Tag archive: Floyd

It's not often you see a product that is both cool, and designed to embarrass one of the technology suppliers that created it. One particular case makes both an interesting product and an interesting back story. Not only did one of the major parts suppliers abstain from its announcement, the company did its level best to try to stop the product altogether. I'm talking about the new Acer Aspire Revo, a revolutionary little… Read More

In some ways it’s not a surprising correlation. When times are tough, we become depressed, and that leads us to sad music. It seems to be borne out by recommendation service TheFilter.com, which says there’s been a large spike in people listening to downbeat music like The Smiths’ “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now” and Joy Division’s “Love Will Tear Us Apart” – also in the top ten… Read More

The free, ad-supported music service SpiralFrog has announced that music and videos from EMI will be available to North American users. The deal means music from artists like David Bowie, Coldplay, Norah Jones, Keith Urban, Lenny Kravitz, Pink Floyd, Miles Davis, and many others will be available via Spiralfrog. “We are ecstatic about adding EMI's content to SpiralFrog,” said SpiralFrog founder and chair Joe Mohen, in a… Read More

I’ve just gotten back from the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. And the 2008 shindig has me brimming over with excitement and optimism for the future of both affordable and high-end audio gear. This is extremely unnatural for me.   First of all, pessimism is my natural state.   Second, having covered audio and video since 1980, when I was first employed by Video Magazine, I have learned to express enthusiasm only when I… Read More

While many small start-ups have tried to topple iTunes Store as the dominant digital music seller, none have had quite the heft of its latest competitor, Amazon.  The Seattle-based company introduced the public beta test of its Amazon MP3 music service on Tuesday, which offers a la carte music downloads for 89 or 99 cents per song with no technical restrictions on the use of downloaded songs. Amazon’s catalog, now at 2… Read More

Apple’s iTunes has made a grand fanfare of offering digital rights management (DRM) free songs from EMI, which the storesells at a premium price. But what they haven’t told you is that those tracks contain data about the person who purchases them, including e-mail address.   The first tracks, by majorartists such as Pink Floyd, Coldplay and Frank Sinatra, went on sale on Wednesday. With a higher sound quality of 256 kbps, rather… Read More

Apple today launched iTunes Plus, a new addition to its existing iTunes service which offers AAC music tracks from major label EMI at 256 Kbps encoding (twice the rate of standard iTunes purchases) at $1.29 per track—and without Apple's FairPlay digital rights management (DRM) technology. That means users can play iTunes Plus tracks on any music player (or using any application) which supports AAC encoding, rather than the tracks… Read More

In what may prove to be a sea change in the way the music industry thinks about digital music sales, UK record label EMI has announced in conjunction with Apple that it will offer its entire music library for sale without digital rights management (DRM) technology. Tracks will go on sale via iTunes in May, 2007, and Apple will offer the non-protected tracks at twice the bit-rate of current iTunes selections: 256 kbps AAC encoding, as… Read More

Following on the heels of Steve Jobs' open letter this week declaring that the best digital music solution for consumers would be if record labels agreed to sell their music without digital rights management technologies impeding consumers, rumors are surfacing in the Wall Street Journal and elsewhere that record label EMI is considering offering some or all of its music catalog for sale in unprotected MP3 format. London-based EMI is… Read More

There's a new entertainment company in town which is looking to capitalize on the growing number of venues by which people seek their programming. Network Live, co-founded by "Live 8" executive producer Kevin Wall, is drawing upon the expertise and distribution platforms of sports and entertainment giant AEG, online portal America Online and satellite radio provider XM Radio to create a new world of multi-platform live… Read More

The two companies will reportedly keep their autonomy sharing their power 50-50 but now have the opportunity to compete with Universal Music Group to become the largest record company in theworld. The Sony-BMG merger comes as two suitors are hunting down another juicy target in Warner Music (WEA). EMI reportedly is close to submitting a 1 billion dollar offer for the vast WEA operation whilebillionaire movie producer Haim Saban and former… Read More

Today at the 2003 Combined Exhibition of Advanced Technologies (CEATEC) show, Microsoft Corp. and Pioneer Corp. announced a new top-of-the-line AV amplifier model that supports Microsoft® WindowsMedia® Audio 9 Professional for the delivery of multichannel surround sound. The new amplifier model, VSA-AX10Ai-N, also uses Pioneer's Advanced Multichannel Acoustic Calibration system, whichallows sound adjustments at the same professional… Read More