The amount of legally purchased downloaded music has increased 10 times in the past year. But what’s really interesting, is what is being downloading. “Music fans are downloading a wide range of songs, with the top 100 downloads accounting for just 11% of sales. This contrasts with CD single sales, where the top 100 CD singles account for 77% of total CD singles sales.”
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Big Plans In Baghdad
In the aftermath of the fall of Baghdad, the looting and ransacking of the Iraq Museum was viewed as a very avoidable tragedy indicative of the inability of the occupying forces to protect the country’s national treasures. But “ten months after its looting, the Iraq Museum has recovered nearly half of the artifacts stolen. Many of those treasures, like the museum itself, are in need of extensive restoration. And a more ambitious goal has emerged, as well: of returning the museum to a role it has not played in a generation, as a center of scholarship and as a place to display Iraq’s priceless archaeological heritage.”
Envy Not The 9/11 Curator
As national tragedies go, the 9/11 terrorist attacks stand out for the visual images left in the minds of everyone who watched the horror unfold, either in person or on television, so the idea of creating a museum to memorialize some of the objects found in the wreckage of the World Trade Center was a natural. But what objects should make the cut? “At the beginning, with memories so fresh and personal and abundant, the most difficult curatorial choices will have to be made. If the museum were to draw on nothing more than the artifacts… that are now stored in Hangar 17 at Kennedy International Airport, it would have to winnow the collection by about 20 percent just to fit in the designated space.”
The Ultimate Do-It-Yourself Music
Who needs a big expensive piano, really? After all, you can make beautiful music for only a few measley bucks! Just “pry open a Gameboy, tinker with its electronic guts, plug the re-engineered result into a Speak & Spell, duct tape it all together, sprinkle liberally with glitter, hook it up to an amplifier and let the good times roll.” The act of creating such self-hacked instruments is known as “circuit bending,” and a new festival celebrating the fad may be proof that it’s becoming a legitimate form of artistic expression.
Solutions? No. But We Do Have A Task Force!
The U.S. Justice Department has announced that it will form a task force to look into the issue of illegal content piracy (online song-swapping, etc.,) and that the task force will advise the attorney general on how the department should be dealing with the problem. “The announcement took place on the same day that a House judiciary subcommittee unanimously approved a bill that would punish file swappers with up to three years in jail for first offenses, and up to six for repeat offenses.”
You Mean MTV Still Plays Videos In Europe?
MTV Europe has backed off efforts to force a cut in the royalty rate it pays to independent record labels. The TV music network, which also owns European music channels VH1 and TMF, had sought a rate cut of 55% from nearly 300 smaller labels, but the companies went public with the dispute, and MTV has apparently backed down.
Taking To The Streets For Gypsy
Cast members in the Broadway production of Gypsy are out on the streets around the TKTS booth in Times Square drumming up business for the show. “Most people have no idea what they want to see. So if you give them a reason to come, like ‘I’m in the show,’ they’ll usually come. It is a grass-roots effort that might be working. Since March 10, the cast’s first day on the TKTS line, the show has been averaging sales of more than 300 half-price tickets a day. Prior to the campaign the show rarely broke 200 at the booth.”
Lincoln Center Redo To Commence (at least the first part)
Finally – an agreement. Now the first phase of Lincoln Center’s badly-needed redevelopment can get started. “The first phase of this grand effort is to improve West 65th Street. Now it feels less like a thoroughfare and more like an oversize back alley. A hulking overhang crosses the street, throwing much of it into perpetual shadow, and the walls of Lincoln Center on either side loom large and forbidding. Early redesigns featured bright marquees, a transparent bridge and a wide staircase leading up into Lincoln Center on the south side of the street.”
The Audience Problem (Yes, We Mean You!)
Audience behavior has got worse and worse in recent years. “Why is this sort of behaviour so common in theatres nowadays? Presumably because we live in a restless channel-flicking culture, where concentration is no longer a virtue. Epidemics of coughing and chatting can, of course, serve as a valid critical response to a tedious spectacle. Yet they are mostly just a manifestation of inattention, laziness, and sheer selfish rudeness. And I’m convinced that people don’t switch off their mobile phones because sub-consciously they crave the distraction.”
$630 Million Brooklyn Project Underway
Construction is beginning on the $630 million redevlopment of the area around the Brooklyn Academy of Music. “Called the BAM Cultural District, the idea, on the drawing board since 1998, is only now beginning to take shape. The project is spearheaded by Harvey Lichtenstein, who served as BAM executive director from 1967 to 1999 and who now heads up the BAM Local Development Corporation, in charge of turning the idea of a cultural district into reality.”