Among the RMA works that Image plans to release on DVD are a production of Richard Wagner's Lohengrin…
search
Classical music fans will be happy to hear that Image Entertainment has announced the signing of an exclusive license agreement with England's Reiner Moritz Associates (RMA) that will see the company releasing 50 classical-music programs on DVD in the coming year. In addition to the classical performance programming, Image will also release some of RMA's special-interest fare, featuring such luminaries as Marilyn Horne, Maria Callas, David Hockney, Jackson Pollock, and Margot Fonteyn.
Internet audio file-sharing service Kazaa is the music industry's pariah—and it wants artists to get paid for their work.
Kazaa has teamed up with telecommunications giant Verizon to propose a system of compulsory Internet copyright licenses that could generate as much as $2 billion annually from Internet service providers alone. Proceeds from the licenses could be used to compensate performers and songwriters who currently get nothing for the sales of their creations by music industry-backed commercial sites pressplay and MusicNet.
"We're proposing the idea of a copyright compulsory…
According to the latest figures from the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), the month of August showed positive gains in the overall factory sales of audio products to dealers. The CEA reports that sales for the month rose six percent compared to the same period last year, resulting in year-to-date sales of $5.3 billion, an 11.2% rise over last year.
The CEA says that even though sales of home receivers dipped slightly in August (six percent), other categories within separate home audio components experienced double-digit growth. Within this sector, the CEA reveals that CD equipment…
Almost beaten to death in the past couple of years by salesfolk, pundits, and journalists, "convergence" has been applied to the coming-together of audio and video, analog and digital, hardware and software, information and entertainment, and Democrats and Republicans. Among all these merging trends, the audiophile community rarely hears about the convergence of pro audio with the High End.
That's because so few companies have ventured outside the narrow niches of their self-defined markets. Only a couple of loudspeaker makers, such as JBL, have anything resembling a tradition of working…
As rules of thumb go, this one is pretty infallible: By the time we've heard about it, a trend's hippest participants will think it's on the decline. That means that mashups, or the manipulation of the musical genetic material of several different songs to create a new song, may be on their way out, because we've become infatuated with them.
The technique of blending melodies and lyrics from different—sometimes widely divergent—artists and genres is not new. It's at least as old as rock'n'roll; there were novelty hits back in the 1950s, such as Dickie Goodman's 1956 "The Flying Saucer,"…
Once upon a time, business competitors relied on the quality of their products and services to hang onto their shares of the market. That's the myth, at least. Increasingly, it seems they rely on regulatory and judicial intervention to stay afloat.
A request for a regulatory crackdown is the tack that US radio broadcasters are taking in response to a move into local weather and traffic reporting by satellite startups XM Satellite Radio Holdings, Inc. and Sirius Satellite Radio, Inc. Over the past couple of months, the satellite services have begun offering local weather and traffic reports…
At the start of his review of the Balanced Audio Technology VK-D5 CD player, Jonathan Scull observes, "Man, has Balanced Audio Technology come a long way in a short time." Scull goes in-depth with the VK-D5 to explain just what he's found.
With the emphasis on digital components these days, a reasonably-priced phono preamp can become a critical part of a high-end system. Wes Phillips may have found true romance as he notes that the $1200 AcousTech Electronics PH-1 phono preamplifier "is a love letter to analog posted by Acoustic Sounds' Chad Kassem and high-end designer Ron Sutherland."…
Yet another major music company has joined the digital downloading stampede, in the wake of the Secure Digital Music Initiative's (SDMI) recent progress toward formulating copyright standards. On July 19, Universal Music Group announced its intention to make its titles available for downloading to the coming generation of portable audio players. New devices from Diamond Multimedia, Toshiba, and Panasonic—all expected to hit the market by the winter holiday season—will play encrypted tunes from Universal and other big labels.
Copyright security has been a major focus in the music industry…
Satellite radio goes high-end: Beginning early next year, Krell Industries will enter the booming market for satellite radio receivers with an XM Radio tuner. The $4000 unit will reportedly also receive traditional AM and FM broadcasts; an optional module will let it stream Internet audio via 802.11g wireless connection to a broadband modem, according to the September 27 edition of This Week in Consumer Electronics (TWICE). The tuner will join Krell's line of custom installation products. In a similar but less expensive vein will be new Sirius tuners from Russound. At $699 and $999, the two…
Historically, radio stations have only partially cooperated with record label attempts to control when and where an important new record is first aired. It's not unusual for a new album or single to be "embargoed" until a specific date by the labels, with stations often competing with each other to find ways to get around this restriction and be first to air a hot new song.
The accepted ways to break a new record include running midnight spins or sneak peaks to gain listener attention, but there will always be the renegades who jump the gun. Once the disc is mailed (sometimes via…