“File-sharing barons are facing their own day of reckoning after a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision last summer. Over the last four months, several Napster heirs have shut down and others are contemplating what they once couldn’t abide — doing business by the entertainment industry’s rules to survive.”
Blog
What Will You Pay For Media?
“The best things in life — TV, radio, newspapers — used to be free, or pretty darned close to free. And now they’re not. So the media question for 2006 is: What are you going to pay for, and why?”
Mozart’s Skull? (We’ll Know Sunday)
Scientists have been testing a skull found in an Austrian basement to see whether it belonged to Mozart. “Researchers said yesterday they would broadcast their findings on Sunday as part of a year of celebratory events marking the composer’s 250th birthday.”
Audubon Gets Extension To Surrender Instruments
Members of the quartet have been given more time before they have to turn over their instruments to the musician who sued them. “The extension came as progress was being made in negotiations with David Ehrlich, the violinist who sued Clyde Shaw, Doris Lederer and violinist Akemi Takayama after they ejected him from the quartet in 2000.”
Elliott Carter’s 80 Years Of Music
Elliott Carter’s music is “still more highly regarded across Europe than in the US, yet he has always been in an important sense an American composer. He has regularly drawn inspiration from US writers such as Walt Whitman, Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Lowell, John Ashbery and Hart Crane…”
The Louvre’s Record Year (WithThe Help Of The Da Vinci Code?)
The Louvre saw a record 7.3 million visitors in 2005. The previous record of 6.7 million visitors was set in 2004. Officials attribute the increased numbers in part to the popularity of The Da Vinci Code, and expect the forthcoming movie will result in even more visitors.
Byron manuscript Found
The only known manuscript of a poem by Lord Byron has been found in the archives of University College London. The original, which had been assumed lost, was found in an 1810 edition of The Pleasures of Memory by Samuel Rogers.
Smith Wins Whitbread
Ali Smith has won this year’s Whitbread Award for her first full-length novel, The Accidental. “The Scottish writer beat authors including Salman Rushdie and Nick Hornby to the title.”
The Art Of Ads
“The Advertising Icon Museum, to open in the fall of 2007, will feature hundreds of toys, dolls, display figurines, cereal bowls, coffee mugs and ashtrays depicting almost a century’s worth of fictional characters hawking everything from food and beer to household appliances and financial services. Electronic and printed displays will walk visitors through the evolution of commercial advertising in the United States and the importance icons have had in reaching customers, first in printed ads and later from the television screen.”
Columbus’ Mr. Theatre Dies At 93
Roy Bowen, known as “Mr. Theater” in Columbus, Ohio, has died of pneumonia in New York City. “Bowen led Players Theatre Columbus and Ohio State University’s theater program for about a decade each, when those institutions represented just about the only games in town.”