Audio Video News

In the beginning, there was Napster, and it was good, albeit illegal. Over the years the file-sharing pioneer went legit and became a subscription service. Now Napster is looking to improve its game by untethering its 770,000 subscribers from its proprietary software. Soon Napsterites will be able to access a library of five million tracks from any net-connected computer without downloading the Napster application itself. Welcome to Napster 4.0.

Porcupine Tree mastermind Steven Wilson (holding down the middle position and leaning on the center channel in the accompanying photo) dropped by the S&V offices yesterday for a 2-hour surround-sound listening session with yours truly (at right)...

It was a lesson in perspective this week in Baja California, Mexico, where Sharp Electronics officially cut the ribbon on a $300 million LCD manufacturing plant in Rosarito. While American journalists were busy scribbling notes about screen sizes...

Led Zeppelin, one of the most notable holdouts in online music sales will finally become--legally--downloadable.

What are all those corporate logos doing on the BitTorrent homepage? Isn't this bastion of P2P technology a den of thieves? Apparently Paramount, 20th Century-Fox, Warner Bros., Lionsgate, Comedy Central, MTV, and other movie and TV studios are willing to entertain a different idea.

Musicians are the backbone of several industries: recording, broadcasting, music publishing, live performance, etc. Several of those industries are currently waging a rhetorical free-for-all over what musicians get paid. It's like watching a pit full of weasels fight over a burger.