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Lebrecht: Diversity Is A Red Herring

In the last several years, the language of diversity has begun to creep into the lily-white world of symphony orchestras, and it’s a big mistake, says Norman Lebrecht. “Diversity, or the policy that speaks its name, is a means of diverting orchestras from what they ought to be doing, making music, to what the Government ought to be doing, creating social harmony… It amounts to a mirror image of Hitlerite policy which entailed the removal of non-aryan races from German music, even though this would relegate the art to the margins of civilisation.”

The Rich Get Richer

Last year, media giant Vivendi Universal nearly collapsed under the weight of its own acquisitions, and came dangerously close to bankruptcy. Now, Vivendi is selling its entertainment arm to NBC, a move which will make the U.S. network one of the premier power players in an increasingly consolidated industry.

Big Media vs. Big Media

The Recording Industry Association of America is demanding that major internet service providers release a list of their customers to the RIAA, to aid in the industry’s prosecution of individuals engaged in illegal online file-sharing. But many of the ISPs, perhaps sensing something to be gained in taking “the people’s side” in the increasingly divisive debate over file-swapping, are refusing to release the lists and challenging the RIAA in court. The latest to sue is Charter Communications, citing its customers’ right to privacy as taking precedent over the requirements laid out in the infamous Digital Millenium Copyright Act.

Embracing the Future

“As the major record companies scramble to put a lid on peer-to-peer file-sharing networks like Morpheus and Kazaa, an upstart California record label is trying to revolutionize the industry by taking the opposite approach: making file sharing the heart of its business. Berkeley-based Magnatune calls its approach ‘open music,’ a blend of shareware, open source and grass-roots activism. The idea is to let users try music before they buy, and when they do, to give half of every sale to the artist. Magnatune’s motto: ‘We are not evil.'”

And How Much Did This Wonder Of Technology Cost?

The much-ballyhooed MediaMax CD3, a copy-protected disc which was designed to prevent its contents from being ‘ripped’ to computers and converted into digital music files, apparently needs fewer loopholes. The discs operate by launching a driver onto any computer into which they are inserted, and the driver blocks the ability to copy the disc. But the driver doesn’t work on Mac or Linux machines, and a college student is already publicizing his discovery that the driver can be bypassed on Windows machines, simply by pressing the key.

New York Merger Fatality

The failure of the Carnegie Hall/New York Philharmonic is a public embarrassment, writes Greg Sandow. “If you ask me, Carnegie Hall and the Philharmonic both look dumb. One issue, as anybody could have guessed beforehand, was how to accomodate all the concerts the Philharmonic gives each year with Carnegie’s strong and diverse schedule. How could it take all these months to figure that out? And how could the two organizations have announced plans to merge – actually announce that the meger was a done deal, with everything set except for the details – without settling such an obvious issue before the announcement was made? I can barely believe it.”

A Crisis For Live Theatre

“People watch an unprecedented amount of drama today, but they generally prefer to experience it through film and television; the appetite for the ‘live’ spoken variety is limited now, and there’s no going back on that. So a regional theatre must programme across the spectrum – stand-up comedy and modern dance as well as Shakespeare and Pinter. The immediate difficulty here is that there simply aren’t enough high-quality acts or shows designed to suit smaller stages.”