One beneficiary of the abandonment of the "free music" movement has been Emusic.com, a downloadable music site boasting strategic agreements with 600…
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The continuing legal attacks on Napster, the free file-sharing software, and on MP3.com, the downloadable music site, have spooked investors, according to the financial press. MP3.com's stock got hammered hard, dropping by about 40% almost immediately in the wake of a recent decision by US District Court judge Jed S. Rakoff in favor of the Recording Industry Association of America's copyright-violation complaint against the Internet startup.
One by one, free music sites are disappearing. On January 19, Amsterdam-based KaZaA became the latest, caving in to threats of fines in excess of $40,000 per day.
KaZaA had been the defendant in a copyright infringement case brought against it last year by Buma-Stemra, a Dutch authors-and-artists collection agency that performs many of the same services in the Netherlands that BMI and ASCAP perform in the US. The Dutch peer-to-peer file-sharing service was found in violation of copyright law, and had been under court order to prevent "unauthorized downloading of copyrighted material" or…
Audiophiles of every stripe know that achieving a realistic soundstage is maddeningly elusive—some would say impossible. When a system is right for some recordings, it's far off for others.
It's especially difficult with only a single pair of loudspeakers, due to huge variations in room acoustics and the almost always unknown but essential details about how a recording was made. Binaural headphone recording and playback has always offered better spatial cues, sometimes with disturbingly realistic effects. Using a dummy head with microphones placed where human ears would be, recordists can…
Merger mania in high-end land: Loudspeaker manufacturer Hales Design Group and digital audio manufacturer Wadia Digital Corporation are joining forces to create what the companies' executives are calling "new digital products for the new millennium." The announcement was made February 14 at Wadia headquarters in River Falls, Wisconsin.
Under terms of the merger, Hales Design Group, based in Huntington Beach, California, will operate as a division of Wadia while retaining its own brand identity. Throughout the company's six-year history, Hales loudspeakers have won numerous industry awards…
Success begets success. Canton, Massachusetts-based Tweeter Home Entertainment Group, Inc. announced February 2 that it has acquired Home Entertainment of Texas, Inc. The acquisition gives Tweeter a solid foothold in the Southwest, and is the latest in a takeover campaign that has enveloped two successful regional chains in each of the past two years.
With four stores in Houston and three in Dallas, the 42-year-old Texas operation did approximately $25 million in retail sales in its most recent fiscal year (ending June 30, 1998). "We are excited about teaming with the Tweeter…
Last week, Tweeter Home Entertainment Group announced that it has reached an agreement in principle to acquire United Audio Centers, located in the Chicago, Illinois area. United Audio describes itself as a seven-store specialty consumer electronics retailer with annual sales of approximately $48 million, and says it has been in business in the Chicago market for over 40 years. The companies expect to complete the transaction on or about April 1, 2000, and note that the agreement in principle to acquire United Audio is subject to various terms and conditions, as well as to regulatory…
Phase One of the Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI) will incorporate watermarking technology for DVD-Audio from Verance Corporation. The agreement was announced at a meeting of the SDMI in Hawaii early in December. Verance Corp. was formed recently by the merger of ARIS Technologies Corporation and Solana Technology Development Corp. ARIS's technology was announced a few months ago as the SDMI's choice for watermarking.
Verance develops and implements technical solutions for copyright management, e-commerce, marketing, royalty, information, and product distribution—including media…
The major record labels and the RIAA have invested much time and effort in sabotaging the MP3 file-trading revolution and its supporters. But the appeal of the compressed music format for a large segment of music fans is undeniable, and many critics of the RIAA have suggested that the petite and portable audio files should be embraced, not resisted.
That's the thinking behind Go-Kart Records' latest plan for getting its music noticed. In what it describes as a first for the music business, the independent music label, based in New York, says it will soon release a double CD packed with…
Gunther Frohnhöfer, Acoustic Signature turntable designer and company owner, informed me last week that the business relationship between his company and Ballmann, the manufacturer of the German Behold line of electronics, which includes a headshell-mounted 768kHz/24-bit A/D converter (see my "Analog Corner" column in the forthcoming April 2005 issue of Stereophile), has been severed. Frohnhöfer has relinquished his position as Ballmann's general manager. "Doing both my own product and the Behold electronics line was too much for one person to handle," he told me. Instead, Frohnhöfer will…
On June 23, Burr-Brown Corp. announced the PCM1728 digital-to-analog converter (DAC), designed for consumer and professional audio applications.
According to Burr-Brown, the PCM1728 offers "the industry's best price/performance ratio of any 24-bit audio DAC," and is intended for mid- to high-performance digital audio applications needing 96kHz sampling rates with 24-bit audio data. Such products include DVD players, AV receivers, surround-sound home-theater systems, and CD players. In addition, this DAC can be used for professional audio systems, including digital mixing consoles and…