Making good on a promise <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/news/10923/">reported</A> back in December of last year, <A HREF="http://www.threshold-audio.com">Threshold Audio</A> has returned the Threshold brand to the market with a new stereo power amplifier.
Electronic equipment worth millions of dollars is damaged every year by lightning strikes and power outages caused by summer storms. These seasonal threats have been amplified by the possibility of rotating blackouts, as well as resulting recent policy changes by major utility companies.
Attendees at the <A HREF="http://www.cedia.org/">Custom Electronics Design and Installation Association</A> Expo 2001 will be the first to see new Aragon products, parent company <A HREF="http://www.klipsch.com">Klipsch</A> announced in late June. The Indianapolis-based audio manufacturer will unveil new Aragon/Klipsch home theater systems at the annual show held in its hometown the first week of September. The show's stature has grown to such an extent that many companies now choose to debut new products there rather than at the January Consumer Electronics Show.
The fate of <A HREF="http://www.towerrecords.com">Tower Records</A> 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 <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/news/11041/">Tower policy</A> of making some suppliers share the burden—especially distributors of small specialty classical labels.
The European Commission isn't especially fond of joint ventures by international media conglomerates. Last year, the EC successfully squashed a proposed merger of EMI and Warner Music Group on the grounds that WMG's parent company, AOL Time Warner (then simply Time Warner), combined with the UK's biggest name in music, would create "a virtual monopoly" of the European music market. A few months later, merger discussions between EMI and Bertelsmann Music Group (BMG) similarly went nowhere. EC investigators also looked into price-fixing in the European CD market early this year.
First, the sobering reality: Among the world's billions of music lovers, probably a million or fewer are true audiophiles, for whom sound quality is a primary concern. The uncritical majority will embrace any audio technology that offers economy and convenience. Case in point: the popularity of the MP3 digital format, widely derided by audiophiles for its compressed dynamics and lack of detail, but adopted readily by the general public because of its ease of use.
Here's an audio riddle for you. Question: What's erasable but not recordable? Answer: Downloadable music from <A HREF="http://www.fullaudio.com">FullAudio Corporation</A>.
Music industry attorneys may not enjoy much of a summer vacation. The season got off to a litigious start with a flurry of lawsuits by and against record labels and music-based websites.
Which has more value in the 21st century: the constitutionally-guaranteed right to free speech or the music industry's right to protect its encryption technology? Princeton University professor Edward W. Felten intends to find out.
The first fiscal quarter was a slow one for major electronics retailers. Eden Prairie, MN–based <A HREF="http://www.bestbuy.com">Best Buy</A> reported a 3.1% drop in comparable-store sales, attributing the slowdown to diminished demand for personal computers. That figure is for stores open a year or longer; Best Buy's total sales for the quarter rose 25% to $3.69 billion from $2.96 billion, thanks to 11 new stores and the addition of the Musicland Group of music stores, which Best Buy acquired earlier this year. Although demand for hardware such as digital cameras, DVD players, and high-definition television sets was "brisk," the market for music CDs lagged more than 6% from last year, company officials explained.