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It was 15 years ago this week that an enthusiastic John Atkinson was lured From">http://www.stereophile.com//asweseeit/352/">From London to Santa Fe to take the helm of Stereophile. As JA recounted back in 1986, "From London, England, to Santa Fe, New Mexico, is a pretty big jump, both geographically and culturally. From Hi-Fi News & Record Review to Stereophile, however, is a mere hop; the similarities overwhelm the differences."

A quickly established favorite among music fans, the CDDBhttp://www.cddb.com">CDDB; website provides comprehensive information for tracking who and what appears on just about any CD in existence (see previoushttp://www.stereophile.com/news/10438/">previous;). But as users of the service are discovering, the company that now maintains the database, Gracenotehttp://www.gracenote.com">Gracenote;, is starting to change the rules of access.

Two scuttled mergers in the past year haven't damaged the profit picture for EMI">http://www.emigroup.com">EMI Group PLC. Neither has a global slowdown in music sales. EMI announced May 22 that it expects to see a 5.7% increase in pretax profits for its fiscal year ended March 31: £259.5 million (US $374 million), up from £245.4 million (US $353 million) a year earlier. EMI's sales for the year rose 12% to £2.67 billion (US $3.84 billion).

The Secure">http://www.sdmi.org">Secure Digital Music Initiative has decided to reconfirm San Diego–based Verance">http://www.verance.com">Verance Corporation's watermarking technology as its choice for inhibiting piracy in digitally recorded music. The May 21 announcement was made by the SDMI Plenary after a year-long campaign to evaluate the effectiveness and audibilityhttp://www.stereophile.com/news/10870/">audibility; of watermarks from 14 different vendors. The group has also apparently decided to halt further research and development efforts, which have been widely blamed for hobbling the rollout of DVD-Audio.

Please bear with us a moment here—we know most audiophiles react to MP3-related news with a serious case of ringing ears, but tracing where the lo-fi market is currently headed can be instructive for understanding the distant hi-fi future. And if the new technology previewed last week at Qualcomm's">http://www.qualcomm.com/brew/">Qualcomm's BREW conference in San Diego is any indication, some parts of your audio future may, in fact, be wireless.

Mark Levinson has traveled from Woodstock to the Whitney, and Michael Fremer lends an ear to his Red">http://www.stereophile.com//loudspeakerreviews/350/">Red Rose Music R3 loudspeaker to determine if the journey was a fruitful one. As Fremer characterizes it, "If Levinson's Cello foray was haute monde, Red Rose is Dockers: loose-fitting and relaxed."

Many small classical record labels are facing an uncertain future in the wake of a decision by Tower">http://www.towerrecords.com">Tower Records to put three classical distributors on buying hold. News of the decision, and discussions about its ramifications, have circulated on the Internet after an internal memo was leaked on May 1. The memo from company headquarters ordered store buyers at all 113 Tower stores in the US not to purchase from Allegro, Harmonia Mundi, and Qualiton, until receiving further notice. The three distributors represent dozens of small independent jazz and classical recording labels.