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The popular condensation of Darwin's theory of evolution is "adapt or die." The phrase could certainly have been addressed to the music-industry establishment by any one of four Internet entrepreneurs in a public discussion last week at San Francisco's Commonwealth Club. The four---Gerry Kearby of Liquid Audio, Gene Hoffman of GoodNoise, Arnold Brown of AudioExplosion, and Andrew Keen of Audiocafe.com---gathered at the public affairs forum Tuesday evening, February 22, for a spirited discussion of "The Future of Music Distribution."
The major record labels may put out most of the world's music, but they're doing so on a format first created by Philips and then further developed by Sony: the Compact Disc. In addition to the underlying technology, Philips and Sony established a strict standard for the format, insuring compatibility with all players around the world, which came to be known as the Red Book standard.
According to Philips, recent attempts to add playback restriction technology to new releases is not just a bad idea: Because the Red Book recipe has been altered, the discs no longer qualify as CDs and should…
Can you hear long passages of music in your mind? If so, your brain may be wired for sound like those of professional musicians.
Using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machines, researchers at Germany's University of Tuebingen scanned the brains of eight professional violinists and determined that they can do something that amateurs can't—namely, hear music in their minds alone. The neuroscientists compared the neural activity of equal numbers of professional and amateur violinists, who were asked to "play back" the first 16 bars of Mozart's violin concerto in G major, first by tapping the…
Apple announced last week that music fans have downloaded over five million songs from its iTunes Music Store since its launch two months ago. In addition, the company reports that over 46% of the songs have been purchased as albums, and over 80% of the over 200,000 songs available on the online store have been purchased at least once.
Apple also announced that it shipped its one millionth iPod music player last week. Apple introduced the third generation of its portable digital audio player in April, edging out consumer electronics heavies like Sony, whose portable music players have…
Country music reached the peak of its popularity six years ago, when it claimed 18.7% of the recorded-music audience. Since then, it has steadily declined to its present 14.1%, according to the Recording Industry Association of America's 1998 Consumer Profile. Reasons for the decline include the increasing crossover of country stars into pop and rock styles, a phenomenon that has broadened many artists' reach and made acts like Garth Brooks and Shania Twain household names among folks who may not previously have paid much attention to country. Crossing over, unfortunately, also dilutes the…
It's been a tough couple of years for those who like to make digital copies of audio recordings. What started with SCMS copy-restriction schemes in DAT machines has quickly spilled over into current digital formats such as those proposed for DVD-Audio. But a glimmer of hope has shone through the haze.
Last month, Members of Congress Rick Boucher (D-VA) and Tom Campbell (R-CA) introduced copyright legislation that would implement the copyright treaties negotiated at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) last December.
According to Gary Shapiro, Chairman of the Home…
After a May 10 announcement from the Federal Trade Commission that it had negotiated a settlement with the music industry's "Big Five" over a controversial pricing policy, enterprising private attorneys wasted little time initiating class-action lawsuits (1, 2) against them. By early August, some reports placed the number of suits nationwide at more than 100.
The minimum advertised pricing policy, or MAP, was used industry-wide in the mid-1990s, and put retailers at risk of losing co-op advertising funds from the Big Five if they promoted CDs below certain prices. The MAP scheme arose in…
Students are often described as people with more time than money. For four accused by the recording industry of being "nodes" for file sharing, the lack of money will almost certainly extend well beyond graduation day.
At the beginning of May, four students charged with massive copyright infringement settled out of court, agreeing to pay between $12,000 and $17,500 each to the Recording Industries Association of America. Terms of the deal, in which the students admitted no wrongdoing, specify that payments will be made in installments through the year 2006. The lawsuit was launched…
Jonathan Scull found himself in awe of the beautiful and ingenious construction lavished on the Boulder 1012 D/A preamplifier. "Its design and build qualities are icons to elegant engineering know-how. No screws show on the rectangular box . . .", J-10 enthuses. And as Scull finds, this D/A preamp combines both beauty and brains to create sheer audio pleasure.
Back in 1987, Lewis Lipnick offered his take on the B&W Matrix 801 Series 2 loudspeaker, which had been evolving steadily for seven years. As a special bonus for the online version of this classic review, we include a…
John Atkinson gets high with the HeadRoom Supreme headphone amplifier and reports on the results. "The quest to make the headphone listening experience more equivalent to normal speaker listening is not new," writes JA. Has the Supreme made the cut?
Wes Phillips got a brand new HeadRoom Traveler Bag. The ultimate audiophile travel accessory? Wes checks it out to see why a headphone sack could be worth over a hundred clams.
"What the hell is going on with headphones these days?!" asks Corey Greenberg after hearing the Grado SR60 headphones. Many a Stereophile scribe has sung the…