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American Express Showcases MusicDirect

If you watch mainstream TV, you've probably seen it: The American Express Plum Card ad that features catalog/online analog retailer MusicDirect. Filmed in December, with little advance notice, the ad debuted on February 19, and is expected to run for several months.

American Express released the Plum Card in November 2007, targeting it at small business with expenses of $5000 or more each month.

Needless to say, no one at MusicDirect is crying over the greatest amount of free exposure both the company and the analog resurgence have received. "To see a half million dollars worth of…

<I>Stereophile</I> Sponsors Festival Son & Image

The Home Entertainment Show, promoted by Stereophile, Ultimate AV, and Home Theater magazines, successfully showed off the best in high-end audio and home theater to enthusiasts from 2001 through 2007. However, following its acquisition of the magazines in August 2007, Source Interlink Media decided not to promote the Home Entertainment Show in 2008. Instead, Stereophile is partnering with the Festival Son & Image, to be held in Montreal, Canada, Thursday April 3 through Sunday, April 6. (The first day is for trade and press only.)

"The endorsement of Stereophile is a real blessing…

Sandy Berlin

Sanford "Sandy" Berlin died on March 11 at his home in Santa Monica, California. He was 80 and had suffered from cancer. Born in 1927, he would have been 81 on April 10. During a long and highly successful career in audio management, Berlin held top positions at companies ranging from Harman/Kardon and JBL to Madrigal and Revel. He entered the industry in the 1960s, after brokering Harman/Kardon, then owned by General Instruments, back to its founder, Sidney Harman, who subsequently hired him and put him in charge of H/K. When Harman's firm, then called Jervis Corporation, acquired JBL in…

Chesky Launches High-Resolution Download Store

"I thought starting an audiophile record label was hard," Chesky Records co-founder Norman Chesky told Stereophile. "That was nothing compared to this. We've spent three years developing HDtracks."

In that time, Chesky and his brother David acquired servers, hired staffs of coders and website developers, negotiated with independent record labels, and created thousands of Web pages of information.

HDtracks has now "soft launched" for PC and Mac, and it's impressive. There's no digital rights management (DRM) and downloads of CD-sourced material can be purchased as full-resolution…

Department of Justice Clears Sirius/XM Merger

On March 24, the Department of Justice's Antitrust Division stated that, "after thorough and careful review" (translation: more than one year) Sirius Satellite Radio's $5 billion offer to purchase XM Satellite Radio "is not likely to harm consumers."

Actually, the complete statement went into great detail, but the pertinent section concerned the affect of the merger on competition in the retail channel: "Because XM and Sirius would no longer compete with one another in the retail channel following the merger, the Division examined what alternatives, if any, were available to consumers…

Montreal Show Starts Thursday

Stereophile is partnering with the Festival Son & Image, to be held in Montreal, Canada, Thursday April 3 through Sunday, April 6. The first day is for trade and press only—public admission starts on Friday at 11am. More than 120 brands will be demonstrated in rooms on 11 floors of the Sheraton Centre hotel in downtown Montreal, and the Show's keynote speech is being given by Monster Cable's Noel Lee at 10am on the trade day, Thursday April 3.

Stereophile will be blogging live from the Show and the magazine's team of editors and writers, including John Marks, Wes Phillips, Robert…

D&M Holdings on the Block?

D&M Holdings, Inc., the Japanese consortium that owns Denon, Snell, Boston Acoustics, McIntosh, Escient, and Marantz, is apparently on the marketing block. Rumors to that effect have been circulating since mid-March, although the company's website, in a press release dated 04/15/08, coyly says only: "D&M Holdings, Inc. notes that recent press reports concerning the potential sale of D&M shares is not based on any information provided by the company."

Not precisely a firm denial.

Speculation on who has entered a bidding war for D&M has been heated, possibly over-…

Consumer Electronics' 2008 Hall of Fame

Our industry has again honored its own. The Consumer Electronics Association, sponsors of the annual International Consumer Electronics Show (CES), has announced 12 new inductees to the Consumer Electronics Hall of Fame. Awards will be presented October 21 at a special Hall of Fame Dinner, scheduled for the Four Seasons in Las Vegas as part of the CEA's annual fall Industry Forum.

Cindy Stevens, senior director of communications at CEA and the editor of Vision magazine, has overseen the Hall of Fame program since its inception in 2000. The first year, she explains, 50 pioneers and…

Microsoft: This Time We Promise!

Microsoft made several announcements this week: one promises Live Mesh, a service that would "connect and bring devices together . . . to work in concert"; the other admits that Microsoft promises are not to be trusted.

Live Mesh is a combination of "a platform and a service," says Microsoft observer Mary Jo Foley, designed to be a "software plus services platform" that will synchronize computers and other electronic devices (personal digital players (PDPs), phones, DVRs, game consoles, etc) with the vast Interwebs. At the moment, however, Microsoft has not announced precisely how Live…

Linn's New Majik Turntable

Has the Linn Sondek LP12 turntable really been around for 35 years? Yes, Ivor Tiefenbrun MBE, founder and Chairman of Linn Products, asserts. Moreover, Tiefenbrun asserts, the revolutionary aspect of that 'table was not simply that it worked "simply better," but that it was designed to be "modular, upgradeable, and expandable in accordance with our continuous improvement philosophy. That is what 'simply better' means. It is not an assertive statement of superiority but an aspirational motto defining our objective as simplifying and improving everything that we do."

On April 22, Linn…