabated. On the format front, Sony has recently announced several deals to bring its ATRAC compressed-audio format to the Web, while IBM and Liquid Audio announced last week that they have entered into a strategic relationship intended to "advance the digital music marketplace" with content-management tools.