"Commoditization leads to the death of a specialty industry!" Hearing this at what I'd anticipated would be a sleep-inducing seminar on marketing, I pricked up my ears. The speaker was management guru Tom Peters, author of the best-selling <I>In Search of Excellence</I> and <I>The Pursuit of WOW!</I>. "Once your product is commoditized, all that is left to compete on is price," Peters continued, as I frantically scrawled down his comments, "and a small company will <I>always</I> lose to the big guns on price!"

The upbeat is the most magic moment in classical music making. Before the conductor brings down his baton for the downbeat, anything and everything are possible in the musical journey that is about to begin. And the upbeat to Mozart's sublime Clarinet Concerto that conductor Robert Bailey was about to give in London's Henry Wood Hall last November gave me an extra frisson&mdash;as producer of the recording sessions, I would have to pronounce instant judgment on everything I was about to hear.

The upbeat is the most magic moment in classical music making. Before the conductor brings down his baton for the downbeat, anything and everything are possible in the musical journey that is about to begin. And the upbeat to Mozart's sublime Clarinet Concerto that conductor Robert Bailey was about to give in London's Henry Wood Hall last November gave me an extra frisson&mdash;as producer of the recording sessions, I would have to pronounce instant judgment on everything I was about to hear.

The upbeat is the most magic moment in classical music making. Before the conductor brings down his baton for the downbeat, anything and everything are possible in the musical journey that is about to begin. And the upbeat to Mozart's sublime Clarinet Concerto that conductor Robert Bailey was about to give in London's Henry Wood Hall last November gave me an extra frisson&mdash;as producer of the recording sessions, I would have to pronounce instant judgment on everything I was about to hear.

The upbeat is the most magic moment in classical music making. Before the conductor brings down his baton for the downbeat, anything and everything are possible in the musical journey that is about to begin. And the upbeat to Mozart's sublime Clarinet Concerto that conductor Robert Bailey was about to give in London's Henry Wood Hall last November gave me an extra frisson&mdash;as producer of the recording sessions, I would have to pronounce instant judgment on everything I was about to hear.

The upbeat is the most magic moment in classical music making. Before the conductor brings down his baton for the downbeat, anything and everything are possible in the musical journey that is about to begin. And the upbeat to Mozart's sublime Clarinet Concerto that conductor Robert Bailey was about to give in London's Henry Wood Hall last November gave me an extra frisson—as producer of the recording sessions, I would have to pronounce instant judgment on everything I was about to hear.

The upbeat is the most magic moment in classical music making. Before the conductor brings down his baton for the downbeat, anything and everything are possible in the musical journey that is about to begin. And the upbeat to Mozart's sublime Clarinet Concerto that conductor Robert Bailey was about to give in London's Henry Wood Hall last November gave me an extra frisson&mdash;as producer of the recording sessions, I would have to pronounce instant judgment on everything I was about to hear.

Pay $350,000 for an amplifier?!?!! Michael Fremer takes a deep breath and plugs in the <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/amplificationreviews/704wavac">Wavac SH-833 monoblock power amplifier</A> in order to hear for himself what he might get if he traded in his house. "When tmh's Jim Ricketts asked me if I wanted to review this eight-box assemblage," says MF, "the first thing I did was laugh at the ludicrousness of the situation. Then I said, 'Why the hell not?'"

Running counter to the music industry's paranoia concerning the perils of modern digital technology, some musicians <I>want</I> you to share their music&mdash;within limits. <A HREF="http://www.garageband.com">GarageBand.com</A&gt;, which bills itself as "the world's largest musician community," announced June 7 that it now offers the Creative Commons Music Sharing License as an optional tag for all songs uploaded to its website.

For some time now, the truly hip Web-enabled person of stature has shared his or her thoughts with the world via a blog (from we<B>b</B> <B>log</B>); these days actors, musicians, and, yes, even politicians are getting into the act.