Olive has unveiled a new line of stereos today in the form of the Opus. And it has some serious storage capacity and a unique design. It’s official name is the Opus No. 4. This stereo will conveniently save imported CDs in lossless FLAC format and has a touchscreen menu.

It will let you make playlists, listen to online radio stations and more. There’s also wireless playback. The Opus is available in several models to suit your needs. There’s a 500GB model, a 1TB model and an extreme 2TB model.

Cheap Trick are living up to their name. Their latest trick is that their newest album will be released on an 8-track tape. Hows that for gimmicky marketing? On one hand, no one will ever hear your songs, but on the other, your stunt will get all kinds of publicity for when the tracks hit iTunes.

It will cost you $30 if you still own an 8-Track player. The new album is comprised of 12 songs broken into four sets of three songs each. It must have been hard to edit them to adhere to the four 10-minute slots on a standard 8-track.

Since sales of physical music formats have declined dramatically with the massive adoption of digital music, record companies have been struggling to find a new format that music fans will buy. For instance, SanDisk launched its slotMusic format to try and boost physical music sales.

Gemalto and Universal Music have announced another new music format called the Smart Video Card. The rectangular card has a hole for a DVD player spindle and a SIM card with up to 120MB of content stored.

If you’ve been paying attention to the gadget world you know that we’ve featured many turntables. Companies are making more and more. Seriously, people are spinning more vinyl. And according to the New York Post, Best Buy is thinking about selling vinyl records in their stores. Yes, it’s hard to believe.

Vinyl albums’ sales are growing. As much as 15 percent in 2007 and 89% more in 2008. The 2009 forecast is even better. And so Best Buy has started a pilot program in 100 stores. The results were good. So good that they are thinking about using as much as eight square feet in each of their stores to sell vinyl records.

Fans of both The Beatles and Rock Band have reason to get excited. Very excited. Are you sitting down? MTV Games and Harmonix have just announced a partnership with Apple Corps, Ltd. to bring the band’s music (and instruments) to the Rock Band universe.

The game will apparently premiere with a set of new hardware “modeled after instruments used by John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr throughout their career.” If you ceck out the site, there’s a holder page up with a launch date of September 9th, but as soon as we get more info, we’ll pass it on.

Marantz, known for its luxury hi-fi output, has announced the CR502, an all-in-one music system. The CR502 consists of two stereo amplifiers, each with 2 x 25W, adding up to 100W of music output and comes complete with a CD drive and DAB tuner.

You’ll also get a variety of inputs and outputs that includes a USB 2.0 port. It’s all packed into a compact aluminum chassis. The CR502 will also give you a clock radio and alarm with sleep functions. This all-in-one will cost you about GBP 499.

When you get two nerd things in one, the result is always awesome. Tesla coils are cool. Tesla coils in a Doctor Who episode is cool. Tesla coils playing the Doctor Who theme is completely nerdgasmic.

ArcAttack uses a unique DJ system combined with the Tesla coils to put on a music show with lightning bolts and synthesizer sounds. I ask you fellow geeks, have you ever heard anything so beautiful?

Just look at that robot face on the Brionvega RR226. Who wouldn’t be charmed by that retro 60s ‘design? Both the RR226 and its 1965 counterpart, the Radiofonografo RR126, earned the nickname “musical component robots” due to that face, with it’s dials and speakers.

But it isn’t all about looks. Brionvega is known for creating superior decks with quality components. This one is no exception, combining a phonograph, radio, record player and a CD/DVD drive. In fact, the new model looks like a copy of the original, aside from the inclusion of the CD and DVD drive. No word on price yet, but we probably can’t afford it anyway.

For those of you who like to have a home that is more bar then dwelling, consider this device instead of a jukebox. It will go great with your round pool table. The IntelliTunes Digital Jukebox. It features two screens and mounts on your wall. It doesn’t just play CDs.

It will also network with your computer so that you can play all of the music you have stored on it by remote control. On top of that, it sports a visualization screen for animations to play along with the music. Consider it a Mega iPod. What we’re talking about here is a built-in UltraHiFi 360 watt 2 channel amplifier and full windows XP functionality, wireless internet, online radio streaming, DVD drive and iPod/MP3 support all in one unit on your wall. Sweet.

How does Robin crank up the tunes while Batman is out cleaning up the streets of Gotham? With Batman’s boombox of course. While it’s not shaped like a bat-wing or anything, it has a strange shape that resembles a…bat-something or other, with colors that go more with the comic books then the movies.

Features include such things as a tuner with LCD display, the ability to play CDs, CD-R and CDRW format, dynamic bass boost, line-in for portable MP3, player support, and top load media. It’s not hard to imagine Batman entertaining Catwoman one night and as he goes to put on some soft romantic tunes, the sound of Robin’s hardcore heavy metal deafens him as it sends bats flying everywhere. After a moment he switches CD’s, but sadly Catwoman’s purr is now gone. Such is the sad and lonely life of the Batman. Sigh.

Many of us have a closet full of old cassette tapes that we haven’t seen since at least the mid nineties. Did you ever think that they could turn into something useful? Like a creepy and cool skeleton for instance?

Brian Dettmer is a man who knows what to do with old music. Melt it and let your music rise from the ashes as something undead. It’s especially appropriate if you use heavy metal tapes. Never throw anything away people. Instead, make it into something else. Imagine how much creepier it would have looked had he used VHS tapes.

If you are an aspiring musician who is having trouble keeping the beat, then here’s a new update on the metronome that will help. The BodyBeat is an electronic metronome that attaches to your fingertip and lets you feel the beat of the music.

The Peterson BB-1 BodyBeat keeps your beat on target by sending tiny little pulses down the wire to your fingertip. It’s a silent method of learning the rhythm that lets you concentrate on playing your music, instead of listening for clicks or watching for blinking LEDs. The Peterson BodyBeat retails for just under $100 USD. Money well spent to improve your jamming.

This boombox is an awesome mix of music and sculpture built into the body of a double bass by artist David Ellis. He incorporated a four-way stereo speaker system, two vaccum tube preamps, a Crown power amp, and a Behringer equalizer.

In case you’re wondering, there is no iPod dock, but it does come with one of the Apple players to provide a music source. You’ll have a hard time getting your hands on one, it’s limited to a run of only three systems. Which is just as well, since many of us don’t have a spare $15,000.

LocaModa and Touch Tunes are doing the nasty together and plan on having a monster love child. The idea is to hook up to 30,000 jukeboxes to social networks, allowing them to be controlled remotely by cell phones. The partnership allows users to let their handsets interact with flat panel screens powered by TouchTunes jukebox’s media server.

Social networks will display all interactions as data feeds. Online users can view and participate at their favorite locations. Is this taking social networks too far? Where does it all end? I don’t know, but it looks like that Jukebox is in the middle of a Bermuda triangle type deal. Hope it doesn’t disappear.

Any aspiring American Idol hopefuls that want to approve their voice but don’t like Karaoke, might want to try this device. Not everyone can afford a vocal coach, plus you probably shouldn’t inflict your voice on others.

This high quality dynamic microphone plugs into your laptop and uses software to measure your range and pitch. That way you can improve on it and hopefully try out in front of the Idol crew one day, only to have Simon tell you that your singing sounds like a drawn out fart. It has 20 tutorials and a tripod to sit on your desk, plus it comes with 12 songs and you can download more. It wll cost you $89.99.