Born Mary Isabel O'Brien, Springfield first gained notoriety in the early 1960s with a folk-pop trio called The Springfields, with her brother Dion O'Brien (known as Tom Springfield) and their friend Tim Field. The group had a popular TV show and several hit records in the UK. Their first breakthrough in the US was…
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Singer Dusty Springfield died at her home near Oxford, England last Tuesday, March 2, a few weeks before what would have been her 60th birthday and only one day before she was to have appeared at Buckingham Palace to be honored by Queen Elizabeth. The cause was breast cancer.
As Jon Iverson points out in another posting this week, a surprising number of readers expect downloads to be a viable music acquisition option in the very near future. Perhaps it's closer than we think.
The Grateful Dead's official online store now offers downloads. That in itself is not too startling, but here's the part that is: In addition to offering printable booklet and CD tray art, the site offers consumers a choice of download formats, including 128kbps MP3 (various prices, depending on length), 256kbps MP3 (around 50–76¢ more), and lossless FLAC files (usually a few bucks more).…
The world's third largest music company has thrown its massive weight behind Internet audio. On June 10, EMI Recorded Music, a division of EMI Group Plc, announced a five-year licensing agreement with Reston, Virginia-based Musicmaker.com, a major custom CD compilation service and digital download site. EMI has not simply made its enormous catalog available to the service---it has also bought into Musicmaker.com with a 50% equity stake.
Musicmaker.com currently offers more than 20,000 licensed songs in three secure digital downloading formats: Liquid Audio, Microsoft MS Audio 4.0, and…
The economic downturn doesn't appear to be hurting Tweeter Home Entertainment Group.
On November 21, the electronics retailer reported a 55.2% increase in total revenue for its fourth fiscal quarter, ended September 30. Citing huge demand for digital products, the Canton, MA–based electronics chain reported that fourth-quarter revenue hit $150.3 million, compared to $96.9 million for the same period a year earlier.
The company's quarterly net income declined, however, by a whopping 76%, thanks primarily to a $1.2 million write-off of its Cyberian Outpost investment, and slightly due…
Major Japanese electronics manufacturers reported mixed results for the quarter ended June 30, with Mitsubishi and Sharp posting sales gains, while Hitachi and JVC did not. Most electronics firms begin their fiscal year on April 1, making June 30 the end of the first quarter.
Mitsubishi Electric's consumer electronics division posted a 12% increase in sales, totaling $1.6 billion, up from $1.5 billion reported for the same period a year ago. Profits were off, however, which the company attributed to declining prices. Mitsubishi's operating income dropped from $108.2 million for the first…
Industry observers have long debated the ultimate fate of satellite broadcaster Sirius Radio. Front-runner XM Radio, with more than two million subscribers, is already above the break-even point, but for many months Sirius struggled against technical problems and overwhelming debt. Would the fledgling survive, get devoured by its larger competitor, or worse, get picked up in a fire sale by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.?
The prognosis for survival is definitely positive as of mid-October. Shortly after announcing that it had signed "king of all media" Howard Stern to a multimillion-dollar…
DVD-Audio has been getting a lot of press and comments from consumers lately—as in "Where is it?" As we reported back in August, the first players from Panasonic were slated to appear last month (see previous story). But, as with all things worth waiting for, better late than never.
In an effort to clear the air about where the format is going, and in anticipation of the national launch of its DVD-Audio player line, last week Panasonic announced that it will host an educational forum on the Internet from 8 until 9pm EST, November 16, 1999. (The forum is linked here.) The company says the…
Cambridge, England's Meridian Ltd. has been making digital active (or self-powered) loudspeakers since 1990. Regarded as the best among the very few companies to offer such a product, Meridian has taken the concept to a new level by introducing three DSP-series loudspeakers with 24-bit/96kHz capability: the DSP6000, DSP5500, and DSP5000---all bearing the 96/24 suffix to distinguish them from their lower-resolution predecessors. Meridian introduced two 96kHz-capable subwoofers, the DSW1500 and DSW2500, at the 1999 Consumer Electronics Show.
The new series has powerful 80MIPS DSPs (80…
Stereophile's senior contributing editor, Michael Fremer, and the magazine's editor at large, Art Dudley, are both giving presentations this spring at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY. Michael appears on Tuesday, March 28, followed two weeks later, on April 11, by Art Dudley.
The goal of Cornell's "Audio Fanatics" series of occasional seminars/lectures/presentations/demonstrations is to cultivate interest among Cornell students in high-end audio/video, from vintage vinyl to the digital state of the art. These events will also be open to the larger community. More information can be found…
The record industry's favorite nonconformist, DualDisc, is getting a modest boost in February and March. Despite hand-wringing and compatibility warnings from scores of manufacturers, all of the major record labels say they plan to release some of the two-faced discs in coming weeks.
The most notable of the labels announcing a DualDisc release schedule is Sony BMG, whose Jordan Katz states, "We're thrilled to be coming to the marketplace with an innovative slate of DualDiscs, representing a broad range of artists and genres, including titles from Omarion, Jennifer Lopez, Velvet Revolver,…