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Legislation <I>vs</I> Music Industry

The music industry is again under legislative assault on both coasts.

In California, state senator Kevin Murray has made good on last year's promise to return to his battle for artists' rights. The Los Angeles Democrat has introduced four bills that will alter contract law for musicians and music labels. Murray claims that his legislation addresses longstanding resentment by artists about oppressive contracts and questionable accounting procedures.

Murray's bills would overturn a music industry–backed exemption to California's general seven-year limit on employment contracts that…

Songwriters Win Royalty Suit

When do fractions of pennies add up to millions of dollars? Answer: When they are accumulated unpaid royalties for one of the most popular albums of all time.

Songwriters Jackson Browne, J.D. Souther, and Jack Tempchin stand to collect as much as $10 million after winning a lawsuit brought against Warner-Chappell Music for royalties owed for songs included in The Eagles' Their Greatest Hits (1971–1975), one of the best-selling rock albums ever released. The plaintiffs, who penned monster hits like "Take it Easy" and "Peaceful Easy Feeling," had asserted that they were due compensation of…

Jeff Rowland Group's Demise a Hoax

The Jeff Rowland Design Group is alive and well and in no danger of going out of business. The company was the victim of hackers who recently broke into the company's website and posted a notice to the contrary.

On July 11, Rowland himself e-mailed Ultimate Audio publisher Myles Astor to straighten out the misinformation. Astor quickly alerted the high-end press of the problem.

The Rowland hoax is the latest in a series of such events that have plagued the high-end audio community. Stereophile equipment reports editor Jonathan Scull has been impersonated on the r.a.h-e discussion…

Industry Update

This is the time of year we are generally inundated with press releases announcing new home theater products that debuted at CEDIA Expo last week (and as audionerds, er 'philes, we are fascinated, of course). However, this year we also received word of some interesting audio products from two of the most consistently innovative high-end audio companies, Meridian and Classé.

Meridian's newest and shiniest: Meridian announced an audacious new active analog in-wall loudspeaker, the $2185/each M420, which is based on the company's popular digital DSP420. The M420 utilizes a 25mm silk dome…

Microsoft's Copy Protection Cracked

Microsoft's confident foray into the world of online entertainment didn't last long. On October 19, the Redmond, WA technology giant admitted that an unknown hacker had successfully circumvented the company's vaunted anti-piracy software.

Earlier this month, a programmer calling himself "Beale Screamer" began circulating software on the Internet that removes copy-inhibit code from music files. Microsoft digital media executives scrambled to contain the damage, spending much of the day on the 19th conferring with their counterparts in the music industry, reassuring them that Microsoft's…

Film Music Radio

Film Music Radio (FMR), one of the newest outposts in the expanding galaxy of cyberspace music media, emerged from the digital ethers on September 13. The Internet radio station streams film and television soundtracks around the clock, and offers genre-based block programs and unique DJ-hosted specialty shows.

The station's schedule is divided into two-hour, genre-based segments: Science Fiction, Drama, Comedy and Family, Action, and Songs, with exclusive original programs airing between 7 and 9am and between 7 and 9pm PST. The latter include On the Score, composer interviews with film…

Amazon.com Beefs Up CD Sales; Stock Surges

The "world's largest bookstore" may be on its way to becoming one of the biggest music stores, too. Two weeks ago, Amazon.com began a big push into CD retailing, more than doubling the number of its musical offerings to over 100,000 titles. (Competitor CDnow offers over 500,000 titles.) Visitors to the Amazon website can now click on a tab that will take them to a new music site, where they can listen to audio previews and read reviews, reprints of articles on bands and musicians, and music-industry news.

Amazon.com's selections are organized in traditional broad categories such as…

HE2005 Day Three: The Show Turns up the Volume

No, we really weren't feeling kind of seasick, but the crowd definitely called out for more—and at HE2005, more is what we usually got.

First things first. We promised to get back to you about that sexy Chord stack we were salivating over in day two's coverage: the $5995 One CD player, the $5495 Prima preamplifier, and the $6495 Mezzo 140 power amplifier, which, oddly enough is rated at 120Wpc. Put 'em all in the $1700 Choral rack and you'll have all of your fashionista friends panting. We're assuming the system sounds as good as it looks, but we still haven't heard it.

That same…

MiniDisc Makes Headway

Four years after its first unsuccessful foray into the American consumer marketplace, Sony's MiniDisc appears finally to be winning serious numbers of converts. Several large-scale retailers, including Best Buy, Circuit City, Service Merchandise, and (soon) Sears department stores, have dedicated MiniDisc displays, with home recorders, portable players, and blank discs available individually or as a package deal. The displays were built with Sony's support, according to Mike Viken, senior VP for Sony's personal audio/video marketing division.

Sony has tried three times to break the…

Universal Goes Universal

Last year in late October, Universal Music Group finally announced its first set of SACD titles and the high-rez format's supporters jumped for joy. Then, at the January 2003 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Universal stood on the podium next to Sony and announced several key SACD releases from the Police, Peter Gabriel, and others.

Talk about hedging your bets: Universal, the world's largest music company, announced last week that it will play both sides of the field by making its music available on the DVD-Audio format as well. Beginning with 20 US releases slated for the…