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Launched with a bang last April, Apple">http://apple.com">Apple Computer's iTunes Music Store has steadily gained popularity with music fans, but it won't reach its projected goal of selling 100 million songs online within its first year.

While Apple's iTunes and RealNetworks Rhapsody are battling it out in the music download ring (see related">http://www.stereophile.com/news/032204itunes">related story), and Microsoft is rumored to be eyeing a corner, Sony has now decided to join the fray with a new music service announced last week in Europe.

Some months back, a poll at the Naxos of America websitehttp://www.naxos.com">website; asked visitors about their preferences among high-resolution and multichannel formats. At that time, Naxos had been releasing DVD-As (and DVDs) in the US, but only released SACDs elsewhere.

Starbucks is taking its signature compilation CDs to the next level—the personal one.

Tower">http://www.towerrecords.com">Tower Records should be back in fighting form on Monday, March 15 when a Delaware bankruptcy court rules on the company's reorganization plans.

From the March 2004 issue, John Atkinson finally gets to listen to the Sonus">http://www.stereophile.com/loudspeakerreviews/304sonus">Sonus Faber Cremona loudspeaker and explains, "it took rather longer than I had expected to set the Cremonas up in my listening room. But, like everything worth experiencing, the wait was worth it."

Audiophiles interested in experimenting with upconverting the digital data on their CDs to higher resolutions will find a recent announcement from the Netherlands of interest. Dutch company Eximiushttp://www.eximius.nl">Eximius; revealed last week a new product tagged "DVD+Audio Creator" for converting CDs to either upsampled PCM or compressed MP2 files.

Apple Computer is riding a wave that shows no sign of breaking.

Bits is bits? In the December 1990 issue, John Atkinson explored in "Jitter">http://www.stereophile.com/reference/1290jitter">"Jitter, Bits, & Sound Quality" why digital audio turns out to be a complicated process. He writes, "As my violin teacher used to say, 'The right note in the wrong place is the wrong note.'" And so it is with digital data, as JA explains in this groundbreaking report.

Electronics retailers may be bouncing back from a long slump, according to a couple of recent reports.