Category: music

“For years, labels and publishers avoided too-complicated TV pacts. But at a time when both sectors are looking for new sources of profits — and with radio on the wane and musicvids a rarity on MTV and VH1 — TV is serving as an extension of labels’ marketing departments.”

There is an identity crisis. Before liberation, songs appealed to a definite we, united in a struggle against them. But in South Africa now everyone is we, united in a “rainbow nation”.

“After years picking apart scraps of varnish taken from Stradivarius instruments, scientists have ruled out any secret ingredient as the key to the fiddles’ superb timbre. They reveal that Antonio Stradivari (1644-1737) applied two simple products in his workshop in northern Italy: oil and pine resin.”

The site “shows music fans where they can get the cheapest downloads from a number of music sites and allows them to click through to buy those songs. The iTunes store, the market leader in online music sales, is crowded out by cheaper rivals such as Tesco and we7 and fails to appear as offering the lowest price on any one of the current top 40 albums.”

The year-old New York City annex to Cleveland’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum will shut down Jan. 3.

Both companies grew out of the Amato Opera, a feisty, much-loved troupe founded in 1948 by the impresario and conductor Anthony Amato with his wife, Sally Amato. Mr. Amato closed the company in June, to the shock of many.

“Longing for Christmas snowfall was hardly a common image before Berlin’s song. And Christmas carols, not secular songs, dominated the seasonal music scene. (After the success of “White Christmas,” songwriters followed with similarly wistful hits, including “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” and “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.”)”

“Devised in his home studio by that secret Darwinian, the jingle-composer, the jingle has one aim, one raison d’être: survival. Wit, prettiness, fluency – none of these signify if the jingle doesn’t attach itself immediately to the host-brain and dig in.”

LA cracks the list…

16-year-old Christie To “is one of ten young Cantonese Opera artists who’ve been striving to resurrect the ancient Chinese art form” in a new government-funded troupe. “It has proven an uphill battle to find younger audiences and performers given its musty image, uncertain career prospects and extreme hardships in mastering the art form.”