Category: music

Prosecuting file traders isn’t likely to win recording companies many fans. “Some music industry analysts and file-trading fans question whether the strategy will do much to further the RIAA’s goal of boosting legitimate music sales. If you’re trying to instill fear, you may have success. But if you’re trying to increase CD sales by getting people to stop sharing music, I don’t think it will have any effect at all.”

The Mercury Prize was “conceived in the early 1990s by Jon Webster, then MD of Virgin Records, who envisaged it as ‘the Booker Prize of the music industry’. It would be independent of both the record companies and the music retailers, but endorsed by both. Its serious image would encourage ageing music fans to explore new albums as well as buying CD copies of their old vinyl favourites. And it would promote modern music as ‘art’. But it’s the sheer unpredictability of the Mercury that makes it so charming. Don’t ever believe anyone who says they know who is or isn’t going to win. And has it achieved its original objectives?”

Players of the Charlotte Symphony have gone on strike. “The talks have gone on in the wake of a $650,000 deficit that the orchestra generated last season – the first red ink in seven years. When the group’s management announced the deficits in July, it cited a drop in donations, a decline in income from its endowment fund and a surge in health-insurance costs as prime causes.”

Not hard to figure out why Universal is cutting CD prices. “After years of gouging customers, the recording industry is desperate. Sparked by Napster, and continued through such file-swapping services as Kazaa, Morpheus, and Grokster, the free-music revolution has left the major labels reeling and hemorrhaging. And CD prices, which despite promises to the contrary have steadily increased through the years, turned off even those who weren’t inclined to sit at their computers downloading their favorite tracks. Now, with CD sales already down almost 16 percent this year – after a 9 percent decline in 2002 – the industry is so rattled it has had to resort to something it has arrogantly avoided for years: a move that will benefit, instead of undermine, music consumers.”

The new orchestra season begins. But “don’t be surprised if you see orchestras, including the Baltimore Symphony and Philadelphia Orchestra, reopening labor contracts, well before expiration dates, in search of budget savings. Such measures, once unthinkable, may soon be common as organizations struggle to get their houses on solid ground. And all the usual things, like cut-backs in performances and costly repertoire, will continue, too. But let’s not get overly gloomy. At least not yet.” There are some bright spots…

Universal’s decision to cut prices by 30 percent is a blockbuster. “It’s a historic move – the first time prices have been trimmed across the board by a major label in the 20-year history of the CD – but it comes at a time when the music industry as we know it is fast becoming history.” The price cut is too little too late.

The scores for four long lost songs by Jan Sibelius have been found. “Although the existence of the scores was known, it was thought they were lost because there was no record of their whereabouts.”

The recording industry began filing lawsuits against file-traders. Monday 261 suits were filed. “On average, the music traders had made over 1,000 music files available to others on P2P networks like Kazaa. The most egregious offender sued had shared over 3,000 files.”

“Should you take the RIAA up on its amnesty offer? Maybe not. The “Clean Slate” program promises that the RIAA won’t pursue legal action against P2P pirates who send in a notarized affidavit declaring that they’ve wiped all copyright-infringing materials from their disk drives and who vow not to file-share again. But lawyers at the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco say there are multiple reasons to sit tight for now, rather than rush to sign and deliver what amounts to an admission of guilt.”

“We’ve seen more releases of Mozart, Beethoven, and beyond with original instruments. In the process we hear scholarship go right and we hear it go wrong. Sometimes, we hear it go nuts. After all, research can take us only so far. We can’t really know what music sounded like before recordings arrived, and the historical data is vague and contradictory. The older the music, the more uncertainty.”