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One battle in the copyright war is over. MP3.com announced Friday, June 9, that it has reached a settlement with BMG Entertainment and Warner Music Group, two of the music industry’s "Big Five" that had sued the online music company for copyright infringement. Although MP3.com will have to pay some serious damages---possibly as much as $100 million once the other litigants resolve their cases---it gained a licensing agreement with the two major labels that could be worth far more in long-term business. "It's a heck of a price to pay to get the keys to the kingdom," analyst Phil Leigh told…
Most folks have enough room in their homes (some college students excepted) to easily place 100W amplifiers without regard to size or heat. But in the car, high-powered amps have always been relegated to the trunk or under a seat, often requiring creative solutions for anything with real heft.
In an effort to solve the size/heat/performance issue for mobile sound, Santa Clara, CA–based Tripath Technology has been developing its Digital Power Processing (DPP) "Class-T" 1-bit digital audio amplifiers and is ready to fire them up. The company announced last week that Matsushita Communication…
Paul Bolin takes a spin with the Vacuum Tube Logic TL-7.5 Reference line preamplifier, observing, "For some reason, the light has never shone quite as brightly on VTL's front-end electronics, perhaps in part because it's been so long since the company attempted a headline-grabbing, all-out assault on the state of that art."
Next, Art Dudley fires up the Ayre AX-7 integrated amplifier, noting, "For the longest time, the AX-7 and I simply didn't click." But after spending many more musical hours with the amp, would AD eventually fall in love?
Also from the October issue, Jon Iverson…
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…
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…
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…
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 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 (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…
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…