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Today at the CES in Las Vegas, it was announced that Sound United (Denon, Marantz, Polk Audio, Definitive Technology, Polk BOOM, HEOS, and Boston Acoustics) had acquired Classé Audio and that operations would be resumed under the leadership of Dave Nauber.

Back when there was still something called the "classical music industry," one of Stereophile's favorite small labels was John Marks Records, masterminded by the magazine's "The Fifth Element" columnist, John Marks. In fact, it was his recordings that first brought John to the magazine's attention. JMR had a phenomenal run of releases, among them Arturo Delmoni and Meg Bachman Vas's Songs My Mother Taught Me, Nathaniel Rosen's cycle of J.S. Bach's Suites for Solo Cello, Delmoni and Rosen's Music for a Glass Bead Game, and the three Rejoice recordings of Christmas music for string quartet (also featuring Delmoni and Rosen). That's a pretty solid run for a label that released fewer than 20 recordings.

Like most of the record business, classical music is having a tough time finding a new audience in the digital download world. And in line with the recent">http://www.stereophile.com/news/11391/">recent moves by record labels to market popular music online, classical music fans in the UK will soon have another bona fide incentive for locating and legally purchasing works via the Internet.

In a press conference held January 9 at the 1998 Winter Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Classic Records announced the debut of the Classic 24/96 digital audio disc "DAD" series of audio-only DVD-Videos. (Video information is included on the disc but represents only a tiny fraction of the data space.)

Back when DVD players were first released in the US, Classic">http://www.classicrecs.com/">Classic Records was among the first companies to exploit the fact that early machines, though intended for the video enthusiast, could play a 24-bit/96kHz audio recording as well as movies (see previous">http://www.stereophile.com/news/10072/">previous story). These early high-resolution discs, which Classic called DADs, were intended to hold us over until DVD-Audio (then thought to be just around the corner) would finally hit the market. More than two years later we're still waiting for DVD-A, but Classic intends to be ready when it finally appears.

One of the great tragedies of Tower Records' lingering demise was that classical music lovers lost perhaps their most reliable source of recordings. Say what you will about brick-and-mortar record stores, there was something wonderful about finding what you wanted where it was supposed to be. Just try looking up, say, Bruckner's Fourth Symphony on Amazon and see what you get. (Amazon's AI, as good as it is, is a classical music idiot.)

In a major plus for the accessibility of classical music on the web, Google Play Music recently launched its Classical Live initiative. Through an exclusive contract with five major symphony orchestras—Boston Symphony Orchestra and new Music Director Andris Nelsons, The Cleveland Orchestra and Music Director Franz Welser-Möst, London Symphony Orchestra and Sir John Eliot Gardiner, New York Philharmonic and Music Director Alan Gilbert, and Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam and Music Director Mariss Jansons—the organizations will offer live recordings for download and streaming exclusively on Google Play for the first six months they are made public.