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Feeling the need to hook your audio system directly into a website for music files? Last week, Sony Corporation and Sun Microsystems announced plans to further collaborate to provide digital consumer-electronics appliances with direct access to Internet-based content and services. The companies say that the first phase of this cooperation will involve the development of home gateway software, running on appliances such as set-top boxes (connected to a home entertainment system), that will support a combination of home networking and network server technologies.
It has now been over a month since Mark Russinovich broke the story about Sony BMG's DRM software that installed root kit code onto consumers' hard drives—exposing infected computers to malware intrusions and reporting back to Sony's servers via spyware installed without consumers' knowledge or consent. Rather than growing stale, however, the story just keeps going and going as new details come to light almost every day.
This week brought news that New York State Attorney General Elliot Spitzer, like Texas AG Greg Abbott, is unhappy about the company's XCP "copy protection." Abbott has…
Author and television producer Howard J. Blumenthal has completed his Jazz and World Music CD Listener's Guides, the first two volumes in a four-volume series. The publications include brief biographies of the top artists in each genre, arranged alphabetically, and hundreds of short reviews of the discs the author considers essential.
"Only the best CDs are included---if a CD is not worth owning, it's not included in the book," Blumenthal states on his Web site, where viewers can read approximately thirty sample reviews. The $14.95 guidebooks are intended to help music lovers build…
Otis Blackwell, the prolific songwriter who helped propel the careers of Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis, died Wednesday, May 9 in Nashville. The cause of death was an apparent heart attack, according to a spokesman for St. Thomas Hospital. Blackwell was 70.
He had been in the St. Thomas emergency room several times recently, the Nashville Tennessean reported. Blackwell had been in ill health since suffering a debilitating stroke in 1991, the year after he moved to Nashville to establish a new record label with Col. Tom Parker, Elvis Presley's former manager.
Blackwell is…
Satellite radio services Sirius and XM both appear headed for a healthy future. The companies both report robust growth in new subscribers. Sweetheart deals with automakers and car rental agencies will expose ever-increasing numbers of consumers to the benefits of commercial-free music.
On August 5, New York City–based Sirius Satellite Radio announced that it had gained approximately 37,000 new subscribers in the second quarter and was on track to reach its goal of 300,000 total subscribers by year's end. Total subscribership was 105,186 at the end of the second quarter, Sirius president…
Last week, The Recording Industry Association of America released its year-end anti-piracy statistics, which it says reveal an increase in the number of counterfeit and pirate CDs and CD-recordables confiscated in 1998. "We've had tremendous success this year with our anti-piracy initiatives," said Frank Creighton, senior vice president and director of anti-piracy. "Between the many CD plants around the country adopting better business practices to the scores of universities signing up for our copyright education program---we're making strides on all fronts."
The RIAA's Internet…
The music industry was much in the news in late May, with file-sharing lawsuits launched, Web royalties deferred, the payola system attacked, and an artists-and-record labels coalition questioning the homogenization of radio.
On May 24, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) continued its war on file-sharing services by launching a copyright suit against Audiogalaxy. The suit, filed in a New York federal court, alleges that Audiogalaxy has made "ineffective" efforts to filter copyrighted songs from its service. RIAA senior vice president and general counsel Matt Oppenheim…
Two new companies have formed in recent weeks to bring audiophile cable and connector products to market.
Stuart Marcus of Vampire Wire and Sound Connections International and Chris Sommovigo of Illuminati and Stereovox say they have joined forces to design, manufacture, and market "precision audio and video connectors" under the new moniker "Xhadow."
The new partners report that they initially teamed up in reaction to what they perceived as a dearth of XLR connector options for high-end cabling systems, noting that "even the most expensive audiophile balanced cables were being…
Would a piece of Krell electronics be the crowning jewel on your equipment rack?
Through August 31, the Orange, CT–based high-end manufacturer is offering a tempting deal: a 25% discount on the price of selected Krell equipment in exchange for one of your old units.
Sound too good to be true? Not so. Krell Industries announced the summer-long "Trade Up To The Best!" promotion on June 28, inviting consumers to take advantage of four separate offers that allow them to exchange their older components for substantial discounts on new, high-performance Krell equipment—"the most intense…
HDCD and Pacific Microsonics appear to be on a roll these days. The HDCD process, developed to coerce 20-bit performance out of the 16-bit CD format, is gaining several new licensees and is also appearing in more devices, as evidenced by several recent announcements. The company is also looking ahead to future DVD formats with an agreement intended to couple HDCD benefits with higher sampling rates.
At the Audio Engineering Society Convention in San Francisco this week (see report elsewhere), Pacific Microsonics announced that it is adding 192kHz A/D conversion and 96/48kHz output…