News

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is continuing its legal campaign against file sharing. In late March, the trade organization launched a new salvo of lawsuits against 532 individuals and 21 university computer networks across the country—89 of the accused violators used school networks for downloading or sharing large numbers of copyrighted recordings. The RIAA claimed that the alleged violators shared an average of 837 songs.

In a never-ending quest to control what it believes is an epidemic of piracy, the music industry in recent years has gone after Internet file-sharing startups, fly-by-night CD duplicators, foreign pirates operating on an industrial scale, college kids with too much time on their hands, and street-corner vendors hawking badly-duped cassettes. At times the anti-piracy campaign has reached the fervor of a witch hunt, with blame laid on the innocent as well as the guilty.

We've heard the sad tales from the record labels and distributors about their ever-weakening music sales, but there are other players in the market who are also feeling the pinch: retailers.

In the age of iTunes and Amazon.com, do brick and mortar music retailers have a future? Perhaps—if they downsize a bit.

First, a prediction: some day we'll buy the nearly complete music library and the player will be free. Imagine getting a player pre-loaded with most songs in your favorite genre already installed, with room left over to add more and a subscription service for instant updates. Imagine even being able to buy the high-resolution library.

Don't bother to tell Music">http://www.musicloversaudio.com">Music Lovers Audio that audio sales have slowed. At a time when many dealers have abandoned two-channel audio altogether or chosen between de-emphasizing music and calling it quits, this Bay Area audio retailer has opened a second store a mere 30 miles from the original North Berkeley location, across the Bay in San Francisco.

"Smash and grab thieves," as Bay Area media are wont to call them, have hit Music Lovers Audio in San Francisco for the second time in a month. This time, at 4am on Wednesday, March 4, three thieves wearing bandanas or ski masks over their faces and either long hoodies or overcoats drove up in a red truck, smashed one of the store's windows, and tried to make off with as much they could.