When Kazaa agreed this week to pay $115 million in damages to the recording industry and relaunch itself as a legal music download service, it perpetuated a business model that many observers see as shortsighted and seriously flawed. “Aside from the fact that there’s no clear mechanism for getting this money to the artists who are supposedly losing their livelihoods due to all of this downloading, what’s really shocking is how little it all adds up to in comparison with how much the record labels might have made by agreeing to Napster’s proposed plan, which would also have solved all of the device compatibility issues that still plague us today.”
Month: July 2006
Could Full Body Trombone Tackling Be Far Behind?
Plenty of orchestras have embraced the trend of performing concert versions of the musical scores to video games, so it probably shouldn’t surprise anyone that the Houston Symphony is planning a concert of music from the National Football League. You didn’t know the NFL produced original music? Silly you. The league has, in fact, had not one but three composers on call over the last 40 years, writing the full orchestral scores you hear under the voice of Harry Kalas on the film-quality highlight reels put out by NFL Films.
Downloadable Music, Without That Nasty Brimstone Aftertaste
A new online music service making use of the motto “We Are Not Evil” is bucking industry trends and bypassing what it sees as an obstructionist recording industry. “Magnatune sets out to be fair and friendly to both artists and consumers. You can listen to any Magnatune album streamed complete for free from its website, download it for a suggested fee of $8, or order it on a finished CD (suggested price $8 a disc, plus $4.97 for duplication costs and postage). Fifty percent of all revenues go directly to the artist(s). All music on Magnatune has been cleared for licensing, so it can be broadcast or used in films or other audiovisual and Web-based productions.” And yes, Magnatune has plenty of classical…
Tickets Going Fast In Edinburgh
Edinburgh’s famed summer festivals are having a great year at the box office. “Some venues are reporting ticket sales up by as much as 100 per cent on this time last year, as Festival-goers vie to book shows before they are sold out.” The Edinburgh Fringe, the world’s largest Fringe Festival, reports a huge increase in online sales over last summer.
Boston Museum Sending Loot Back To Italy
“The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, has agreed to return to the Italian government artifacts long suspected of being looted, according to a tentative agreement announced today. In exchange, Italy will loan the MFA objects from the country’s vast holdings of antiquities, and work with the museum to make sure the MFA does not acquire stolen works in the future.”
Gandhi Says No (Again) To Biopic
Indian politician Sonia Gandhi and her ruling Indian National Congress Party have threatened legal action against the producers of a new biographical film focused on Ms. Gandhi. “Alarmed, the producer [has] halted the project. It was the second time in less than a decade that Gandhi and her political advisers had taken legal action to prevent the making of a film about her life.”
West End Booming On The Back Of Song & Dance
London’s West End is awash in musicals both old and new this season, and a survey of UK ticket buyers suggests that they couldn’t be happier. “There were some concerns that musicals were squeezing out ‘straight plays’,” but some observers have pointed out that full houses for musicals are clearly far preferable to the darkened houses the West End has frequently sported over the last several seasons.
Did Andrew Lloyd Webber Just Accuse Others Of Redundancy?
Andrew Lloyd Webber is allowing the audience of a UK reality TV show to choose the leading lady for his new revival of The Sound of Music, causing many in the theatre industry to throw up their hands in exasperation. But Lloyd Webber says he has good reason to trust the people over the experts, “[delivering] a withering assessment of stage schools, which he says are churning out performers of such uniformity that he can almost tell which school they come from.”
Is Kazaa’s Capitulation Too Little, Too Late?
“The death of Kazaa as an illegal service is notable – the $100m damages payout represents half of the entire value of the European legal download market in 2005… Kazaa is not the people’s favourite it was several years ago, and, furthermore, the introduction of various filters to protect illegal downloading on the site could well see a mass migration making the site a has-been anyway. Those that have migrated to the likes of iTunes are the law abiding easy sell. Filesharers are tougher nuts to crack.”
Nothing But New
The Venice Film Festival is taking a risk this year, presenting nothing but world premieres among the films vying for the fest’s top prize. “Twenty one films will compete for the Golden Lion, which was won last year by Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain… Competing films include Bobby, written by actor Emilio Estevez, about the final days leading up to Senator Robert Kennedy’s assassination, and Alfonso Cuaron’s sci-fi thriller Children of Men. Brian De Palma’s The Black Dahlia, also in competition, will open the 63rd festival.”