Are CD prices too high? Does pricing constrict the amount of music you purchase and listen to? After reading the responses to last week's question, it seems appropriate to ask if you would buy more regular CDs if the price dropped substantially---let's say to around $8 US per disc at retail.
Looks like it might be a while before a profitable formula jells for selling music over the Internet. News this week indicates that one of the largest music retailers, <A HREF="http://www.towerrecords.com">Tower Records</A>, is finally ready to challenge the market, while online distribution pioneer <A HREF="http://www.n2k.com">N2K</A> will be scaling back operations until things steady a bit.
The latest music-piracy statistics have just been released by the <A HREF="http://www.riaa.com/">RIAA</A>, bringing to light several new wrinkles in the ongoing struggle to protect the owners of music copyrights from those who illegally copy and sell protected works. Released August 21, the report details the new problems brought about by CD-R technology and MP3 files distributed via the web.
The <A HREF="http://www.fcc.gov/">Federal Communications Commission</A> is fighting an epidemic called "microradio." The agency has closed 250 unlicensed stations in the past year, most of them low-powered urban pip-squeaks with less than 100W of power and broadcast radii of 10 miles or less. The typical microradio station offers an off-center perspective on local, national, and world events to a listenership of a few hundred people, and loses money in the process.
In June, while the <A HREF="http://www.riaa.com/">Recording Industry Association of America</A> was collecting fat <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/news/10208/">settlements</A> from unauthorized CD compilers, its Canadian counterpart was busy shutting down <A HREF="http://www.purpledot.zener.com/">Purple Dot</A>, a custom-disc operation in Calgary, Alberta. The Canadian Recording Industry Association e-mailed a cease-and-desist order to 18-year-old Robert Clark, owner and operator of Purple Dot, which had been advertising on the Internet in the <A HREF="http://www.yahoo.com/">Yahoo!</A> directory.
Recent announcements indicate that DVD-Audio may soon emerge as a set of standards. Assuming that a DVD-Audio disc is not backward-compatible with CD players, but will play on the new DVD player (with DVD-Audio update) you just bought, how much would you spend for the special discs?
Up from the deep: Torrance, CA-based <A HREF="http://wherehouse.com/">Wherehouse Entertainment</A> announced last week that it will purchase <A HREF="http://www.blockbuster.com/music">Blockbuster Music</A> from Viacom Inc. for $115 million. The merged operation will have 598 stores throughout North America, second only to Minnesota-based Musicland. The deal comes at the end of a prolonged slump for the music industry, one that was particularly hard for Blockbuster.
As with past HI-FI Shows, we asked visitors to HI-FI '98 to vote for the room that offered what they thought to be the best sound. The ballot in the Show Guide asked visitors to list the best, second-best, third-best, and worst sounds, for which I allocated 3 points, 2 points, 1 point, and -1 point, respectively. Any exhibitor that received more than 0.7% of the total votes cast is listed in the Table. I've tried to include both the exhibitors and the brands demonstrated, as listed in the Show Guide and in our report text in the September issue of the paper <i>Stereophile</i>. My apologies if I've left anyone out.