Category: music

Apple’s iTunes “has sold over five billion songs since its 2003 debut, while the iTunes music catalog has ballooned to over eight million tracks. Customers can also choose between over twenty thousand television episodes or over two thousand films, 350 or so of which are available in high definition.”

Timothy O’Leary, 33, who joined Opera Theatre of St. Louis as executive director in January, will be the company’s new general director.

Less than 10 years ago, it was common for albums to cost $15 and above. Apple helped redefine what the price of an album could be in the minds of consumers, but Steve Jobs’ company is far from the only reason that albums are costing less and less.

It was made in 1951. “The recording captures one of the earliest computers to use short term random access memory playing God Save the King, Baa Baa Black Sheep and a short piece of Glenn Miller’s In The Mood.”

“Currently, as many as 80 million children play the piano in China and the factory churns out one keyboard a minute. China is evidently in the grip of some kind of fever. Rachmaninov seeps from loudspeakers and you can scarcely make it ten yards down the street before being forced to buy an illegal Goldberg Variations box set. If you’d ever suspected Brahms could be used as a deadly weapon, then here was the proof.”

“The compact disc has less than three years left in its reign atop the music industry in Canada, with new data on music sales indicating the download will officially be king by 2011.”

“One look at this week’s charts and you’d be tempted to think that all is well in the classical dovecote and the doomsayers have got it wrong again. But check the bottom line and the gloom is unconfined. Insiders at Universal, which released [chart-topper Hilary] Hahn on the Deutsche Grammophon label, tell me she is selling no more than 500 CDs a week in the world’s biggest market.”

“Most couldn’t escape at least nodding to the controversy that flared when Voigt was denied the title role for being too fat and the dramatic transformation that cut the singer down to size.”

“The equivalent of 1.86 billion albums were sold last year, down 11 per cent from 2.09 billion, according to figures published yesterday by worldwide music representative company IFPI.”

“How could a city so precipitously consider abandoning something it has cultivated for more than a half century? Columbus is a metropolitan area of nearly two million, similar in size to both Cincinnati and Cleveland. But Columbus’s musical aspirations were never as high as those other Ohio cities’, nor has the orchestra enjoyed the same kind of community largesse.”