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With the music industry in retreat from classical music, dozens of the nation’s symphony orchestras, opera and ballet companies have decided to bring their work directly to the people. On June 12, an association of 66 orchestras and opera groups signed an agreement with the American">http://www.afm.org/">American Federation of Musicians (AFM) that will let them put their music on the Internet, without interference or fee extraction by the recording business.

Over-the-air classical music broadcasting is becoming increasingly rare, but classical has got a huge listenership on the Internet, according to a survey by rating service Arbitron">http://www.arbitron.com">Arbitron, Inc., which early this month announced that three classical music stations were among the five most listened to on the Internet.

There is no denying that buying pre-owned high-end gear can easily provide the biggest bang for the audio buck. Many of us got our first glimpse of sonic nirvana after scoring some second-hand component at a fraction of its retail price. Or perhaps you've just bought a new product and need to unload that old classic hanging out in the closet. Stereophile wants to help.

If a recent announcement by the nation's largest radio broadcaster is any indication of a trend, independent music promoters may be on their way to extinction.

Clear Channel Communications, the radio industry's 900-lb gorilla, may be getting too big for its britches.

Artists' groups are celebrating what they hope will be more than a symbolic victory over the recording industry in the wake of legislation signed by President Clinton the last week of October. Known as "The Works Made for Hire and Copyright Corrections Act," the repeal negates a provision that was inserted into last year's "Satellite Home Viewer Act" at the insistence of the Recording">http://www.riaa.com/">Recording Industry Association of America, designating musical recordings as "works for hire." Such a designation catergorizes a musical recording as a commodity that can be purchased at a fixed price, such as a table built by a furniture craftsman, rather than as a performance subject to syndication and royalty fees.

On December 16, Congressmen James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) and John Conyers (D-MI) introduced HR">http://static.publicknowledge.org/pdf/HR-4569-DTCSA-Analog-Hole.pdf">HR 4569, a bill "to require certain analog conversion devices to preserve digital content security measures"—in other words, to mandate that electronic devices and software manufactured after a yet-to-be-specified date respond to a copy protection system or watermark embedded in a video signal and pass that along when converting the signal to analog or vice versa. It also mandates copy protection for analog signals. This is referred to as "plugging the analog hole," since analog signals, even those converted from protected high-definition digital sources, are currently "in the clear" or open for copying. (Standard-definition signals can be protected by systems like Macrovision, but no such protection exists for high-definition signals.)