Category: music

“Warner Music has rejected a suggestion from Apple boss Steve Jobs that record companies should remove copy protection software from digital music downloads.”

Warner music says its profits are down 74 percent. “While Warner’s digital music sales jumped 45% to $100m, this still only accounted for 11% of total revenues. Sales of physical music products such as CDs declined 13% to $800m following poor sales in the US and Europe.”

The Toronto Symphony took a chance when it hired the relatively inexperienced (though unquestionably gifted) conductor Peter Oundjian to be its music director in 2004. But Oundjian’s skill on the podium and profile as a homegrown success story have boosted ticket sales, and this week, the TSO announced that he will be staying at least through 2012.

“When composer Gian Carlo Menotti left Spoleto Festival USA nearly 14 years ago in a raging dispute with the board, his action split the American event from its Italian counterpart, the Festival of Two Worlds. With the death of Menotti on Feb. 1 at age 95, the question arises: Will the two festivals he founded possibly reunite and share some of the same performing artists as they did in the past?”

Why did Steve Jobs come out against music copy protection? After all, iTunes’ success is driven by this business model. “Jobs is cleverly positioning himself to take credit for the death of DRM. The music industry is on the brink of abandoning DRM, according to the New York Times, after it has failed to make the slightest dent in piracy.”

So the BBC has decided it can no longer offer free downloads of music. The service has been astonishingly popular. “This marks the beginning of a new era for the BBC, an age of clipped wings and shortened horizons in which inexpert individuals appointed by an interfering government will destroy vision and make producers work to rule.”

In almost any city but New York, The Manhattan School of Music would be the most famous conservatory in town. But MSM has long operated in the shadow of Juilliard, known around the world as one of the finest music schools anywhere. Now, in an effort to project a more glamorous image to prospective students and donors, MSM is unveiling a spectactular new… um, penthouse apartment? For the school’s president? Ooookay.

John Steinbeck’s classic novel, The Grapes of Wrath, might not seem like the best libretto for an opera. For one thing, it’s awfully long. For another, destitute Dust Bowl denizens singing in grand operatic style? Seems a bit much. But the opera, which gets its premiere this weekend in Minnesota, is intended as “a work that will bring new audiences for an art form long thought of as irrelevant by American audiences – if they’ve even thought of it at all.”

“David Hill has been appointed chief conductor of the BBC Singers, effective this summer. The ensemble, which regularly gives performances for broadcast on BBC Radio 3, is Great Britain’s only full-time professional choir.”

Apple’s deal with Apple might mean big things for the iPod. “The new contract clears the way for Steve Jobs to sell iPods loaded with music. Who cares? Well, the iPod could become the new CD, especially if Apple starts offering cheap shuffle iPods pre-loaded with hot new albums or artists’ catalogs. Imagine a whole range of inexpensive, special-edition iPods branded with popular bands containing a new album, or their whole catalogs.”