LATEST ADDITIONS

Over the last several weeks, one newspaper after another has made note of Nielsen Soundscan's 2006 point-of-purchase data, which showed classical record sales up 22.5%, making it the "fastest growing" category for the year. Hip-hop was down (-20.7%), R&B was down (-18.4%), alternative was down (-9.2%), jazz was down (-8.3%)&mdash;soundtracks were up (+19%), but everybody dismissed that, attributing it to the dominance of a single title, <I>High School Musical</I>.

On March 2, the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) published a <A HREF="http://www.loc.gov/crb/proceedings/2005-1/rates-terms2005-1.pdf">"Deter… of Rates and Terms,"</A> which announced an artist and recording company royalty fee structure for Internet radio based upon a "per song" structure. As it so happens, that was the model proposed by <A HREF="http://www.soundexchange.com/">SoundExchange</A&gt;, a digital fee collection agency founded by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).

So I'm sitting in traffic on MOPAC, the north/south expressway in Austin, listening to Willie Nile sing "Streets of New York," a tune that can be thought of as his "Jungleland" from his latest album, <I>Streets of New York</I>, on the CD player of my rented Jeep Liberty.

<I>StreetTech</I> has the cutest little portables from the 1920s

Erik Bobeda is a full-time college student. With all sorts of debts and due dates and distractions, Erik Bobeda is also an audiophile.

Looking this good takes effort.

Huckleberry is ever vigilant, keeping my desktop 100% rodent free. And birds&mdash;no birds here!

Why is the mammal ear more complex than the reptile ear?

It's the small wildcats that naturalists are all excited about.