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Widely assumed to be at death's door, streaming-audio site MP3.comhttp://www.mp3.com/">MP3.com; may be on the rebound after reaching a preliminary agreement October 19 to license more than one million songs from the National">http://www.nmpa.org/">National Music Publishers' Association, Inc. (NMPA) and the organization's primary subsidiary, the Harry Fox Agency, Inc. (HFA). Individual music publishers represented by the Fox Agency must approve the agreement before it can take effect.

John Atkinson shuffles his feet a little and finally mutters, " . . . Convergence." He laments, "I swore I wasn't going to use the 'C' word, but when you're faced with writing about a product that smashes the boundaries between component categories as completely as the CardDeluxe does, you have little choice." JA reviews the Digital">http://www.stereophile.com//digitalsourcereviews/280/">Digital Audio Labs CardDeluxe PC soundcard and answers the pointed question: "But it's only a PC soundcard. What's the big deal?"

With $60,000 in award money as incentive, the hacker community is helping the Secure">http://www.sdmi.org/">Secure Digital Music Initiative find out just how secure six proposed watermarking technologies really are. On October 12, as SDMI representatives were testinghttp://www.stereophile.com/news/10870/">testing; the audibility of three of the watermarks, the organization announced the closure of a month-long challenge it had offered hackers: break the code. According to the terms of the challenge, each defeated technology will mean $10,000 to a successful hacker.

Last night I saw him on the stair—
the little man who wasn't there.
I saw him there again today;
oh, how I wish he'd go away.

The most common complaint about record companies: CD prices are too high. In fact, many blame Napster's runaway success on the insistence of "greedy labels" on pricing discs at $15 or higher. Apparently BMG Direct, a division of BMG">http://www.bmg.com/">BMG Entertainment, has put two and two together and found it equals $9.99.

Following on the heels of its announcement">http://www.stereophile.com/news/10863/">announcement last week of the first commercially available DVD-Audio disc (Swingin' for the Fences, by Gordon Goodwin's Big Phat Band), Silverline">http://www.silverlinerecords.com">Silverline Records says that Aaron Neville will become the first major artist to release an album in the format. Silverline expects that, on October 24, Neville's solo album Devotion will be released on DVD-A. The disc will also include audio tracks compatible with standard DVD players.

After a difficult gestation, DVD-Audio may finally be moving toward becoming a market reality now that a major record label has stepped forward to support it. Warner">http://www.wmg.com/">Warner Music Group (WMG) has issued several recordings in the new format, covering a range of genres. DVD-A is "the most significant industry format launch since the introduction of the CD nearly 20 years ago," according to an October 2 WMG press release.