News

The recording label Deutsche Grammophon, founded in 1898, boldly ventured into the 21^st century on November 28 with a new http://www2.ham.deutschegrammophon.com/home
">online store that eschews digital rights management (DRM) and offers MP3 downloads at 320kbps.

This week marks Stereophile's 10^th year online.

The Consumer Electronics Association (CEAhttp://www.ce.org">CEA;) has taken major steps to ensure that the 2008 edition of its International Consumer Electronics Show, to take place in Las Vegas, Nevada, January 7–10, will provide a model for sustainable and energy-efficient practices. According to CEA president and CEO Gary Shapiro, the world's largest international trade show for consumer technologies is "the first tradeshow of our size to reduce our carbon footprint. We will do so by reducing energy consumption, increasing our recycling efforts, improving efficiency where possible, and making strides toward offsetting our unavoidable emissions. . . . [We intend to give] this industry an opportunity to be a positive force for change and integral to environmental solutions that will ensure future generations inherit a healthy planet."

According to an article posted by The Financial Times November 20, Kim Bailey, the director general of the UK trade group Entertainment Retailers Association (ERA) is urging the music industry to drop digital rights management (DRM), saying that incompatible proprietary technologies, rather than preventing unlicensed copying, discourage sales of electronic files, "stifling growth and working against the consumer interest."

The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) has always been aimed at the electronics industry and the reporters who cover it. Other than a brief experiment with "open" days toward the end of the summer CES held in Chicago in the mid-1990s, the exhibition has never been open to the public.

Speaking at the GSMA Mobile Asia Congress in Macau on November 13, Warner Music Group (WMG) chairman and CEO Edgar Bronfman, Jr. warned mobile phone executives to heed the mistakes of the record industry as it moved forward.

As we reportedhttp://www.stereophile.com/news/012907master/">reported; last January, The">http://www.tapeproject.com">The Tape Project, a collaboration among mastering engineers Paul Stubblebine and Michael Romanowski, both of Paul Stubblebine Mastering, and Dan Schmalle of Bottlehead, plans to release 10 master-quality tapes per year. The Tape Project's inaugural outing, available now, is The Number White by jazz vocalist Jaqui Naylor.