LATEST ADDITIONS

The man who signed the Beatles to their first recording contract has joined garageband.com, an online venture for musicians. On October 21, the San Francisco-based website announced that Sir George Martin has assumed the position of chairman of its advisory board. The board's membership includes some of the music industry's best-known professional and creative talent, according to garageband.com co-founders Tom Zito and Jerry Harrison.

Last week, WorldSpace announced that it has launched what it describes as "the world's largest digital audio broadcast system." The new system is based on a satellite radio service that recently began transmitting a wide array of multilingual radio programming across the entire African continent.

Trying to get a grip on where the new high-end audio formats, DVD-Audio and SACD, might be going? A logical place to start might be to check with the factories getting ready to crank out the discs and see how the orders have so far stacked up. After conducting just such a survey, the International Recording Media Association (IRMA) released last week the first projections for next year's worldwide marketplace introduction of DVD-Audio and SACD.