News

In early June, Toshibahttp://www.toshiba.com/">Toshiba; will institute a new retailing program that embraces the Internet but favors traditional retailers. The electronics manufacturing giant will have "a defined group of Internet retailers" that will be built on a base of traditional retailers, according to an announcement made in late April. Later, the program will be expanded in stages to include Internet-only retailers. The announcement follows an">http://www.stereophile.com/news/10662/">an announcement by Sony Corp. late in January that Sony would begin direct Internet sales this year.

The Consumer">http://www.ce.org">Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) reports that factory-to-dealer sales of audio products soared in March, with dollar volume increasing by 14% over March 1999, to a total of more than $721 million. According to the CEA, sales in the first quarter of this year were 10% ahead of first-quarter 1999, at approximately $1.75 billion.

Getting a jump on the RIAA's move to create a new music-download standard (see">http://www.stereophile.com/news/10338/">see related article), Tower Records announced last week that it will feature a new song-download service, created by Atlanta-based amplified.comhttp://www.amplified.com">amplified.com;, on the Towerrecords.comhttp://www.towerrecords.com">Towerrecords.com; website.

Even after a two-day auction and federal bankruptcy court approval of a $134.3 million bid by the Great American Group, which has stated that it plans to liquidate the music retailer, it's not precisely clear what is in store for Tower Records.

The fate of Tower">http://www.towerrecords.com">Tower Records has been the subject of music industry speculation for months. The company's financial difficulties have been no secret; several stories recently appeared alluding to a new Tower">http://www.stereophile.com/news/11041/">Tower policy of making some suppliers share the burden—especially distributors of small specialty classical labels.

John Atkinson and I recently spent a few hours talking to cable manufacturer Tributaries&#039">http://www.tributariescable.com/">Tributaries' president and founder, Joe Perfito. Perfito had come to NYC to meet the press and introduce his company's newest cable families, the high-end Series 7 and the higher-end Series 9. "The Series 9 cables are the best cables we know how to make," Perfito told us. "The interconnects are hand-made of 20AWF solid OFHC signal conductor and a 1.25% silver-plated 46-strand 20AWG OFHC return conductor. We use an LDPE dielectric and an OFHC copper-braided shield and a double-sided copper foil secondary shield for 100% freedom from interference. The conductors are double-soldered to the solid brass connectors, then pressure welded—they will not let go of one another."

It's been a rough season for some in the e-commerce crowd, as several consumer-electronics Internet startups find themselves amid changes. Last week, CyberShop.comhttp://www.CyberShop.com">CyberShop.com; announced that it will close the e-tailing sites CyberShop.com and electronics.net (created as a joint venture with Tops Appliance City, which is now under Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection) and sell these operations' remaining retail assets. At the same time, the company says it will launch an "Internet incubator" through the establishment of Grove">http://www.grovestreetventures.com">Grove Street Ventures to attract and develop startup Internet companies.