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Cheap Music That’s Legal (Whoopee!)

“Music-for-peanuts is suddenly flooding the Internet, much of the tide being released by at least eight Web sites, each one telling the world that it has a quarter of a million songs or more in stock. This wave of legitimate, low-cost music may eventually sweep away music stores as we knew and loved them, because it is such an easy wave to ride. If you can surf the Internet – and especially if you have a high-speed cable modem or DSL connection to the Net – you can do this.”

Turner – Once You Get Beyond The Damn Hype…

What’s with all the “controversy about the Chapmans’ Turner entry this year? “Nobody I know who has actually seen the Chapman brothers’ Death, as the sculpture is called, thought it anything other than oafish. To my mind, it is by far the duffest work they have ever produced. The sense is of a stand-up comic who has lost his sense of timing and is reduced to begging for a laugh.” Meanwhile, the rest of the show is pretty good…

Complaints From Kabul

Asne Seierstad story “The Bookseller of Kabul” about Shah Mohammed Rais and his family, is a big bestseller. But the subject of her book is furious, and not sitting still without complaining. “In a nightmare scenario for any writer, her one-time ally has not only hired a high-flying lawyer, but flown out to Oslo to rally support. After welcoming Seierstad into his home after the fall of the Taliban, Rais says he is outraged by his portrayal as a tyrannical traditionalist bent on imprisoning women, including his teenage second wife.”

Loving To Hate You – 20 Years Of The Turner Prize

The Turner Prize is the art prize people love to hate. “In its early days the award was criticised for its emphasis on established names, but in 1991 it was relaunched with a hip new sponsor, twice the prize money and an upper age limit. It was thus perfectly positioned to pick up on the whole Britart phenomenon.” Now it fuels controversy after manufactured controversy. Here’s the Guardian’s look back at 20 years of the Turner…

Tarting Up The Classics

“Just when you thought it was safe to get in an elevator again, there comes a new twist on an old bastardization: the rearrangement of classical standards by performers whose chief selling points are not their musical chops but their sexy attire and cool attitudes. The Planets, a British acoustic-electronic ensemble, sell bizarre arrangements of Bach, Bizet and, of course, Clair de Lune on their Classical Graffiti disc. The OperaBabes, also British, indiscriminately mix arias and famous classical instrumental works – all arranged for vocal duet and backed up by various combinations of chorus, string orchestra and the inevitable electronic keyboards.”

Getting Hot Over “Smooth” Jazz

Hard-core jazz fans can’t abide it, but the so-called “smooth jazz” has a large and growing following. “It’s supposed to be banal tripe for people too meek for real jazz. It’s the boring music played on ‘quiet storm’ radio stations or heard in the waiting rooms, lounges and elevators. It’s even the porno industry’s soundtrack. Nonetheless, smooth jazz has its champions. And its audiences are perhaps the most diverse and harmonious in all of music.”

Melbourne Opera: A Long Road Up

“It is seven years since the Victoria State Opera disappeared in the merger that created the Sydney-based national company, Opera Australia, and started a stream of complaints that Melbourne’s needs are not being met.” The recharged Melbourne Opera Company looks to meet those needs, but the challenges are many. “For a start, it has no funding, so the budgeting skills are of the micro variety rather than the macro.”

When Google Meets Amazon

Amazon’s new searchable book service has been widely praised. But Google looks like it’s trying to get into the act too. “For the last few months, Google has been courting publishers, hoping to convince them to turn over book content that could be used in Google’s database, say people close to the discussions. How that content would be presented is not clear, but it would likely not be provided in excerpted passages to customers, as it is on Amazon. Instead, the material would go into a database that Google spiders would comb, then turning up relevant links. If a user clicks through, they would be sent to a separate page that contains a book abstract and the opportunity to buy the title.”

Recording Companies Increasingly Focusing On Older Consumers

While overall sales of recordings are down, music sales to older music lovers are strong. “The growing success of albums by older artists — and of singers like Norah Jones, who appeal to less cutting-edge tastes — offers some solace to an industry mired in a three-year sales slump. The older audience, typically more affluent consumers who grew up buying their music on vinyl LP’s, seldom uses the free file-sharing sites. And because they account for a growing segment of the record-buying public, labels are increasingly tailoring their releases and their marketing, particularly on television, to reach them.”