An Internet startup being organized by Fleetwood Mac drummer Mick Fleetwood and auctioneer Ted Owen will offer John Lennon's 30-year-old Steinway piano for auction some time in July. The piano is now on display in The Beatles Story museum in Liverpool and will remain there until October 9, which would have been Lennon's 60th birthday.
In a move that could save exhibitors a considerable amount of money, the 2001 International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas is being rescheduled for a day earlier than previously announced. Originally planned to run from Sunday, January 7 through Wednesday, January 10, 2001, the show will now begin on Saturday, January 6 and run through Tuesday, January 9.
Conventional wisdom has it that, compared to men, few women express much interest in consumer electronics, and especially audio equipment. In fact, according to Consumer Electronics Association statistics, women accounted for only 22% of the $81 billion spent on consumer electronics in 1999. Prognosticator Jupiter Communcations predicts that, in spite of this, women will account for 46 million online buyers by 2003, and will overtake men in online purchasing.
A slump in the music business is officially over. Sales of recorded music in the United States last year totaled $14.6 billion, an all-time high. The figure is a 6.3% increase from 1998's total of $13.7 billion, the previous record, according to a recent <A HREF="http://www.riaa.com/stats/press/021800.htm">report</A> from the <A HREF="http://www.riaa.com/">Recording Industries Association of America</A> (RIAA).
In a statement that may have far-reaching ramifications for the online digital music-distribution business, last week <A HREF="http://www.sonic.com">Sonic Solutions</A> and <A HREF="http://www.sony.co.jp">Sony</A> announced at the Audio Engineering Society Convention (AES) in Paris that they would collaborate to integrate Sony's ATRAC3 (Adaptive Transform Acoustic Coding 3) into iMaster, Sonic's suite of tools for the preparation of compressed audio for Internet distribution.
<B>KEITH JARRETT: <I>The Melody at Night, With You</I></B><BR> Keith Jarrett, piano<BR> ECM 1675 (CD). 1999. Keith Jarrett, prod., eng.; Manfred Eicher, prod. DDD. TT: 55:18<BR> Performance <B>****1/2</B><BR> Sonics <B>****?</B>
February 2000—We are now comfortably past all the millennial hype, which, by New Year's Eve, really <I>had</I> risen to a nauseating fever pitch. But it's hard not to look back to the times, the places, and, most of all, to the faces and personalities that populated the last hundred years.
Several companies, such as TacT, SigTech, and Perpetual Technologies, are offering products that can digitally equalize your speakers to counteract problems in your listening room. Is this of interest to you?
Merger mania in high-end land: Loudspeaker manufacturer <A HREF="http://www.halesdesigngroup.com/">Hales Design Group</A> and digital audio manufacturer <A HREF="http://www.wadia.com/">Wadia Digital Corporation</A> are joining forces to create what the companies' executives are calling "new digital products for the new millennium." The announcement was made February 14 at Wadia headquarters in River Falls, Wisconsin.