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Several news sources reported Saturday, January 22, that Time">http://www.timewarner.com/">Time Warner is close to completing a merger with EMI">http://www.emigroup.com/">EMI Recorded Music. The combined company will be worth an estimated $20 billion, making it the world's second-largest music conglomerate, exceeded in size and scope only by Seagram Ltd.'s Universal">http://www.umusic.com/">Universal Music. News of the deal came less than a week after the announcement of an impending mergerhttp://www.stereophile.com/news/10648/">merger; between America Online, the world’s largest Internet service provider, with Time Warner, one of the world's largest media conglomerates.

It's been no secret that leading British speaker brand Mission was up for sale—the situation had been spelled out last fall in the Annual Report of parent company NXT plc. NXT is busy pioneering its new flat-panel speaker technology, and shareholder interests were clearly not being well served by "carrying" for any length of time a box-speaker brand whose recent financial reports had been mostly in the red.

Recognizing that high-end audio is anything but plug'n'play, Jonathan Scull examines the details of getting the best from alternating current in "Fines">http://www.stereophile.com//finetunes/192/">"Fines Tunes" #8. As Jonathan writes: "Bill Gates would have you believe we live in a plug'n'play world. Apple has proselytized same since day one. But I'm here to tell you it just isn't so for high-end audio."

After 53 years of publication, Audio magazine, owned and operated by Hachette Filipacchi Magazines, is closing its doors this week. Often rumored to be on the ropes, the magazine had recently attempted a new editorial direction and artistic facelift.

The buzz about digital audio downloads from the Internet would lead one to think that the only way we'll be buying music in the not-too-distant future is through the Web. But the reality this past holiday season looks quite different. Reuters is running stories saying that there was "No Santa for the Internet Music Industry," and record companies attempting to get online are having a tough time (see related">http://www.stereophile.com/news/10648/">related item). MP3 for Dummies author Andy Rathbone states bluntly: "It [the digital music business] hasn't taken off as much as analysts expected," and EMI Records' Jay Alan Samit laments, "this year, over a billion songs were downloaded. None of our artists got paid."

At this year's recent CES in Las Vegas, the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) announced the first 50 inductees into its Consumer Electronics Hall of Fame, chosen from the nominees by a panel of 11 media and industry professionals.

In "Working">http://www.stereophile.com//asweseeit/190/">Working in the Front Line," Martin Colloms writes: "A committed audio equipment reviewer operates at the front line of audio subjectivity. How is it possible to do this successfully, when a similar task undertaken by an industrial laboratory or test house would take five times as long, cost ten times as much, and deliver a verdict of arguably poorer relevance?" How indeed . . . Colloms explains himself.