Barry Willis

Several <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/news/10750/">class-action lawsuits</A> have been thrown against the music industry in the wake of its admission that it engaged in a price-fixing scheme known as Minimum Advertised Pricing, or MAP. The policy arose as a response to widespread CD price wars in the early 1990s that drove prices of some CDs below $10 each, and was intended to prevent mass-market merchandisers from offering CDs below cost as lures to pull customers into stores. The MAP policy was officially discontinued after the Federal Trade Commission <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/news/10744/">reached a settlement</A> with the industry in May of this year.

A merger announced Wednesday, July 12 by Columbia, Maryland&ndash;based <A HREF="http://www.usadr.com/">USA Digital Radio</A> and <A HREF="http://www.lucentdigitalradio.com/">Lucent Digital Radio</A> of Warren, New Jersey may hasten the creation of a unified US standard for terrestrial digital radio, according to industry analysts. The merger was approved by the National Radio Systems Committee, which is in charge of developing a set of digital radio specifications for the US. It was also backed by 15 companies involved in the rollout of digital radio, including Viacom Inc.'s Infinity Broadcasting Corp. and Clear Channel Communications, Inc.

Audiophiles have complained since the earliest days of the compact disc that music reissued in the digital format often doesn't sound as good as it does on the original LPs. For nearly 20 years, such complaints have been dismissed by ordinary music lovers and by music-industry executives as the rantings of purists, but at least one major label is now admitting that many early CDs were not very good.

For technophiles, DVD is the current hot ticket. The compact disc is far from dead, however. The 20-year-old format has been given a new lease on life by <A HREF="http://www.sony.com/">Sony Corporation</A>, which in early July announced the development of a new technique that will double the data-storage capacity of recordable CDs.

DVD-Audio will soon bring high-resolution multichannel sound to music lovers, but they may be dismayed by the format's several varieties and the semi-compatible hardware that will be needed to play them. That was the impression left by a lecture the last week of June at <A HREF="http://www.dolby.com/">Dolby Laboratories</A>' Presentation Studio in San Francisco.

For months now, the music industry has concentrated all its legal firepower on <A HREF="http://www.napster.com/">Napster</A&gt;, the Silicon Valley&ndash;based software company that lets users share music; and against San Diego's <A HREF="http://www.mp3.com/">MP3.com</A&gt;, which lets users upload their music to a central server and then access it from any Internet-connected computer. As of the end of June, it appears that MP3.com will likely be co-opted by the industry's Big Five until it is no longer a threat&mdash;two of the major labels have already settled with the startup&mdash;but Napster will fight on.

With the music industry in retreat from classical music, dozens of the nation&rsquo;s symphony orchestras, opera and ballet companies have decided to bring their work directly to the people. On June 12, an association of 66 orchestras and opera groups signed an agreement with the <A HREF="http://www.afm.org/">American Federation of Musicians</A> (AFM) that will let them put their music on the Internet, without interference or fee extraction by the recording business.