Category: music

Why is it that pop music not sung in English doesn’t do well in the UK? “Indeed, with only 15% of UK record sales going to acts from outside the UK or US, the window is barely open at all. William Luff, senior press officer at EMI, puts this down to the strength of Anglophone pop as much as our notoriously insular attitude.”

Should different songs cost differnt prices? Steve Jobs thinks not. “Negotiations between Apple and the four major music companies – with which iTunes deals all expire in the next two months – have reached a crucial point as several record executives now say they are unlikely to convince Jobs to allow variable pricing, sources said. This marks a change of tune for the record industry as late last year several executives said they believed variable pricing – something the music companies have been pushing for – was imminent.”

“The top 100 is strewn with records that can only be described as easy listening. And it is all a reflection of a significant change in the music industry – the power of ‘mum rock’. Forty-somethings now buy more than twice as many pop CDs as teenagers and the gap is growing every year.”

“Gustavo Dudamel, a 25 year-old Venezuelan with a film-star look in his eyes and the physical stature of Paul Newman without heels, has been storming concert halls on scant rehearsal this past year as a last-minute substitute. He helped the Philharmonia out of a hole at the Beethoven Festival in Bonn, deputised for Esa-Pekka Salonen and Zubin Mehta in Switzerland and Israel and went on air worldwide by stepping in for Neeme Järvi at the BBC Proms. He’s smart, he’s cute and, in case you’re getting interested, he has just married a ballet dancer, Eloisa Maturen. All the right moves, in just the right order, and backstory to break hardened hearts.”

“Nobody overlooks the qualities of a lone pianist, or the importance of the pianist in a trio. But when it comes to the pianist in a duo, the public seems to suffer from piano blindness.”

“Two European Union directives, which come into force in the 25 EU countries in July, ban the manufacture of ‘electrical equipment’ containing more than 0.1 percent lead. The statutes are intended principally to reduce the volume of lead seeping back into the environment mainly from discarded mobile phones and other disposable modern technologies. But the 1,000-year-old art of organ-building appears to have been swept up in the legislating zeal.”

Today’s big music? Well, it was supposed to be reggaeton. But then again, maybe not. “In at least three markets — Las Vegas, Dallas and Miami — stations that gambled on the music’s growing popularity have since switched back to more traditional formats. And in perhaps the most worrisome sign yet, turnout was disappointing for a reggaeton concert last month at the Forum in Inglewood, Calif., headlined by Daddy Yankee, the genre’s superstar, and rapper Snoop Dogg.”

Who wins on “American Idol”? “For five years, the most wildly popular talent contest on American television has been dominated — thoroughly, totally and completely — by kids from Southern Hicksville, USA. Seven of the eight top-two finishers in the first four years were from states that once formed the Confederacy, and five of the seven remaining finalists this season are, too.”

“Chicago Public Radio’s recently announced decision to gut music programs from all three frequencies it controls — most notably WBEZ-FM 91.5 — has unleashed a torrent of criticism. Listeners who for decades have tuned in to WBEZ’s jazz, blues and world-music programming are incensed at the plans, which will go into effect in early 2007.”

Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto has topped Classic FM’s poll of Britain’s most popular composer. “It is the first time the Austrian-born composer has come first in the radio station’s annual Hall of Fame survey. Rachmaninov’s Second Piano Concerto had previously topped the survey for five years in a row. Mozart has 24 entries in the Top 300, three more than his nearest rival Beethoven – three of whose works feature in the Top 10.”