News

Retail prices of compact discs are likely to drop in the coming months, thanks to a Federal">http://www.ftc.gov/">Federal Trade Commission action ending an industry-wide price-support policy begun five years ago. On May 10, the FTC announced that it had reached an agreement with the "Big Five" of the music business—Time Warner Inc.'s Warner Music, Seagram Ltd.'s Universal Music, Sony Music Entertainment, BMG Entertainment, and EMI Group PLC—that will effectively end the practice of "minimum advertised pricing" (MAP) instituted as a response to music-retailing price wars in the mid-1990s. Under MAP, retailers were forbidden to advertise CDs below an established minimum, at the risk of losing millions of promotional dollars from the record labels.

In the early morning hours of December 11, Joseph Cohen of the Lotus">http://www.lotusgroupusa.com">Lotus Group, the exclusive distributor of Oyaide products in North America, sent out a "Lotus Group News Flash!" The e-mail, dated December 10, declared:

It's five years from now. Wide bandwidth has made audio-on-demand as commonplace as ATM machines and cellular phones were in 1999. Music lovers can plug into the Internet from almost anywhere and download any tunes they wish to hear anytime they wish to hear them for only pennies per song. Portable devices the size of wristwatches contain entire libraries of music. Picture frames, computer screens, and ceiling tiles all double as loudspeakers. Intuitive programs suggest personal playlists based on databases of prior requests. People are awash in a sea of music.

Among the terrible news coming out of the Gulf states these past few days, we heard the sad news that Gary Warzin, one of the co-founders, with Tony Gregory, of high-end distribution company Audiophile Systems, had died on Saturday August 27 at just 56. Audiophile Systems had grown to prominence in the 1970s and '80s marketing Linn components in the US, and after Linn had set up their own distribution, had worked hard to establish the Arcam and dCS brands in the US. We reproduce below the email we received from Audiophile Systems, telling us of the news, but I'd like to offer my own memory of someone whose abilities as a serious expert on marketing—he was a Disney Fellow—were matched by his penchant for practical jokes:

Gateway">http://www.gateway.com">Gateway Computer appears intent on expanding into the home entertainment arena.

On June 6, as we traveled back from HE">http://blog.stereophile.com/he2006/">HE 2006, we received near simultaneous press releases from Genesis Advanced Technologies and Arnie Nudell describing the same event.

How often have you encountered someone reciting your obituary? That's what happened when he of the living dead visited Michael Woods' aesthetically sensational Elite Audio Systems showroom in San Francisco on February 22, only to discover Gary Leonard Koh, CEO of and chief designer for Genesis Advanced Technologies, declaring, "The days when people sat in one sole sweet spot listening to music are over."