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sounds great, again!!
Funny you mention that arkie.....
I saw an old post of his yesterday. He was a respectful and helpful person and I miss him, as well. RIP, "JV."
That's the carrot/
Any James Carr, yet?
LOL!!!!
HEY you guys!!!
Everything sounds great! Especially these classic gems you're pulling out, Missy!!
So what did Putnam say?
Who's on first??
Hey, who stopped the music?/
He's in tough company, lance
After MJ, things will never be the same.
Hey, HE would know, chwd!/
Is it theirs? Who knows?
IF it is a tweaked O-1K, given the desperation that went into developing that platform for last year's retail endeavor and the thin margins that they know exist in CE products, I would have to say it is negligible. (A Royalty)
Hey, maybe digitalway made it without any edig inside. Who owns the design of the shells that appear so similar? Who knows? Putnam MUST!
Did Ray mention when APS was
going public?
I believe that the posters
who reported emails regarding Gateway from Putnam, did so accurately. The Investor Relations department at edigital is slicker that snot, IMO, and has demonstrated on numerous occasions that it is not forthright and, in fact, has been blatantly deceptive in the answers given inquiring shareholders.
To paraphrase Dinkie, who said it well, "what do you expect.....he's the VP for Investor Relations!"
Great Tower 'o Power run, sister!
I didn't say they were finished
I've said for many months that this stock is a "players paradise." I am grateful.
Sentinel.....
Please give credit where credit is due
http://investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=1739354
corners up/
Would someone PLEASE help redwing?
http://www.agoracom.com/nonmemforum/msgreview.asp?id=292486&refid=0&orig=292486
"How else can one interpret this?"
Whoaaa. Trading on insider inuendo? I mean, if you follow the flow of info, a female edig employee tending their street scene booth said that there was a Gateway/EDIG JB in the works, way back in September. No public acknowledgement from Headquarters. Pictures show remarkable similarities as do specs. Only a complete putz wouldn't conclude that edigital is involved in the Gateway PJB.....but no public notice from the company. Putnam supposedly exchanges the referenced emails with ssi. No PR, as of yet.
If there is money lying on the table, take it. Congratulations to all of the emotionally detached smarties who did.
WOW!! PARTNERS OF NAPSTER
http://www.napster.com/partners.html
Gateway is one of Napster’s key OEM distribution partners. In addition to pre-installing the Napster software on Gateway PC’s, Gateway and Napster work together to build, market and distribute the Gateway Music Vault, unique packs of music pre-loaded on Gateway PC’s, offering customers a one-of-a-kind digital music experience.
Microsoft provides a number of key technologies, including the Windows Media format and Windows Media digital rights management, that help Napster deliver a consistent, high-quality experience. In addition, the Napster service is integrated into the Windows Media Player 9 Series and the Windows XP Media Center Edition.
Roxio provides the world’s #1 burning software to power Napster’s burning capability. Roxio and Napster also work together to create software bundles distributed at retail.
Samsung and Napster have partnered to jointly design, market and distribute a number of best of breed music-related devices, which enhance the Napster experience and extend it beyond the PC.
Yahoo! is Napster’s premier online portal distribution partner. With integrated placement within LAUNCH and MyYahoo!, as well as advertising throughout the Yahoo! Network, Yahoo! connects Napster to millions of Web users everyday.
Yes, U do/
Wow!! Fantastic find, Missy.
From the same recording, please see if you can find "Lush Life."
Play My Favorite Things, by
John Coltrane. You can bake a cake while it's playing!
WOW!! What a run, Missy/
I'm sorry, but that's sad/
Living on the west coast, Gil,
you wake up three hours late.
I think it has already been "excepted."/
Here we go, fred....
set to rocket into a three figure pps, right? Are these long sufferers about to claim the coveted brass ring? God, I hope so!
U.R./
It's about $10,005.24/
Alright!! Get ready for blastoff!/
Retailers can't get no satisfaction
By Kim Campbell / Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
When the Rolling Stones' new DVD of concert footage, "Four Flicks," hits the streets Tuesday, it will only be available at one outlet: Best Buy.
What started as a deal to benefit consumers is now putting the band between a rock and a hard place, as angry retailers in the United States and Canada protest the exclusive arrangement. In the US, some national and local chains are pulling the band's CDs off shelves or canceling plans for special promotions of Stones music.
The deal was the breaking point for some music-store owners, who have watched the rising number of "exclusives" between mass-market chains like Target and Best Buy and artists ranging from Christina Aguilera and Justin Timberlake to the Eagles to U2.
In the case of the Stones, retailers are smarting from being ignored by a band whose career they've supported, but they and others in the industry say there is more at stake if such deals continue. Exclusive deals could hurt the already diminishing independent and smaller chain music stores, further limiting consumers' choices. They also have the potential to make shoppers unhappy by forcing them to go from store to store to find their favorite music.
"If this practice doesn't change, then we're going to be forced to work our own exclusives on new releases. And I don't think that's good for the music industry, and I know it's not good for the consumer," says Fred Fox, executive vice president of merchandising and marketing at Trans World Entertainment, one of the largest specialty music and video retailers in the US.
