The world's third largest music company has thrown its massive weight behind Internet audio. On June 10, EMI Recorded Music, a division of <A HREF="http://www.emigroup.com/">EMI Group Plc</A>, announced a five-year licensing agreement with Reston, Virginia-based <A HREF="http://www.musicmaker.com/">Musicmaker.com</A&gt;, a major custom CD compilation service and digital download site. EMI has not simply made its enormous catalog available to the service---it has also bought into Musicmaker.com with a 50% equity stake.

Last Thursday, <A HREF="http://www.virgin.com/">Virgin Entertainment Group</A> announced an agreement with <A HREF="http://www.reddotnet.com/">RedDotNet</A&gt;, a Digital on Demand company, that Virgin says will allow its customers to download music and create custom CDs, DVDs, and MiniDiscs in-store. Virgin describes the deal as "a revolutionary development heralding a new wave of music retailing." As part of the agreement, Virgin will become a shareholder in Digital on Demand, RedDotNet's parent company.

Writer Robert Deutsch takes an in-depth look at the <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com//loudspeakerreviews/118/">Hales Design Group Revelation Three loudspeaker</A> in an attempt to determine whether the product lives up to its name. He also checks into the manufacturer's claim that "what we made will forever change the world of dynamic loudspeakers . . . an instant classic, a benchmark against which others of its type are measured."

Steve Portocarrero passed away Monday, June 7 from Lou Gehrig's Disease, or ALS (Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), which he was diagnosed with two years ago.

John Wright was one of the most important figures on the British hi-fi scene since the mid-1960s. His natural modesty and reticence made it easy to underestimate a working life that encompassed an unusually wide range of different roles: from inventor to speaker engineer to reviewer to businessman.

Last week, <A HREF="http://www.tdk.com%20">TDK</A&gt; announced that it is introducing extended-capacity, 80-minute/700MB multimedia and music CD-R discs this July. The new discs add 50MB, or 6 minutes of stereo music capacity, to the conventional 74-minute/650MB CD-R disc. TDK says it is the first manufacturer to offer extended-capacity CD-Rs, and points out that it has been supplying recording studios with 80-minute CD-Rs for music-mastering applications since 1996.(<I>Stereophile</I>'s new 77+ minute <I>Bravo!</I> CD, featuring chamber music by Elgar and Mozart, for example, was mastered on a 700MB TDK CD-R.)

Conrad-Johnson has been on a roll with their Anniversary Reference Triode preamplifier, aka the ART, which garnered the <I>Stereophile</I> Product of the Year award in 1998. (See <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/news/10318/">previous article</A>.) According to Lew Johnson, "We realized that Conrad-Johnson is coming up on its 20th anniversary, so we thought we might produce something special to celebrate. This is a version of the preamplifier we use in our listening room at the factory---we never even thought about producing it because it would be god-awful expensive. But it really is our last thought on what a preamp should be, so we figured we'd produce a limited edition, say 250 total, as a way of commemorating our 20 years in the business."

The mid-20th century was a time of tremendous political and social upheaval, technological advancement, and artistic innovation. Jazz---an American invention---is arguably the greatest single development in the history of modern music. Most of its pioneers are gone now, but their legacy lives on in their recordings---and in photographs.

Better late than never. <A HREF="http://www.aol.com/">America Online</A> has finally leaped into the Internet music business with its recent purchase of San Francisco-based <A HREF="http://www.spinner.com/">Spinner Networks</A>, and <A HREF="http://www.nullsoft.com/">Nullsoft</A&gt; of Sedona, Arizona. The combined deals, which were announced on June 1, cost AOL $400 million in company stock.