News

From the Bandcamp Blog:

Bandcamp grew by 35% last year. Fans pay artists $4.3 million dollars every month using the site, and they buy about 25,000 records a day, which works out to about one every 4 seconds (you can see a real-time feed of those purchases on our desktop home page). Nearly 6 million fans have bought music through Bandcamp (half of whom are younger than 30), and hundreds of thousands of artists have sold music on Bandcamp. Digital album sales on Bandcamp grew 14% in 2015 while dropping 3% industry-wide, track sales grew 11% while dropping 13% industry-wide, vinyl was up 40%, cassettes 49%… even CD sales grew 10% (down 11% industry-wide). Most importantly of all, Bandcamp has been profitable (in the now-quaint revenues-exceed-expenses sense) since 2012.

First things first—who the hell designed that logo? If the message you want to convey about high-res music is that it's very old-fashioned, has little real money behind it, and it sounds kinda painful and spiky and stings like a bee, bravo, a job well done. I know that's harsh, so let me apologize to whomever RIAA member's son or daughter designed that logo.

From the press release dated May 11, 2016:

Let's say you want less boxes in your hi-fi but you don't want to give up the stuff you need and the stuff you like. And the stuff you need includes a DAC and the stuff you like (need?) includes Roon and Tidal HiFi. Well, more and more companies are answering your wants and needs by introducing what can best be described as networked DACs: In addition to the usual digital inputs (USB, S/PDIF), companies are adding Ethernet to their D to A converters so that they can stream from network attached storage and the Internet without the need for another box. Case in point, Ayre's new QX-5 Twenty: The Digital Hub.

From the press release:

New York, April 13, 2016 - The 1.2 release of Roon marks the launch of the Roon Core partner program, which places the Roon Core software functions into partner devices so that server companies can offer a turnkey Roon experience.

"For many customers, the journey of building and managing a computer audio system is a hobby that they enjoy, but for others, working through the challenges of making an ideal computer audio system is an obstacle to enjoying music.

"The Roon Core program means that these customers can leave the technology to others and have an off-the-shelf experience of Roon from trusted partners."—Roon Labs CEO, Enno Vandermeer

The Loudness Petition Group, which consists of members Eelco Grimm (Grimm Audio and HKU University of the Arts Utrecht), Bob Katz (Digital Domain), Matt Mayfield (Matt Mayfield Music) and Ian Shepherd (Mastering Media), is on a mission to cut the legs and logic out from under the excessive use of dynamic compression in our music. Their proposal and petition aims to get streaming services to apply "loudness normalization" by default (the loudness level as defined the Audio Engineering Society recommendations), thus rendering all streaming music equal in terms of volume level. Check out that video for a nice illustration of the problem.

In a press event held at Stereo Exchange in NYC, Peachtree Audio introduced us to Peachtree 2.0. I think it's fair to say that Peachtree Audio has been rather quietly going about its business as of late. They've moved much of their production back to North America from China, they've implemented multi-tiered quality control in every phase of production, and continued to develop what we've come to expect from the company; solidly engineered and built audio products with an eye toward incorporating new technology at very competitive prices. Peachtree 2.0 marks, in my words, the end of the "rather quietly" bit.

What's more, and most interesting (and I have to admit a little unexpected), is there are 1.35 million Tidal HiFi subscribers (that's the $19.99/mo CD quality service)! That's a lot of people caring about quality and that's great news. For a change.