Category: music

Of course the orchestra didn’t like Don Rosenberg’s coverage. Of course it talked to the paper about it. But it’s an unusually public exposure of hypocrisy to follow a public assertion of “we had nothing to do with this” with “it was our right to defend ourselves.”

Most Americans have no problem with BMI charging for its music — except when they do.

“Now that the outsized profits of the CD era have disappeared, the music business is rapidly retrenching. With a limited amount of money to make–a sum dwarfed by movies, video games, and sporting events–many bands may figure out that major labels’ publicity budgets are an unsustainable luxury.”

“The company now known as the Washington National Opera has always had trouble keeping its finances in order. As a result, it has come to rely on a small group of donors who, time and again, have bailed the season out. These two traits are now clashing head-on.”

“Music industry up 5% in 2009”, “Music piracy crisis ‘over’ as industry revenues rise to £3.9bn”, “Consumer spend on live music hit a record breaking £1.5bn”, screamed headlines the other day. Great news! So what have all these artists and record labels been going on about, complaining about what a dire state the music industry is in?

“Vassily Sinaisky will replace avant-guard composer Leonid Dessiatnikov, who was appointed to the post in September 2009 and whose contract was set to run through December 2011.”

“Vevo, now the number three most popular video site on the internet behind YouTube and Yahoo, is a Universal- and Sony-led initiative to concentrate all major label music videos under one roof, so that websites including YouTube must embed those videos from Vevo if they want to display them, rather than forging deals directly with the labels themselves.”

“The Chicago Sinfonietta is an orchestra that was founded in 1987 to give classical musicians who are members of minority groups greater professional opportunities. In a field with a minuscule number of black performers, it prides itself on the racial composition of its players, staff members and board, with roughly half representing minorities.”

“The layoffs and emergency fundraising are the latest in a series of moves aimed at staving off economic failure by Northeast Ohio cultural institutions.”

The playwright responsible for Shopping and F***ing recounts how a crush on an ENO stagehand led to his becoming a real opera queen, one whose first lyric work, written with composer Conor Mitchell, opens next week in London.