Trans World, owner of Strawberries, FYE, and other chains, is pulling all but a handful of Stones albums from its 950 stores and sending them back - with the total returns potentially reaching 75,000 units. The move is not intended as a publicity stunt, says Mr. Fox, but to send a message to the Stones and other artists: Reconsider marketing with a single retailer.
Circuit City, a Best Buy rival, is also among those that took action, choosing to cancel a Stones promotion scheduled for November and December. "We feel the arrangement not only damages other retailers who have supported the Rolling Stones for years, it is also damaging to the band, because this product will be available in far fewer outlets," says Jim Babb, a spokesman for the 614-store chain.
While Best Buy is in a position to wield some clout with its 583 US stores, local chains and independent stores are not. Their livelihood is already affected by discount chains like Wal-Mart and Target, which are attracting consumers by offering albums at lower prices. Industry watchers say it's not surprising that retailers are rebelling.
"The don't need anything new coming down the pike. The Internet is bad enough," says John Kellogg, a professor of music business at the University of Colorado at Denver. He says the real concern with such a high profile deal is this: "If it's successful, then you're going to see other artists following the same type of business model."
These deals could be the model of the future, say some who follow the music business, with artists bypassing labels and other middlemen to deal more directly with distribution of their wares. Best Buy, for example, took on the production, manufacturing, marketing, and distribution of "Four Flicks" on the Stones' behalf. Instead of lots of entities between the band and the fan - increasing costs - it was just the retailer, says Gary Arnold, senior vice president for entertainment at Best Buy.
Some deals, like those made with Target, include albums made exclusively for the store.
In the case of the Stones, the band's management brokered the deal. After soliciting offers, they settled on Best Buy, because it could offer the four DVD set for $29.99 in the US. "The other offers we received ... would have had the product being sold for at least $20 to $30 higher to the consumer, something which was unacceptable to the Stones and TGA," said Michael Cohl, CEO of TGA Entertainment, the Stones' tour promoter, in a statement.
Best Buy's Arnold dismisses the idea that consumers will be inconvenienced if such deals continue, pointing out that people can order products online or by phone - and have them delivered, rather than hopping from store to store.
The upheaval from retailers is puzzling, he says, noting that now is a time to make entertainment offerings more compelling to consumers. "The music industry has articulated ... all the challenges confronting the business," he says. "[But] it's too easy to sit on the sidelines and not do anything."
Cool, drummer!
You two played some great music
over the last day or so!
It was an Agora thing, fred.....
you wouldn't understand.
Sony and Bertelsmann Announce Plans
for Merging Music Units
By KEN BELSON
TOKYO, Nov. 6 — Two of the world's largest entertainment giants, Sony of Japan and Bertelsmann of Germany, said today that they were planning to merge their music businesses into a new joint venture to bolster their flagging operations.
The companies signed a nonbinding letter of intent to form Sony BMG, which would be 50 percent owned by each company. The two companies have been negotiating for several weeks.
Sony BMG would be the second-largest music company in the world, after Universal Music Group.
The move comes as record companies globally try to find ways to offset the explosion in music available legally and illegally on the Internet. High production costs and competition from other forms of entertainment, including movies and video games, have also contributed to sliding music sales.
A Sony-Bertelsmann venture would likely face scrutiny from various governments, since only five record labels dominate the world's music business.
The venture with Bertelsmann's BMG recording studio, if concluded, would be the latest step by Sony to overhaul its faltering electronics and entertainment empire.
The Tokyo-based company, which has struggled to revamp its consumer electronics division, has also had to make extensive management changes at its music group, which has its headquarters in New York. In January, Sony appointed Andrew Lack as chairman and chief executive of Sony Music Entertainment, replacing Thomas Mottola, a long-time executive who differed with Sony's top management. Mr. Lack is to become the chief executive of Sony BMG.
Mr. Lack helped rebuild NBC News, but had no previous experience in the music business. Soon after his appointment, Sony Music announced plans to eliminate 1,000 jobs in hopes of saving $100 million a year. Sony took a charge of 4.1 billion yen, or $37 million, in the July-September quarter to pay for the restructuring of its music business.
Rolf Schmidt-Holtz, currently the chairman and chief executive of BMG, is to become the chairman of Sony BMG.
Sony's music division, which includes artists like Aerosmith, Michael Jackson and Jennifer Lopez, has struggled for several years. Sony has also tried to reduce costs at its movie division.
In the July-September quarter, sales fell to 127 billion yen, 8.9 percent less than a year earlier. Thanks to cost-cutting measures, though, the group recorded a 300 million yen operating profit, compared with a 5.6 billion loss a year earlier.
Sony is not the only music business in trouble. In October, the Universal Music Group, the world's largest music company and a division of Vivendi of France, said it would reduce its work force by 11 percent. Last year, EMI Group cut 20 percent of its employees. Time Warner has also considered merging with or selling its Warner Music business to EMI, and it had held combination discussions as well with BMG in the past.
