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Philip O'Hanlon, formerly US marketing director for Halcro, has a new project. His distribution company, On">http://www.onahighernote.com">On a Higher Note, is bringing Japanese high-end company Luxman back to the United States.

If Lydstrom">http://lydstrom.com/">Lydstrom, Inc. has anything to do with it, the next hot ticket in home audio won't be just another CD player, but a musical database manager capable of organizing and playing as many as 5000 songs, from CDs or from Internet downloads. The Boston, Massachusetts-based company announced June 30 that it has licensed Lucent">http://www.lucent.com/">Lucent Technologies' Enhanced Perceptual Audio Coder (ePAC) for inclusion in a product as yet unnamed but projected to be available by Christmas 1999.

Mergers and acquisitions are among the oldest tactics for commercial ventures that want to increase their power and presence. They are also increasingly popular in the non-commercial sector, according to a March 14 Associated Press report.

As we reportedhttp://stereophile.com/news/030507kreisel/">reported; last March, Ken">http://stereophile.com/interviews/136/">Ken Kreisel declared bankruptcy, closing M&K Sound after 34 years of operation. Last week, the Great American Group, which, according to its website, "provides asset management, disposition, and financial services," announcedhttp://www.greatamerican.com/admin/uploads/events/047adb79-a055-4a5a-95…; that it would offer M&K's $3 million in assets at auction on July 19.

Forget the Serial Copy Management System, music fans. http://www.macrovision.com/"> Macrovision Corporation is taking CD copy prevention to the next level. The folks who made it impossible to loop your DVD player through your VCR want to make sure you can't copy new music either. On February 27, Sunnyvale, CA-based Macrovision announced that it will begin beta-testing its "Safeaudio Toolkit," a CD-audio copy-protection technology. One major record label has already completed its own testing, according to an official statement. Macrovision announced its intentionhttp://www.stereophile.com/news/10623/">intention; to go forward with the technology late last year.

Coming soon on the Madrigal">http://www.madrigal.com">Madrigal Audio Laboratories website is La Folia, a music webzine. Edited by Mike Silverton, La Folia sets out to supplement the audiophile press by directing its emphasis at recordings elsewhere neglected: present-day art music (aka "classical"), free and improvisational jazz, category-defying hybrids, and whatever else strikes their "clutch of sweet-spot stuckees as rare and well done."

Folk wisdom has it that fools lock the barn door after the horses have escaped. They also chase all over the countryside trying to catch them. The music business is doing some of both in legal action brought against file-sharing service Madsterhttp://www.madster.com">Madster;.