News

More than 50 independent music labels ("indies") have signed on with Liquid">http://www.liquidaudio.com">Liquid Audio, the leading provider of music downloads over the Internet. The announcement was made March 19 at South by Southwest (SXSW), an annual music and media conference in Austin, Texas.

Could the average computer hard drive soon be able to store the equivalent of over 80 DVD-Audio discs or 600 CDs? Last week, IBMhttp://www.research.ibm.com">IBM; announced that it is using just a few atoms of what it has termed "pixie dust" to push back the data storage industry's most formidable barrier, and will effectively quadruple disk drive densities in the next two years.

A chancery court in England has issued a ruling that, if left to stand, may have a profound effect on copyright holders throughout popular music.

The annual Capital Audio Fest (CAF), the Mid-Atlantic States' premier playground for audio, returns to the Sheraton Hotel in Silver Spring, MD on July 25–27. With the addition of its CanMania, whose list of vendors continues to grow; Saturday's Headphone Meet; and a new focus on high-resolution downloads, the annual show expects to draw a younger and bigger crowd of up to 2000 attendees to its eminently accessible location.

As first reported April 8 in EETimeshttp://www.eetimes.com">EETimes;, Sonyhttp://www.sony.com">Sony; has made known its plans for the first generation of Super Audio Compact Disc (SACD) players, to be released in Japan this May. For the last several months, Sony has been suggesting that the SACD format would be going head to head with the competing DVD-Audio format, despite overtures from the DVD-Audio Working Group to join in a single all-encompassing specification.

Lights out in Gloversville: Universal Music Group's record-pressing plant in Gloversville, NY will shut its doors on May 6, 2005. Founded in 1953 as part of the Brunswick Radio Corporation of America, the plant (and the parent corporation) were acquired in 1962 by Decca, which was itself merged into MCA—and later, UMG, now part of Vivendi Universal.

According to a report released last week by Cahners">http://www.cahnersinstat.com">Cahners In-Stat Group, a high-tech market research firm, the market for personal digital music players using audio compression technologies will experience a tremendous increase in growth through the next several years. Nearly $800 million in player sales are expected in 2003, spurred largely by widespread Internet access. The report also states that products in this segment will initially focus on downloading technologies like MP3, and over the next 12 months consumers should expect to see more features integrated into the players such as FM tuners, increased storage capacity, and security systems like Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMIhttp://sdmi.org/">SDMI;).