That strategy may now be backfiring in Bertelsmann's face. Napster is gone and forgotten, and the German media conglomerate is defending itself in a $17 billion copyright infringement suit brought by a group of songwriters and…
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In October 2000, during Napster's prolonged courtroom agony, Bertelsmann AG alienated fellow music industry plaintiffs by investing $50 million in a strategic partnership with the file-sharing upstart. At the time, Bertelsmann hoped to leverage Napster's technical expertise and fame to give Bertelsmann Music Group the inside track with Internet music distribution.
Last Friday, October 23, Garden City, NY---based CDKnet announced that Atlantic Recording Corporation had signed a licensing agreement to use the company’s CDT technology for enhancing the content of its music CDs. CDKnet’s audio and video streaming technology embeds links on music CDs to sites on the World Wide Web, such as Atlantic’s own Metrotainment site. The first musical release under this agreement will be "A Random Act of Senseless Kindness," a single by South SixtyFive, a new group on the Atlantic label.
Eventually, millions of customers will be accommodated by CDKnet’s high-…
Imagine yourself a recording artist just signed to a contract with one of Sony Music's record labels. You put out a couple of albums and start a website using your own name (say, for example, www.bobdylan.com). But the music wind starts blowing in a different direction, your contract comes up for renewal, and, either through your manager's insistence or that of one of Sony's big cheeses, you decide to leave the label and sign with someone else.
There's just one problem: Your contract says you can't take your website with you. Sony owns it for the rest of your life (and, probably, beyond…
For 14 years now, Stereophile has recognized the components that have proved capable of giving maximal musical pleasure with its "Products of the Year." Based on a vote by the magazine's reviewers and editors, the 2005 winners were announced in the December 2005 issue and the awards were presented by Stereophile editor John Atkinson at the 2006 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES), held January 4–8 in Las Vegas.
Winner of the Amplification Component Award for 2005 and one of the two Joint Overall Winners, the DarTZeel NHB-108 Model One power amplifier impressed both Wes…
For the music industry, copyright and royalty litigation is like an endless war fought on many fronts. During early November, as four of the industry's "Big Five" continued their pursuit of the file-sharing service Napster, a parallel trial in US Federal Court in New York against music archiving-and-accessing site MP3.com by Universal Music Group entered its penalty phase, that segment of the proceeding in which aggrieved plaintiffs seek to extract money from guilty defendants. Other plaintiffs in the trial—Sony Music Entertainment, BMG, Warner Music, and EMI—have all settled with the San…
On August 18, XM Radio invited the press to Manhattan's Rainbow Room to announce its latest product offerings. The locale was not unintentional, according to Chance Patterson, XM's vice president for programming operations, "This building [30 Rockefeller Plaza, headquarters of NBC] was at the center of radio's first flowering, and XM represents radio's future."
XM senior vice president of retail and marketing operations Dan Murphy announced that the satellite broadcaster now boasts 2.1 million subscribers and looks to pass the 3 million mark by year's end. This growth will come out of a two…
Kal Rubinson gets in shape for some heavy lifting to review the B&W Signature 800 loudspeaker. "The Signature 800 is part of B&W's Prestige line, which represents the best that B&W can do with present loudspeaker technology," reports Kal, who watched with anticipation as a team of four hefted the 275-pound beauties into place.
"Sometimes it all comes down to the shape of the side panels . . . a love affair with an enclosure?" asks Larry Greenhill as he falls in love with the graceful design of the Burmester Audiosystems B99 loudspeaker. But Greenhill decides that sound is…
Even if you win, sometimes you lose—a lesson the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) might soon be learning if the results of a new poll are proven to reflect the long-term mainstream music buying mood.
Just last month, the RIAA, claiming to represent the interests of the major recording companies, filed copyright infringement suits against another 482 people in St. Louis, Denver, New Jersey, and Washington, DC, who allegedly downloaded music illegally from the Internet. Since last September, the recording industry has filed suit against more than 3400 people for damages of up…
Getting a jump on the RIAA's move to create a new music-download standard (see related article), Tower Records announced last week that it will feature a new song-download service, created by Atlanta-based amplified.com, on the Towerrecords.com website.
Tower will launch a special section on its online store, where customers will have the option of previewing music and selecting individual songs for digital download using Liquid Audio software. Amplified.com, which includes Philips Electronics among its investors, will provide the content and the back-end fulfillment service for the…
Back in 1987, J. Gordon Holt & Martin Colloms set their sights on the Audio Research M300 monoblock power amplifier. "After having proven that vacuum tubes could do some sonic things better than transistors, Audio Research is now endeavoring to show that transistors can do most things better than tubes," says JGH, adding that the then-new M300 is a "hybrid amplifier . . . it's half tube, half solid-state."
For many readers, tube amplifiers lost their relevance years ago. But not so fast says John Atkinson as he reviews the Audio Research Classic 60 power amplifier. JA says, "It…