Born in rural Sneedville, TN in 1928, Jimmy Martin showed a talent for singing early in life, and as a child he and his brothers and friends used homemade instruments to imitate the sounds of…
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Jimmy Martin, the self-styled "King of Bluegrass," died at a hospice near his home in Hermitage, TN on May 14. Martin had been diagnosed with bladder cancer in 2003, but the progress of the disease was slow, and the first of two hospice stays was cut short by an apparent recovery. Significantly, Martin never gave up his plans to perform at this year's Bill Monroe Bluegrass Festival in Bean Blossom, IN.
It's been an up-and-down week for consumer-electronics companies, as revealed by recent earnings reports surfacing around the globe. First, the bad news: Sony reports that its profits fell 32% in the latest fiscal year, and cites the strong yen for depressing the value of the consumer-electronics and entertainment company's overseas earnings.
According to Sony, its earnings fell to $1.1 billion (¥121.84 billion) in the fiscal year ended March 31, from $1.6 billion (¥179.00 billion) the previous year. With the devaluation of the dollar figured in, Sony reports that, even though sales of…
Starbucks is taking its signature compilation CDs to the next level—the personal one.
In mid-March, the coffee franchise announced that it would begin a new service, letting customers create and purchase CDs culled from songs selected from digital music libraries in each coffee house. Established through a partnership with computer giant Hewlett-Packard, Starbucks' "Hear Music Café" debuts Tuesday, March 16 in Santa Monica. The company plans to expand the service over the next two years to 2500 other Starbucks outlets.
Hear Music Café's music library will contain 250,000 songs,…
Among loudspeaker designers, Franco Serblin enjoys an enviable reputation for beautiful creations and meticulous craftsmanship. Until recently, Sonus Faber's resident genius had confined himself to minimonitors with simple crossover networks, such as the Concerto, a Stereophile Class B Recommended Component.
All of Serblin's designs have been well received by the audiophile community. His first commercial venture into floorstanding speakers, the Concerto Grand Piano, a two-way-with-passive-radiator design, also won a Class B recommendation. Now he has graduated to a three-way, the Amati…
On April 8, Nordic Entertainment Worldwide announced that it has adopted ARIS Technologies' MusiCode audio watermarking system. The Napa, California-based company operates the Downloadable Music Site, one of the Internet's most extensive music archives. MusiCode is an attempt to discourage piracy by embedding signals in recorded music, which can later be extracted for tracking the recordingÆs origin.
"Every piece of music sold online can contain recipient and transaction information specific to the sale, such as purchaser identity and the conditions of permitted use," said David E.…
Last week, Robert Rich began this two-part article (click here for part one) with an explanation of ambient music and pointers to some of his favorite artists' web pages. This week he wraps up with more web resources, including record labels, webzines, and online radio programs dedicated to the genre.
Labels
Fathom (www.fathomusic.com) releases some of the best-sounding CDs in the genre, including recordings by Roach, Stearns, TUU, Lightwave, Ken Newby, and myself. The parent label, Hearts of Space (www.hos.com), releases the more melodic and accessible material, including excellent…
Copy protection efforts currently being initiated by national lawmakers at the behest of the entertainment industry are based on a model of Internet use that will soon become obsolete, according to Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig.
In the near future, it will be far easier for music fans to tap into a universal content library than it will be to accumulate audio files and manage them as databases, he claims—all that's needed is wider penetration of high-speed broadband connections.
On Wednesday, February 19, speaking at the Digital Rights Summit at Intel Corporation headquarters…
Step all the way back to issue number one of Stereophile, in which Lucius Wordburger proffers some sage advice on How to Write an Ad. Learn about The Endorsement (hint: don't use Fidel Castro), The Calculated Omission, and The Junk Product.
Next, we bring Web readers the conclusion of a three-part series that attempts to reveal how Stereophile's audio writers practice their craft. The final installment, titled "As Reviewers See It," hails from the summer of 1991 and includes newcomer Corey Greenberg. John Atkinson poses the challenge: Is telling the audio truth synonymous with being…
Certain ideas (or memes in Internet jargon) seem to achieve instantaneous critical mass, at least if you judge them by how frequently certain web URLs are transmitted among friends. One article that appeared in our inbox many times this week linked us to research by music psychologist Adrian North of the University of Leicester, who led a team of researchers who monitored 346 people for two weeks, evaluating how they related to music.
North concluded, "The accessibility of music has meant that it is taken for granted and does not require a deep emotional commitment once associated with…
One of the most astute bits of folk wisdom is the old saying "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."
Top management at BMG Entertainment might have taken this into consideration last year when their slavish devotion to a company-wide mandatory retirement policy resulted in the ouster of legendary music producer Clive Davis. Arista had been one of the most successful labels in a desperate and volatile business, with top talent like Carlos Santana and Whitney Houston on its roster. Despite his track record and obvious youthful energy, Davis's age—he was nearing 70—caused certain executives at…