Satellite radio is supposed to be the answer for music fans who have been driven away from the FM dial by generic, preprogrammed formats, personality-less disc jockeys, and other components of the broadcasting horror known as Album-Oriented Rock. But it just so happens that the guy at the helm of one of the two satellite broadcasters is the very same individual who sent traditional radio spiralling down the toilet 30 years ago! This time, though, his addiction to audience research and marketing data might just work in the listeners’ favor: after all, satellite radio has the bandwidth to create a station for everyone, making one-size-fits-all radio unnecessary.
Blog
Scottish Publisher Keeps On Growing
“Scottish publisher Birlinn has added another asset to its growing business with the buy-out of Tuckwell Press, the Scottish academic publisher. Tuckwell Press’s founders and owners, John and Val Tuckwell, are to work with the Edinburgh-based Birlinn. Birlinn is riding high on the huge sales of the novels of Alexander McCall Smith. The company bought the Polygon imprint in 2002, acquiring the publisher of the No 1 Ladies Detective Agency series just as they exploded into a huge international success. McCall Smith’s sales have helped push Birlinn’s annual turnover to the £2 million mark.”
Cleaning Up A Classic
One of the finest examples of Victorian Gothic architecture in Europe is getting a £15 million makeover. The John Rylands Library in Manchester, England is being thoroughly cleaned, renovated, and modernized in an effort to lengthen its lifespan and allow the permanent display of more of the treasures in its collection. “It is hoped the new-look library will attract up to 90,000 visitors a year – three times as many as visited it before the restoration.”
Surviving The Wagner Marathon
Everyone loves a good Ring cycle, right? Well, maybe not the musicians in the orchestra pit, who have to play for 16 solid hours to get through the four Wagner operas. Wagner’s music is as physically demanding as classical performance gets, and injuries are a very real concern. In Australia, where the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra is gearing up for its first Ring, organizers have gone as far as bringing in physical therapists and other specialists to assist the musicians in completing the cycle without injury.
Downloading Confusion
“Rival technologies that baffle consumers will run more companies out of business in the nascent music download market than will head-to-head competition, one of the lead creators of MP3 playback technology warned Wednesday… Consumers nowadays can store thousands of songs in a pocket-sized device, play music and videos on their mobile phones and buy albums at the click of a button. But to their chagrin, a bewildering array of competing playback compression technologies and anti-piracy software options determines which songs play on which devices.”
A Sudden End For Georgian Orchestra
An overhaul of television in the former Soviet republic of Georgia has spelled the end of the Television and Radio Symphonic Orchestra. “As part of the reduction processes underway at the state-owned 1st Channel, the television management disbanded (the) symphonic orchestra that was formed in 1937 and basically has been recording compositions of Georgian composers and created a ‘gold fund’ – high quality collection of records for Georgian television and radio for the last 70 years.”
Or We Could Just Keep Forcing It On Unsuspecting Audiences
Art students are, as a rule, fairly well engaged with the world of contemporary art, and a serious knowledge of current masters is considered as essential as being able to distinguish between French Impressionists. So why are so few music students conversant with new music? An outspoken official at the UK’s Royal Academy of Arts thinks that the answer may be that no one has ever bothered to make new music as accessible as modern art has become. A “rigorously and cruelly curated new-music festival in London, like a Biennale” might help, and while we’re changing the world, why not make new-music concerts free to the public, since they never make any real money anyway?
Not Innocent, But Essential: “Smile”
“Schubert’s ‘Unfinished’ Symphony, Coleridge’s ‘Kubla Khan,’ Dickens’s ‘Mystery of Edwin Drood’: These are all works of art left incomplete by their creators, works that have invited speculation and fantasy for years. Those with a love for American popular music would immediately add ‘Smile’ — the legendary, lost Beach Boys album, begun and abandoned in the mid-1960s — to this list. … So what are we to think of ‘Brian Wilson Presents Smile,’ a new CD released yesterday?”
Festivals May Saturate Market
“The festival idea … has almost irresistible selling points: There is strength in numbers. There is spice in variety. There is built-in word-of-mouth. There may be more outlay, true, but there may be more revenue.” But are there simply too many festivals?
Less Airtime For David Hasselhoff?
“Germany should have quotas for the radio airtime to be dedicated to pop sung in the native language, industry officials say. They estimate only 10% of German radio’s play lists is sung in German, falling way short of France, Italy and Spain’s 50% native language ratio.”