Month: December 2003

Steve Jobs: Recording Companies Need To Be Educated

How did Apple get recording companies to buy in to the iTunes download store? “We told them the music subscription services they were pushing were going to fail. MusicNet was gonna fail, Pressplay was gonna fail. Here’s why: People don’t want to buy their music as a subscription. They bought 45s, then they bought LPs, they bought cassettes, they bought 8-tracks, then they bought CDs. They’re going to want to buy downloads. They didn’t see it that way. There were people running around — business-development people — who kept pointing to AOL as the great model for this and saying, ‘No, we want that — we want a subscription business’.”

Australia’s $39 Million To The Visual Arts

Australia’s various levels of government have united to pump an additional $39 million in funding to the visual arts. The money is the direct result of a Federal Government-initiated inquiry. In a joint announcement the governments said they would allocate the funds to support infrastructure, including giving more money to 40 arts and crafts organisations, expand the market through more art fairs and touring, give more grants to individual artists and provide more support for indigenous art.”

Death Of Theatre Criticism?

Theatre criticism is dying, writes Bill Marx. But why? “The fact is most of today’s critics have no interest in ideas: they are functionaries who treat reviewing as diplomacy rather than provocation. Once criticism becomes a job, rather than an act of passionate thought, timidity inevitably follows. ‘The tygers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction,’ proclaims poet William Blake. The consumer guide critics are winning; the horses that provide context are going to the glue factory on their knees. And a tear or two should be shed. But do not despair, because in the future the tygers of wrath will growl and a mad dog or two bark.”

Criticism Of Disney’s Eisner Growing

Is Michael Eisner vulnerable as head of Disney? After Roy Disney quit Disney’s board last week, more public criticism of Eisner has surfaced. “Despite a charm offensive by Mr. Eisner in response to the board uprising last year – wooing anxious or skeptical directors, institutional investors, partners and members of the news media over cocktails and in interviews – many say he has just papered over a lack of substantive change at the company.”

The Changing Balanchine

“Once upon a time it was easy to defend the orthodoxy of the Balanchine style in practice. It was on stage with the master’s imprimatur at the New York State Theatre. Things are not that simple anymore. Suddenly, Balanchine is everywhere. And his dances simply don’t look the same on Martins’ New York City Ballet, Tomasson’s San Francisco Ballet, Mitchell’s Dancer Theatre of Harlem, the Suzanne Farrell Ballet or in Villella’s own Miami City Ballet.”

What Is Matthew Bourne, Exactly?

“When Matthew Bourne was on the way up, it was generally accepted that what he did was choreography. When his 1995 Swan Lake became a huge success, however, dance critics began to say that he was not a choreographer but a director. The (sniffy) implication was that London is full of mere directors, whereas the world has few true choreographers. That Bourne was proficient at arranging a piece of theatre was not to be denied; but how efficient was he at making a dance?”

Some NBC Affiliates Refuse to Carry Saturday Night Live

“Over the weekend, half a dozen or so NBC stations refused to show “Saturday Night Live” because Al Sharpton, a presidential candidate, was hosting. They objected either because of the equal time rules or out of fear the 90-minute program would embarrass them by amounting to more political coverage than most TV stations offer in six months.”

Wright: Melbourne Theatre Stuck In The 19th Century

“According to Tom Wright, theatre in Melbourne has become stylistically mired in late-19th-century naturalism and has lost its intellectual edge. ‘There’s a discourse in Melbourne, mostly led by Adrian Martin, that takes cinema seriously and contextualises it as an art form. That’s exactly what’s lacking in theatre. No one’s providing a sense of historical perspective, and that makes it easy for theatre companies to develop a certain plodding sensibility where comfort becomes the major factor’.”

Coetzee Shows Up For Nobel

JM Coetzee turns up in Stockholm to accept his Nobel. “Although he did not turn up to collect either of his Booker Prizes in 1993 and 1999, he delivered this year’s Nobel Lecture last night and will receive the prize itself on Wednesday. What Coetzee will not do is make himself available for interview. He belongs to that small band of heroic writers who – without being as reclusive as Pynchon or Salinger – have declined to make themselves available for publicity purposes.”