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Online Music Vendor Slashes Prices (Gotta Do Something To Get Customers)

Downloading songs from pay services over the internet generally costs 99 cents or more. But though the sites have licenses to sell the music, and a way to get it to customers, there have been too few customers so far. So one of the services is slashing its prices to 49 centers per track. That’s below cost, says the company – but you’ve got to get the customers somehow. Look for increasing competition in the next few months as more companies try to compete.

Barnes Collection Future Begins In Court

Legal wrangling over the future of the Barnes Collection outside Philadelphia has begun. The foundation is trying to move to Philadelphia, but is being challenged by Lincoln University, which currently appoints board members to oversee the Barnes. The university wants to keep control of the board, and objects to the move. Tuesday a judge granted Lincoln full status in the case, denying the same to other parties that have interests in the Barnes. The Barnes says it will go bankrupt if it is not allowed to move.

The Song Of Love…

“Why is starry-eyed romance so tied to music? Nothing touches people like a good love song. The love theme has been around from the birth of music in general. ‘It’s a timeless kind of a medium. It runs the gamut of emotion. There’s always a little sadness hidden in a love song because it reminds people of something that might not last’. The most-recorded song of all time, after all, is the lovelorn ode, ‘Yesterday,’ by Paul McCartney, reports the Guinness Book of World Records.”

Library Of Congress Gets Digital Money

The Library of Congress will get $100 million collect and preserve digital information, including images, CD’s, Web pages and electronic journals. The Library has been “lagging in the task of archiving electronica: scholarly journals, books and magazines that are ‘born digital’; CD-ROM’s; digital photographs, music and films; and millions of miscellaneous pieces of Internet-based material. Digital technology “has spawned a surfeit of information that is extremely fragile, inherently impermanent, and difficult to assess for long-term value.”

Creatives Vs. Bean Counters – Who Should Prevail?

The “combination of financial foundering and artistic success sums up the challenge of running an arts organisation. Which do you put first: the art or the accounts? Given that it is tough to find curators, opera administrators or artistic directors who are as good at managing as they are at having creative ideas, who do you put in charge: a bean counter who can balance the books, or the visionary with no head for figures?” The answer, every time, has got to be…

Grant Denied Because Of “Unpatriotic” Comment

An arts group in Whitesburg, Kentucky has been turned down for a $300,000 grant to create an exhibition hall for film documentaries and old radio programs because county officials objected to a remark they said one of the group’s members made on his radio program. County officials called the remark – that “America has killed more innocent people than any other country in the world” “unpatriotic,” but the disk jockey says he doesn’t remember saying it.

Sagging Ratings For Those Who Compile The Ratings

Radio industry execs are challenging Arbitron, the ratings company to improve its sampling rates. It seems fewer listeners are cooperating by filling out listening diaries. “As radio researchers, we have all been troubled for a long while over the impact that sagging response rates have had on Arbitron’s nationwide and local market products. These surveys are our currency for pricing our commercials and inventories industrywide.”

Drawing Little Comfort – Animators Brooding

“These are anxious times for film animators, whose business is being roiled by layoffs, new technology and tension between the industry’s longtime leader, the Walt Disney Company, and its upstart partner, Pixar Animation Studios. Computer technology is the essence of both the creative and production process of every movie. Those are not soothing words to traditional animators, who have watched jobs dwindle in the wake of computer techniques.”