BMG is the smallest of the world's top five labels. It reported operating losses of 117 million euros, or $133.6 million, in the first half of the year, nearly triple its losses of a year ago. The company attributed the poor results to a combination of delayed album releases, writeoffs of record contracts with Whitney Houston and other stars, and the battle against piracy.
Sales of recorded music have fallen in the past three years as more consumers download music from the Internet. Sony, in particular, has been hurt by this trend because it not only produces music, but also makes the recorders, stereos and other devices to listen to it.
But that's another story.....
http://www.agoracom.com/nonmemforum/msgreview.asp?id=291193&refid=0&orig=291193
"Tanned, 64 years old and gregarious, the self-taught engineer has made a fortune in four decades of inventing electronic gadgets outside the corporate tent. In 1967 he delivered a ''transcutaneous Doppler,'' a forerunner of sonography. Since then Norris has devised the 20-hour cassette tape, the first palm-size digital voice recorder and an in-the-ear speaker that uses the bones of the skull to transmit sound. Norris sold the rights to that last device for $5 million a decade ago. GN Netcom now sells $40 million of them a year under the Jabra name for hands-free phone use."
Loudeye's hard music lesson
plants it in center of controversy
By Kim Peterson
Seattle Times technology reporter
At the beginning of last week, Seattle-based Loudeye was trumpeting a new system developed by two college students as a groundbreaking, legal way to share music.
By week's end, the digital-media company was in defensive mode after the service — which it supplied with songs — was shut down.
Now it's not saying anything as it stands at the center of controversy.
The company's predicament demonstrates the bewildering issues that surround digital music. New and evolving technologies are forcing the recording industry into uncharted territory, where the rules are so murky that even a student research project cannot escape scrutiny.
Loudeye supplied tens of thousands of songs for a campuswide electronic music library developed by students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The company issued a news release praising the system, the Library Access to Music Project, or LAMP, when it launched last week and emphasized the system was legal.
"LAMP is an innovative approach to enabling legitimate digital-music distribution at universities," said Chief Executive Jeff Cavins in the release.
But Loudeye did not have the right to provide the music, the recording industry said. Copyright concerns raised by at least one record label prompted MIT to shut down the system Friday.
MIT said it would like to get LAMP running again but not until the legal issues are resolved. Loudeye is not commenting on the issue at all.
LAMP evolved from a two-year research project by two students studying electrical engineering and computer science. The students wanted to develop a way to instantly access songs from a campuswide library without breaking copyright law.
They found the answer in MIT's cable-television system. Users could choose a particular song or compact disc from LAMP's Web site, and the music would be broadcast over one of 16 cable-television channels. Students could not download or copy the music files.
The songs were broadcast over a non-digital source, and LAMP won praise as an elegant way to get around some of the stringent copyright and distribution laws associated with digital music. Some observers even hoped it would quell the rampant music piracy at universities by providing an alternative source of music.
The project was funded with $60,000 in grants from Microsoft, which has a research alliance with MIT called I-Campus. A Microsoft spokeswoman said yesterday the company only provided money for LAMP and is not otherwise involved in the project.
LAMP creators Keith Winstein, 22, and Josh Mandel, 21, spent about $25,000 to buy hard drives stocked with about 48,000 songs from Loudeye, which makes money by providing content to online music stores, such as Apple's iTunes.
MIT put LAMP through a yearlong legal review before it went live. It concluded the project's licensing requirements were similar to those governing campus radio. MIT already pays for blanket licenses to broadcast songs on its radio network. LAMP got the green light to launch Oct. 27.
It didn't take long for the project to hit a snag. Universal Music Group contacted Loudeye with concerns about improper licensing, according to a source familiar with the discussions. Loudeye brought those concerns to MIT.
The university shut the project down after five days, although hopes are high LAMP will rise again.
In a statement issued Friday, MIT seemed to lay much of the blame for the debacle on Loudeye.
"We relied on Loudeye to provide us with authorized content and for Loudeye to facilitate and obtain the appropriate licenses," the university said. "We have been working with Loudeye on obtaining content since October 2002, and Loudeye assured us on multiple occasions that the content they provided to us was prepared fully under authorization from the record labels and on behalf of the publishers."
Finger-pointing from the recording industry also appeared to be aimed at Loudeye. Universal Music Group, a unit of Vivendi Universal, said it has been contacted by MIT and will work with the university.
"It is unfortunate that MIT launched a service in an attempt to avoid paying recording artists, union musicians and record labels," Universal said. "Loudeye recognized that they had no right to deliver Universal's music to the MIT service, and MIT acted responsibly by removing the music."
Analysts say LAMP has become an embarrassment for Loudeye, which touts its extensive inventory of encoded music and its licensing agreements with the five major record labels.
"Loudeye should not have let this happen," said Phil Leigh, an analyst who follows the digital-music industry. "They're moving very fast and they just made a misstep here. It's going to cost them from a public-relations perspective."
The issue hasn't affected Loudeye's stock, which dipped slightly over the past week but closed yesterday up 4 cents at $2.64.
Perhaps investors are used to the complexities surrounding digital-music deals.
"It can be a quagmire to try and navigate through the process," said Yankee Group analyst Paul Ritter. "It's not black and white about what's legitimate and what's not considered kosher."