Weekly AUDIO NEWS for Feb. 14, 2001

Looking Bad for Napster - If you haven't seen the headlines, Napster has been told by a federal appeals court that they have violated copyright laws and may in fact be required to shut down operations unless they begin distributing only material that is copyrighted, with payment of proper fees. The Napster software and in fact their general concept doesn't handle that - as does Liquid Audio, AAC coding and other technology - and thus cannot comply. As many as 9 million people used Napster in December to share downloads of MP3 music files among their individual computers. Napster principles said they would appeal the decision but this case already appealed the injunction against them from a lower court. The service might switch to a subscription-based model, with a $10 to $20 per month fee.

Digital Audio Broadcasting Soon? - DAB has had an even more difficult launch than HDTV. The industry and FCC are still trying to decide exactly how to proceed with it, the only agreement so far being that it will be an in-band, on-channel system rather than broadcasting on completely different frequencies as does the Eureka 147 system used in Canada and Europe. Many broadcasters now providing digital services have not been giving them much promotion and manufacturers have been slow to introduce DAB receivers. Customers are wary of buying new hardware that could be rendered obsolete if DAB doesn't skate in the marketplace.

Latest on Low Power FM - The original idea for LPFM was to offer an alternative to the increasingly monopolistic major broadcast ownership chains with simple locally-owned neighborhood stations. It seems the FCC got cold feet at the last minute, partly due to tremendous lobbying from the National Association of Broadcasters, as well as NPR. LPFM licenses have been launched on a smaller scale and strictly noncommercial. It is felt that most will be snapped up by individuals anxious to promulgate their special point of view or by religious broadcasters who can legally get income (contributions) while proselytizing. There has also been much discussion of the alleged interference of LPFM stations (only 10 to 100 watts) to full power FM stations. This has been called by some industry observers a thinly-disguised attempt to prevent any competition for audience, however small.

Les Paul & Pro Tools to Receive Special Grammies - Special Grammies for Technical Achievement will be given next week to Les Paul for his invention of multi-track tape recording and to the developers of Pro Tools - the most popular software for digital audio editing - used in the editing and making of most CDs today. The ability of Pro Tools and similar audio editing software has made possible much easier and less hearable sound editing. Even producers and performers preferring the sonics of mastering on analog tape instead of hard drive or DAT mostly transfer to digital to edit in Pro Tools. So in one way the software is spelling the end of tape recording - multi-track or not.

- John Sunier

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