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Sony Tries to Connect

While Apple's iTunes and RealNetworks Rhapsody are battling it out in the music download ring (see 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.

At one time, Sony was the king of the portable audio player market with its ubiquitous and wide-ranging line of cassette-, FM-, and CD-based walkmans. But more recently, Apple's iPod and MP3 players from Creative and others have grabbed the headlines in an ever-changing portable market to which Sony has been slow to adapt.

Until…

Jim Morrison Breaks on Through to Toyland

It may be true that baby-boomers yearn to relive their childhoods, but how many aging wanted-to-be rock stars and music lovers still like to play with dolls? McFarlane Toys, which made its mark creating and marketing Spawn merchandise, is hoping quite a few.

Despite being not long for this mortal coil, Jim Morrison's tenure with The Doors established him as one of rock'n'roll's pre-eminent, if controversial, frontmen. He died in France 30 years ago this month, and to commemorate the occasion, McFarlane says that "the Lizard King will forever live on" with the Jim Morrison "action figure…

Music for Rent: BMG Signs Web Deal with FullAudio

Here's an audio riddle for you. Question: What's erasable but not recordable? Answer: Downloadable music from FullAudio Corporation.

The Chicago-based Internet music startup has just signed a three-year licensing agreement with BMG Music Publishing, a division of the German media conglomerate Bertelsmann AG. BMG inked the deal in early June with privately-held FullAudio in part because the company's business model allows subscribers to download a fixed number of songs per month for a fixed monthly fee, but doesn't allow them to transfer the songs to recordable CDs or any other type of…

B&W Redefines Its State of the Art

In 1991, British loudspeaker manufacturer B&W celebrated its 25th birthday with the introduction of the John Bowers Silver Signature loudspeaker (see review). Not the largest or most expensive speaker on the company chart, the John Bowers Silver Signature, named after the company's late founder, still prompted John Atkinson to write that its performance was the best he'd heard for its modest size in his listening room.

Ten years later and B&W is now approaching the 35th anniversary of its 1966 birth. To commemorate the occasion, the company has announced several design…

Get Media's Technology Helps Music Lovers Find Tunes Online

Radio broadcasts are still among the most useful resources for finding new music. They are also among the most frustrating. It's a rare occurrence anymore for announcers to tell you the name of a song and who performed it. Often, if you really want to know, you have to call the station and ask. If you're really lucky, someone might be willing to answer your question.

Get Media, a San Jose, California-based startup company, intends to change all that. The situation has gotten so bad that "people are walking into Tower Records, and they will sing the song to the clerk," says Robert…

Upscale Retailers Report Good Returns; TDK Closes US Plants

Is the consumer electronics business swimming, sinking, or simply treading water? It all depends on who's talking. Retailers don't appear to be suffering, despite widespread staffing cutbacks by large companies, but the gains are coming more slowly than they did last year.

On April 17, Harvey Electronics, Inc. reported a 13.8% increase in sales for the five-month period ending March 24, with an 11.4% improvement in comparable store sales. The Lyndhurst, NJ–based retailer reported that net sales for the five months grew to approximately $17.2 million, a gain of $2.1 million over the same…

Peer to Peer's Promise

The music industry has been telling us for years that peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing is a bad thing. But a New York company has decided the record labels had it wrong and that it merely needed to harness P2P's power.

Wurld Media announced last week that Peer Impact, its P2P online digital download service, has now signed agreements with all four major labels: Sony BMG, Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, and most recently, EMI Music.

Instead of itself redistributing music, Wurld says that Peer Impact offers a viable peer-to-peer alternative to unauthorized services and allows…

New Website!

It's been a while since the Stereophile website was freshened up. Probably too long. So this time we decided to start from scratch and combine the stack of reader suggestions we've received with the thousands of articles and other features already online to create something that we hope scratches your audiophile itch better than ever.

Stereophile Forums
With all of the excellent audio forums already out there, we thought long and hard about what we could offer that would add to an audiophile's daily web tour. Editor John Atkinson and forum moderators Stephen Mejias (hardware) and Robert…

Bang & Olufsen Hits the Road

Danish audio-video manufacturer Bang & Olufsen has long been known for its unusual product designs. Eschewing the normal tendency of consumer electronics manufacturers to design their circuits and transports into stackable black boxes, the company's current home-audio line includes colorful vertical CD stacks with sliding clear-glass doors and brushed-aluminum cylindrical speakers.

On June 11, Bang & Olufsen announced that it has paired with American manufacturer and distributor Visteon Automotive Systems to develop a new line of audio products for the automotive market. The…

Continuing Coverage of CES

Audiophiles on a budget will be pleased to learn that not everything on display at Alexis Park requires a second mortgage. We were particularly impressed by the Audes model 037 loudspeaker, of similar size and sound to Revel's excellent Performa F-30. At $1200/pair, the Audes offers extraordinary value. All the company's products, including the drivers, are made in Estonia for export to North and South America, Western (and parts of Eastern) Europe, and Asia. The company has yet to establish a dealer network in nearby Russia because of economic uncertainties there, according to an Audes…