The voice of the high-end audio community
Back in the early-to-mid-1990s, there was no Spotify, no Pandora, no Napster. There were albums and tapes and CDs and MTV (which still played music then) and the radio. But what if you liked a particular genre of music and there wasn’t a local station that catered to your tastes? There was an answer on the way.
After months of planning, Audiogon is pleased to announce the creation of AutoGahn, a premier online marketplace for the sale and auctioning of luxury and classic automobiles.
It’s time to take another look at an old dogeared magazine and look at some vintage tech and music trends of the past. This month, we’ll flip through this February 1966 issue of Playboy which, although not exactly chock full of ads, does have two notable features … HEY! Get your mind out of the gutter.
Word came down late Tuesday that Lou Ottens, the man who launched a million mixtapes by virtue of inventing the compact cassette tape, passed away last weekend in his hometown of Duizel in the Netherlands. As a tribute to the man who made it possible, here’s a mixtape I made some 30 years ago.
Somebody came up with the bright idea of creating DVDs that you could rent and not have to return, because they would simply become unreadable after two days and you could throw them out. If that seems like a lot of waste, you have to remember that this was 2003, and you were probably getting an AOL disc in the mail every other day.
Forty years ago this month, the hi-fi industry stood at the edge of the digital precipice. The arrival of the Sony CDP-101, the first consumer compact disc player, was just a year away. But in February 1981, there was still much to be settled. What format would become the dominant means of digital music conveyance in the home? And whose version of that format would win out in the end?
Get together a bunch of recording artists and try to develop a better digital marketplace, one where the music doesn’t sound like crap and where you actually get paid, and whaddaya get? A yellow paperweight, that’s what.
RCA had the bright idea in 1964 to reproduce video in a phonographic format. Great idea. They then took 17 years to develop the idea and bring it to market. Not such a great idea.
It’s Christmas, so here’s an hour’s worth of songs to listen to while the yule log burns. What, you don’t have a fireplace? Better check the oven then …
That’s right, not rotating platforms for displaying automobiles. Actual record turntables for vehicles. This was a thing.
Audiogon Blog 