« Last post by BSD2000 on January 09, 2018, 08:16:39 AM »
Two classics, reborn.
Technics is continuing its drive to bring back its most important turntables, with the classic SP-10 and SL-1000 decks set to be given a high-end reboot.
Previewed in August 2017, the Technics SP-10R turntable was described as Technics’ “most premium turntable ever”, and with further details emerging at Panasonic’s CES 2018 press conference, we now know why.
Living up to the reputation of the original SP-10 – the world’s first direct drive turntable – this new model is powered by a coreless direct drive motor, with the rubber-dampened aluminium platter stabilised by a 10mmm brass weight, giving it a mass of 7.9kg.
Reducing wow and flutter rate to 0.015 percent, it promises to limit background noise while increasing and clarifying the audio signal in the process.
With that in mind, the SP-10R’s control unit is separated from the main turntable unit, using what Panasonic calls an “unwanted noise reduction circuit.”
While this won’t come as a surprise to fans of the classic SP-10, which also required additional components – like the tonearm – to be purchased alongside the deck, Panasonic have designed the new SP-10R to be backwards compatible, meaning that the new system is interchangeable with previous models.
That said, any savings made from integrating the SP-10R into your original set-up will be somewhat off-set by the price-tag, which What Hi-Fi expects to be in the region of $10,000.
The second turntable announced at CES 2018 is the SL-1000R, which adds a base and S-shaped tonearm for a more complete and recognisable turntable set-up. These components are expected to raise the price of the SL-1000R to around $20,000.
It remains to be seen whether Technics will follow-up these new Reference Class decks with more affordable variations, as was the case with the stunning and, somewhat controversial Technics SL-1200G, and subsequent cheaper SL-1200GR model. [via What Hi-Fi / Verge]
« Last post by BSD2000 on January 07, 2018, 04:21:36 PM »
John Pratt/Keystone/Getty Images
Vinyl LP sales accounted for 14 percent of all physical album sales in 2017, The Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" top selling vinyl LP.
Once again, yearly vinyl album sales have hit another Nielsen Music-era record high, as the configuration sold 14.32 million (up 9 percent) in 2017. That’s up from the previous one-year high, registered in 2016 with 13.1 million.
Nielsen Music’s 2017 tracking year ran from Dec. 30, 2016 through Dec. 28, 2017. Numbers in this story are rounded. Nielsen Music began electronically tracking music sales and data in 1991 (so a reference in this story to the “Nielsen era” means from 1991 to the present).
2017 marks the 12th straight year of growth in vinyl album sales. The format continues to increase in sales as more new and classic albums are issued on vinyl, promotion from retailers like Amazon, Urban Outfitters and Barnes & Noble, as well as annual vinyl-oriented celebrations like Record Store Day.
Vinyl LP sales represented 8.5 percent of all album sales in 2017 – up from 6.5 percent for the configuration’s share in 2016. Further, LP sales were 14 percent of all physical album sales in 2017 (a Nielsen-era record share for the format) – up from 11 percent in 2016.
Further, vinyl album sales were driven by an array of titles, not just a handful of hot sellers. In total, 77 different titles each sold more than 20,000 copies on vinyl LP in 2017, as compared to 58 in 2016.
As usual, rock music, by far, drives most vinyl album sales, as the genre accounted for 67 percent of all vinyl album sales in 2017 (versus 69 percent in 2016).
The Beatles finish 2017 with the top two selling vinyl LPs of the year: Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (72,000 — powered in large part by the album’s deluxe anniversary reissue in 2017) and Abbey Road (66,000). The soundtrack Guardians of the Galaxy: Awesome Mix Vol. 1 is the third biggest with 62,000. Comparably, in 2016, the top three sellers were Twenty One Pilots’ Blurryface (68,000), David Bowie’s Blackstar (66,000) and Adele’s 25 (58,000).
TOP 10 SELLING VINYL ALBUMS OF 2017 IN U.S.
Rank
Artist, Title
Sales
1
The Beatles, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
72,000
2
The Beatles, Abbey Road
66,000
3
Soundtrack, Guardians of the Galaxy: Awesome Mix Vol. 1
62,000
4
Ed Sheeran, ÷ (Divide)
62,000
5
Amy Winehouse, Back to Black
58,000
6
Prince and the Revolution, Purple Rain (Soundtrack)
« Last post by BSD2000 on December 27, 2017, 01:15:44 AM »
The first ever TEDx talk on the cultural importance and community of record digging has been held in Montreal. Hosted by Alexis Charpentier aka DJ Lexis, the brains behind online platform Music Is My Sanctuary and the 24 Hours of Vinyl series, the talk details the cultural significance of the community of crate diggers, DJs and producers who’ve performed the role of de facto “archeologists”, preserving and revitalising forgotten music scenes in the digital age.
As Alexis says: “From the start the idea was to build a talk around the notion of record digging as a cultural practise: the history of this community, what drives record diggers and why they have significant cultural role in protecting important parts of recorded music history.”
In doing so, Alexis tried to keep the talk, titled, Music Archeology: Reviving the World’s Forgotten Records, as instructive and inclusive as possible, as “for 99% of the audience, they don’t know very much about the record collecting culture that’s existed since the 1930s.”
