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While Apple's iTunes and RealNetworks Rhapsody are battling it out in the music download ring (see related">http://www.stereophile.com/news/032204itunes">related story), and Microsoft is rumored to be eyeing a corner, Sony has now decided to join the fray with a new music service announced last week in Europe.

Where Sony goes, the electronics industry follows. And Sony is going on the Internet—not merely with product information and links to dealers, but with sales direct to consumers. The announcement was made late in January by Sony">http://www.sony.com/sel">Sony Electronics president Teruaki Aoki. "We cannot neglect the customers' viewpoint," Aoki said, acknowledging that serving consumers is a higher priority for the electronics giant than protecting dealers.

The merger of Sony Music and Bertelsmann Music Group (BMG) may not be a done deal after all.

There's gold in them digital music hills. This obvious reality---supported by the music industry's near-panic in the face of the phenomenal growth of MP3 in the past year---was reinforced last week, when Sony">http://www.sony.com/">Sony Corporation and International">http://www.ibm.com/">International Business Machines announced a digital music mutual-aid pact at a press conference in Los Angeles.

At a Hi-Res Symposium presented by The Digital Entertainment Group (DEG) on June 1 in Capitol's legendary Studio A in Hollywood, representatives from record labels, Sony, Capitol Studios, and The Recording Academy's Producers and Engineers wing discussed the future of high-resolution digital audio.

It's mating season for entertainment-industry giants. Sony">http://www.sonymusic.com/">Sony Music Entertainment and Universal">http://www.umusic.com/">Universal Music Group are in talks to develop a jointly operated subscription music service for the Internet, according to a report the two companies issued in the first week of May. The news followed by only a week an announcement of a possible">http://www.stereophile.com/news/10729/">possible merger between record clubs Columbia House and BMG Music Club.

Will music fans willingly pay for what they've been getting free? With the shuttering of free music site Napster a strong probability, two giants of the music industry are moving forward with plans to roll out a subscriber-based online music distribution plan.

After posting a round-uphttp://www.stereophile.com/news/110705sony/">round-up; of the news about Sony BMG's F4i's XCP digital rights management system (DRM), which hid itself inside consumers' computers' root-kit code, I spent a frantic week simply trying to keep up with all of the breaking news on the issue on my bloghttp://blog.stereophile.com/wesphillips/">blog;. During the week of November 7, I posted no fewer than 9 URLs outlining breaking news on the Sony story. However, by the end of the week, the company was reeling from the news that hackers had managed to install malware (malicious programs that dismantle a computer's firewall protection) on consumers' computers that masked its presence by using the hidden software placed there by Sony BMG's DRM system.

An old adage has it that "when Sony sneezes, the whole electronics industry catches cold." If that's so, there could be an epidemic brewing. Sony's profits plunged an astounding 98% in the first quarter of its current fiscal year. Thomson, Samsung, and some large retailers also reported big drops.

As we go into our fourth week of coverage of Sony BMG's digital rights management debacle, it's a good time to review what all the fuss has been about. On October 31, Mark Russinovich postedhttp://www.sysinternals.com/blog/2005/10/sony-rootkits-and-digital-righ…; his discovery of a root kit—a cloaked file that had been inserted on to his computer's hard drive. Cloaked root kit files are popular tools used by malevolent hackers, so Russinovich was curious about how the files he detected had entered his computer. It came from Get Right With the Man, a Sony DRM-protected disc Russinovich had purchased and played on his computer. When he attempted to remove the hidden files, Russinovich lost the ability to use his CD drive.