Joining technology firms including AOL, Sony and Microsoft are several major labels including BMG Entertainment, EMI Recorded Music, Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group and…
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As expected, the Recording Industry Association of America held a press conference last week to announce the formation of the Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI) which hopes to develop internet downloading technologies for music. The move comes after a rough year for the music business who has seen thousands of unauthorized websites offer copyrighted material for free using the MP3 audio format.
Several readers have been asking "What's with all of the Musical Fidelity reviews in Stereophile?" Michael Fremer fearlessly wires the Musical Fidelity Tri-Vista SACD player into his system, noting, "Overachievers tend to rankle people after a while."
Next, Brian Damkroger gets his hands on the GamuT CD 1 CD player. Why the GamuT? BD comments, "I'm picky, so it had to be something that sounded good. I wanted to be realistic, so it couldn't cost a fortune. And I wanted to try something new."
Also from the current May issue, John Atkinson reviews the Ayre CX-7 CD player. JA uses the…
This past week, The Academy Advancing High Performance Audio & Video (AAHPAV) released its 1998 Golden Note Awards Nominations.
Winners will be announced at the Golden Notes Awards banquet to be held at The Ritz Carlton, Marina Del Rey, June 10th.á Also on hand at the event will be John Hoskins, co-founder of Advantage Performance Group, who will present the keynote address, "Why Bad Things Happen to Good New Products."
According to Sue Regan, AAHPAV Chairperson, "I believe that because the Golden Note awards are decided following votes cast by manufacturers---Academy General…
Love it or hate it, MP3 users are a huge new market, as yet untapped by the music industry. Portable digital compressed-audio players, whether employing Flash memory or compact hard drives à la Apple's iPod, are estimated to begin reaching critical-mass sales numbers around 2006, with an installed base of 24 million units by 2007. Most observers agree that this dramatic growth has been driven, in large part, by the vast quantity of no-fee music that is available in the format, as well as the players' ease of use and flexibility.
Until secure MP3 players dominate the portable market,…
The WebNoize three-day conference took place last week in Los Angeles, mixing record-company executives with Internet geeks, all trying to find profitable ways to distribute music online. Tom Roli, publisher of the Webnoize website, set the tone for the event, stating that "the industry is facing great change and uncertainty due to emerging technologies, shifting global markets, and media revolutions."
Diamond Multimedia, a company we've been reporting on the last several weeks due to their tangle with the RIAA, announced several new deals to support their Rio MP3 player. Diamond and…
Forget about tuning dots, mystical poker chips, and clocks with programmed electrons. They're all hopelessly out of date.
In Berkeley, California, where I lived for many years, crackpot theorists of every variety are as common as cockroaches. I have known people who sincerely believe that the world's economic order is controlled by a secret cabal of bankers, who believe that crystals programmed in ancient Atlantis speak to them personally, who believe that a perky blond equestrienne from the Pacific Northwest is the incarnation of a 40,000-year-old warrior.
Even today, I know…
On Sunday, December 1, 2002, we celebrated five years of uninterrupted webcasting, our website having emerged from the Internet darkness on December 1, 1997 to become, at least in my eyes, an institution. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote that "an institution is the lengthened shadow of one man," and www.stereophile.com is definitely the shadow of erstwhile high-end audio retailer Jon Iverson.
It was Jon, who is still our webmaster—or "web monkey," as he prefers to be called—who came up with the idea that timely audio news presented regularly would generate the repeat visits that are a website's…
Running audio signals around a home's AC power wiring has been a consumer electronics goal for several years. The reasoning goes that most folks live in homes that cannot be easily rewired for multiroom audio or multichannel surround, so why not use the AC wires that are already in the walls? Think of it as the ultimate solid-core interconnect.
Since the idea first surfaced to use AC lines for music, wireless digital networks have sprung to life and taken off, creating an alternative to running audio on cables. But that hasn't stopped development of what is known as HomePlug audio…
Hilary Rosen's 17-year tenure with the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) will come to an end this year.
On Wednesday, January 22, the 44-year-old chairman and CEO of the music industry trade organization announced that she would leave at the end of 2003. Rosen's official explanation was that she wished "to spend more time with her family," a reason often cited by departing executives.
The real reason may be closer to battle fatigue. Rosen joined one of the nation's most contentious industries as the compact disc was beginning its ascent, displacing the cassette tape…
More compact discs that attempt to restrict how you use them are coming to a record store near you. BMG announced last week that its Arista Records division will be the company's first label in the US to release a commercial CD using copy-restriction technology.
Until now, BMG says, its US labels have used copy management technology only on promotional CDs as part of their overall approach to restrict the use of copyrighted content. The first of the new restricted CDs will be Comin' From Where I'm From by singer/songwriter Anthony Hamilton, slated for release nationwide on September 23.…