As he explains: “I used one central story to illustrate the role of the record digger as a cultural catalyst who can give overlooked music a second chance to be heard. That story was about Henri-Pierre Noel, a Haitian musician who moved to Montreal recorded two albums who were eventually forgotten until Kobal, a Montreal record digger, rediscovered them and made a reissue project happen with the help of WahWah45’s.”
That said, Alexis was also keen to stress perspective in the role of the record collector and reissue label engaged in this cultural process. “We need to get over this superstar digger phase we seem to be stuck into these days,” he says. “At the end of the day, the glory should go to the artist who made the tune… and our role should be about giving beautiful music a second chance to be heard by as many people as possible.”
« Last post by BSD2000 on October 30, 2017, 07:47:50 PM »
So this complicates things a bit. A bombshell decision from the Florida Supreme Court effectively says that recording copyrights didn’t exist before 1972.
Should oldie recordings enjoy copyright protection?
Absolutely not, according to a unanimous decision by the Florida Supreme Court. Effectively, anything recorded before the year 1972 is in the public domain and can be used freely. At least in the state of Florida.
The ruling was released to Digital Music News early this morning.
The unanimous decision strikes a serious blow against Howard Kaylan and Mark Volman, both members of the oldies rock band, The Turtles. Kaylan and Volman, aka ‘Flo & Eddie,’ have been battling for payments on their pre-1972 for years.
On the other side, both Pandora and Sirius XM Radio have argued that recording royalties don’t apply to music released before 1972. The reason? There isn’t a consistent law protecting recordings prior to that date.
“We conclude that Florida law does not recognize any such right and that Flo & Eddie’s various state law claims fail.”
Prior to 1972, artists and labels simply relied on a patchwork of state laws to determine copyright. But even after 1972, Congress left pre-1972 copyright decisions to the states. And in the case of Florida, copyright protection for recordings simply didn’t exist.
“The crucial question presented is whether Florida common law recognizes an exclusive right of public performance in pre-1972 sound recordings,” the justices opined in a 35-page ruling (see below).
“We conclude that Florida law does not recognize any such right and that Flo & Eddie’s various state law claims fail.”
Keep in mind that none of this applies to the compositions themselves. Broader copyrights have long applied to the underlying notes and lyrics, which comprise the publishing side of a song. The other side, specifically the recorded version of that composition, was simply not protected until February 15th, 1972.
This is part of a broader legal war by the Turtles. Accordingly, Florida’s decision doesn’t directly impact separate battles in states like New York and California. But it certainly influences decisions in other critical US states, especially those with similar laws. In effect, the Florida blow may trigger a domino effect against copyright protection for oldies.
The Turtles became internationally famous after the release of ‘Happy Together’.
« Last post by Admin on August 25, 2017, 03:59:10 AM »
DreamHost, one of the world’s largest web hosting companies, said a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) caused significant outages Thursday affecting customers of its web and email services. The Los Angeles-based hosting provider said that an attack against part of its online infrastructure had resulted in connectivity issues affecting several aspects of its operations, ranging from its online customer support features to the hosting service used by over 1.5 million websites.
The attack targeted DreamHost’s Domain Name Servers (DNS) – digital directories that allow internet users to access specific websites without remembering their lengthy, numeric IP addresses – and was remedied about four hours after first being detected, according to the company.
DDoS attacks involve knocking websites offline by overloading their servers with illegitimate traffic and effectively rendering them inaccessible.
Low-level attacks are capable of briefly disabling websites lacking DDoS protection, but wide-scale attacks like the one conducted last year against Dyn, an American DNS provider, caused unprecedented outages affecting some of the world’s most popular websites, including Amazon and Netflix.
DreamHost customers, including the Cambridge Seventh-day Adventist Church in England and the Tale of Two Wastelands video gaming project, were among those who said their websites were unavailable Thursday due to the powerful DDoS attack.
The DDoS attack was confirmed by DreamHost as two of the company’s customers made headlines in their own right over their unrelated efforts to survive scrutiny: DisruptJ20, an anti-Trump protest site, and The Daily Stormer, a white supremacist website that remerged online this week with the help of DreamHost after being all but driven off the internet.
A federal judge earlier Thursday ordered DreamHost to provide information sought by federal prosecutors investigating the riots that erupted in Washington, D.C. during President Trump’s inauguration Jan. 20.
It was not clear if the DDoS attack was related to either website, and DreamHost did not immediately return an email Thursday seeking comment.
« Last post by Admin on August 24, 2017, 03:48:27 PM »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A District of Columbia Superior Court judge on Thursday approved a government warrant seeking data from an anti-Trump website related to Inauguration Day protests, but he added protections to safeguard "innocent users."
Chief Judge Robert Morin said DreamHost, a Los Angeles-based web-hosting company, must turn over data about visitors to the website disruptj20.org, which is a home to political activists who organised protests at the time of Donald Trump's inauguration as U.S. president in January.
Morin, who will oversee review of the data, said the government must explain what protocols it will use to make sure prosecutors do not seize the data of "innocent users."
The U.S. Justice Department said it sought the records connected to the site because of concerns that it helped facilitate the planning of protests on Inauguration Day, when more than 200 people were arrested for rioting and vandalising businesses in downtown Washington.
DreamHost resisted the request, saying the scope of the warrant was too broad and trampled on the rights of 1.3 million visitors to the site, many of whom were simply expressing their political views.
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