Keith Olberg, a Republican Assemblyman from the desert community of Victorville, has introduced a bill in California's legislature that would require the state to unload its investment in the entertainment industry. Known as the "California Family Protection Act," Olberg's bill would require California's Public Employees Retirement System, the world's fourth-largest investment fund, to divest itself of an…
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Do offensive lyrics in pop music contribute to violent behavior and teen suicide? Some lawmakers believe so, and think public investment in the entertainment business is immoral.
A billion-dollar loss for the parent company may be a big gain for performers under contract to Warner Music Group, who will benefit from cross-promotional efforts aimed at millions of America Online subscribers beginning this month.
The campaign is part of a new corporate agenda for recently merged AOL Time Warner, which finalized its union in January after more than a year of review by federal regulators. The old Time Warner tended to operate its divisions as unrelated independent companies, but will now have all of them working together more cohesively, according to press releases…
Last week, InterTrust Technologies, which creates Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology, and format developer DataPlay announced a partnership intended to create a portable media distribution platform for protected content such as music. Universal Music Group, EMI Recorded Music, and BMG Entertainment have all announced that they are planning to release prerecorded music on the resultant DataPlay digital format for use in a variety of consumer electronic devices.
Taking the MiniDisc concept a step further, DataPlay has developed a small enclosed disc that is less than 1.5" (32mm) in…
Heads up RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America): those music dollars skittering away in all directions probably have very little to do with online file trading. That was the message last week as members of two important trade organizations challenged the conventional RIAA view that blames peer-to-peer networks for the record industry's third dismal year in a row.
In a rousing call to reason, 32-time Grammy nominee John Snyder, who is also president of Artist House Records and a board member of NARAS (National Academy of Recorded Arts and Sciences), issued a lengthy statement…
This will be a huge year for the electronics industry, insiders are saying in the wake of the just-finished 1999 Consumer Electronics Show. This one "surpassed anything we've seen before," said Gary Shapiro, the president of the Consumer Electronics Manufacturers Association, in a post-Show statement. "Our industry is driving the technologies that will define the digital age."
Overall factory sales are expected to hit $80 billion this year, an increase of more than 5% over 1998's figures, with significant leaps in home information systems, electronic games, and mobile electronics. The…
Media servers are one of the hottest trends in home entertainment, as mentioned by Jon Iverson last week.
Emeryville , CA–based Meda Systems, Inc. is among the companies on the leading edge of this technological frontier. On September 10, Meda introduced four new models of its Bravo and Bravado music servers, using new software developed for multizone applications.
Launched at this year's Custom Electronics Design and Installation Association (CEDIA) show in Indianapolis, the full-featured Bravo 16 and Bravo 20 music servers are intended for large homes with many rooms and listening…
In an era when music as instant entertainment enjoys increasing dominance over music as art, cellular phones have emerged as the latest purveyor of music on demand. Issues of sound quality mean little when the goal is to accumulate more and more files at an ever-accelerating pace and have ever easier access to those files.
On September 7, Apple, Motorola, and Cingular Wireless (currently serving close to 52 million US customers) introduced the first iTunes-equipped mobile phone. The Motorola ROKR enables owners to transfer up to 100 favorite songs from their computer's iTunes jukebox. The…
Electronics dealers may have a great autumn if they load up on dual-well CD recorders and DVD carousel changers, two of the hottest audio fashion items. Major manufacturers like Kenwood, Onkyo, Denon,, and Harman/Kardon have all announced plans to deliver recorders and DVD changers by October, in time for the holiday season.
The growing popularity of DVD has induced many companies to remodel their CD carousel changers—long one of the best-selling categories in consumer audio—into DVD machines. Yamaha and Sony already have DVD changers on the market, and Onkyo dealers should soon have a 6-…
Citing the desire to take advantage of the power of sharing audio files over the Internet, one of the larger independent record labels, TVT Records, announced last week that it has withdrawn its copyright claims against the file-sharing company Napster. TVT said that the basis for its decision to end the lawsuit and provide its support to Napster is "the new service Napster is evolving under the strategic alliance it recently announced with Bertelsmann AG." TVT points out that, since Bertelsmann is still technically a party to litigation with Napster, it becomes the first record label to…
Chicago's Maxwell Street district is considered by many to be the birthplace of Chicago blues. But the old neighborhood is in danger of permanently losing some of its historic buildings, thanks to expansion plans by the University of Illinois at Chicago. The potential loss of the neighborhood has sparked protests by a coalition of blues musicians, including a hunger strike by 69-year-old APO Records artist Jimmie Lee Robinson.
Robinson began his fast Friday, August 18, to draw attention to threats posed by the expansion of the university's south campus into the area. The expansion will…