Here is a fun site and a fine example of how the Internet has contributed to the preservation of our cultural heritage. Created and maintained by Glenn Sage, this site showcases some of the over 2,000 wax cylinder recordings that Sage has preserved by recording them digitally. A new two-minute recording is offered in RealPlayer and .wav or .mp3 format each month, and the archive contains...

On January 12, 2000, MP3.com launched Instant Listening Service and Beam-it, free services that allow users to listen to their music CDs through their computers using MP3's applications and technology. A user loads CDs into his or her CD ROM drive, and the CD is then matched to one of the 40,000 CDs in MP3.com's database. Then MP3.com transfers a MP3-formatted copy of the CD from their database...

Provided by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), this site offers a database of gold, platinum, multi-platinum, and diamond record sales awards, "the longest-running objective measure of achievement for sound recordings in the United States." At the site, users will find recent record sales headlines, a brief history of the awards, a pull-down menu listing of monthly awards since...

A federal judge's order, made public Wednesday, January 30, 2002, puts the recording industry's copyright infringement suit against Internet song-downloading service Napster, Inc. on hold until February 17, 2002. The case was put on hold for a month after both sides submitted requests to seek a possible settlement. Capitol Records, Inc. and Virgin Records America were the only two recording labels...

On Tuesday, August 8, 2000, 28 states, including New York and Florida, banded together to file a federal lawsuit against five of the largest record companies and three major music retailers, accusing them of fixing the prices of compact discs. The lawsuit charges the music companies Tower Records, Sony, BMG, Warner Music Group, and Universal Music with inflating the price of CDs by as much as $2,...