According to Rolling Stone magazine, sales of vinyl albums continue to grow, setting a new record in 2010. Does vinyl reproduce sound better, or is it just a trend? Two audio experts join guest host John Dankosky to talk about the science of audio, and how perceptions can shape the sound experience. JOHN DANKOSKY, HOST: Up next:…

A short time ago in a place just a freeway ride away, 18,000 kids, both young and old, were welcomed to the Hollywood Bowl for a theatrical experience like no other. For four nights in August, the Los Angeles Philharmonic and conductor David Newman performed the epic “Star Wars” scores live along with the movie…

LET’S TALK ABOUT THE UK SINGLES CHART. SINCE MINISTRY OF SOUND WAS BOUGHT BY SONY, INDEPENDENT TOP 40 SINGLES ARE ALMOST NON-EXISTENT… EXCEPT FOR DITTO. WHAT’S GOING ON THERE? More people, especially in the hip-hop world, aren’t signing deals. Young Bane goes through Disturbing London, who went through us [before a recently-signed Parlophone JV]. Dave’s…

THAT WAS 2006, BUT BY 2007 YOU’D HAD YOUR FIRST TOP 40 SINGLE… We’d found this band, Koopa, who’d built up a pretty good fanbase. We explained to them that we thought we could get them into the charts. This was around September [2006], and we put them on pre-order from then until the second…

If you got in touch with Ditto Music a decade ago, you might have ended up with a bouncy castle. If you get in touch with Ditto Music today, you might end up with a global hit. The fast-growing music distribution and services company was founded in January 2007 by brothers Lee and Matt Parsons…

The 1970s brought about the idea that rock was important – and needed a canon of greatest albums to match. But in a digital age, is definitive musical excellence a ridiculous notion? Rock’s flight into seriousness in the 1970s had many ill effects. There was prog rock, jamming, not releasing singles – and the idea…

Artists received only 12% of the $43 billion generated in music industry revenue in the United States last year, according to a new report published by Citigroup last night. The study—conducted by a team of Citigroup’s researchers and analysts—states that most of the revenue is captured by middlemen, including tech companies, radio stations, and record…

“I’ll teach you how to flow,” Antonio tells Sebastian in The Tempest. Almost as long as hip-hop has existed, scholars both professional and less so have made efforts to compare its lyrics to the work of Shakespeare. The Folger Shakespeare Library offered a lesson, “M.C. Shakespeare,” that asked students to find comparisons between the rhymes…

Come on now. He doesn’t really need an introduction, does he? Lyor Cohen. It’s not hyperbole to suggest he’s one of the most-talked about – and fiercely debated – music executives in history. The thing is, he knows exactly what you say about him. The good and the bad. That stands whether you’re a supporter…

In 2012, a group of male patients underwent heart transplants at Teikyo University’s Department of Surgery, in Tokyo, Japan. As they recovered, closely monitored by attending physicians, an alert onlooker may have noticed a subtle difference in each patient’s recovery room: the ambient noise. Some rooms were silent. In others, Giuseppe Verdi’s “La Traviata” played…