Category: music

We have a romanticized image of the violin-maker. The reality tends to be much more clinical. “Violins are made of spruce, maple and ebony. So anyone with carpentry experience could actually go out and buy a do-it-yourself book and build one. But without an idea of sound, it would be hit or miss.”

EMI is laying off workers, and recording companies are slashing their expenses. So is that really a bad thing? “The real risk with major record companies being in a position where they have to be cautious with their money is that they’ll play safe, and the way to play safe is to play pop. That’s the thing that many people overlook when they see the downloading as simply stealing music from rich companies. If those companies aren’t able to invest in long-term artists, they will just continue to churn out manufactured pop bands.”

The recording industry says suing downloaders has helped reduce piracy. And new legal download stores are thriving. “None of these actions has done anything to change the public’s view of the music industry as one that gouges its customers. One reason that the illegal sharing of music files online is still so widespread is that music-lovers know how little of the price of a compact disc goes on its manufacture, or to the artist. Musicians, too, are becoming fed up.”

“The Australian record industry has just had its best year ever. But it doesn’t want you to know about it. This month ARIA announced its sales figures for last year. In its press release, it talked about Delta, it talked about falling CD singles sales, it talked about the rise in DVD sales, but at no stage did it tell us it was the industry’s best year ever. Why bury the good news? Record industry types aren’t usually shy about success. But this time their success is a little embarrassing.”

The amount of legally purchased downloaded music has increased 10 times in the past year. But what’s really interesting, is what is being downloading. “Music fans are downloading a wide range of songs, with the top 100 downloads accounting for just 11% of sales. This contrasts with CD single sales, where the top 100 CD singles account for 77% of total CD singles sales.”

Who needs a big expensive piano, really? After all, you can make beautiful music for only a few measley bucks! Just “pry open a Gameboy, tinker with its electronic guts, plug the re-engineered result into a Speak & Spell, duct tape it all together, sprinkle liberally with glitter, hook it up to an amplifier and let the good times roll.” The act of creating such self-hacked instruments is known as “circuit bending,” and a new festival celebrating the fad may be proof that it’s becoming a legitimate form of artistic expression.

MTV Europe has backed off efforts to force a cut in the royalty rate it pays to independent record labels. The TV music network, which also owns European music channels VH1 and TMF, had sought a rate cut of 55% from nearly 300 smaller labels, but the companies went public with the dispute, and MTV has apparently backed down.

Why all the kudos for Austin as a music capital? It peaked about seven years ago, writes Lindsey Eck. These days “cops with dB meters lurk like vultures outside of venues and force people unloading equipment to park blocks away, no matter how heavy the drum kit. Alcohol enforcement is particularly heavy, while the State Comptroller has singled out downtown clubs for closure over unpaid taxes (which must be paid in advance of the club taking in revenues). And let’s not even begin to enumerate the ways in which zoning, industrial policy, and development decisions generally have made Austin an impossible place.”

A Canadian judge has ruled that the recording industry can’t sue people who allow music they own to be copied by others. The judge ruled that “the Canadian Recording Industry Association hadn’t shown copyright infringement by 29 people who had allowed their music files to be uploaded. Making files available in online, shared directories is within the bounds of Canadian copyright law.”

The provincial government of Manitoba is giving the financially strapped Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra another year to pay off it’s CAN$1.3 million credit line which was guaranteed by the province in 1999. In addition the WSO will receive two additional $75,000 grants for the current year, as the organization struggles to return to fiscal solvency. The moves were welcomed by orchestra supporters, but some taxpayer advocacy groups were upset at the news, pointing out that Manitoba is running a deficit of its own, and can ill-afford to be subsidizing a money-losing symphony.