Category: music

Vinyl sales of 9.2 million might be up 52 percent from 2013, but that can’t offset a huge drop in album and individual song download sales.

Classical song and popular song should not be so far apart: they share a lot in their subject matter and in their aesthetic of intimacy. Mostly, however, the influence has to be a subliminal one, for only then can it avoid self-consciousness or a certain archness.

“I don’t take life for granted, and I don’t know if I will be alive in five years. As far as I know, no composer wrote on their score, ‘Forbidden to those under age 18.'”

“Some blame computers and others note the high cost of new pianos, but what’s clear is that a long-term decline in sales has accelerated.”

“In recent days at Orchestra Hall, I’ve repeatedly heard the word ‘optimistic’. The Orchestra is playing well, and musicians are clearly happy to be working with music director Osmo Vänskä again. … After two years of being held up as the example of the way not to do things, there is apparently great interest in the Minnesota Orchestra elsewhere.”

Despite the decades of complaints about the French capital lacking a decent venue for symphonic music, there’s a lot of hand-wringing about the soon-to-open Philharmonie de Paris – over everything from its location at the edge of the city to budget overruns and missed deadlines to planned programming.

“Jazz in 2014 — or more accurately, the discourse around jazz in 2014 — often resembled a crescendo of gibes and gripes, with each new affront calling forth a fresh wave of umbrage. In the end it wasn’t any single skirmish that led to my air of weary resignation, but rather a brisk accumulation of them, quickening into a blur. And what surprised me was the exasperation I felt not only with jazz’s cynical assailants, but also with its gallant defenders.”

Since the fall, the management and supporters of the Orchestra “Giuseppe Verdi” have been warning that, because €3 million in promised government funding since 2013 had still not arrived and no subsidy for 2015 had been allocated, the ensemble could be forced to shut down. With less than 48 hours remaining until the new year, Italy’s culture minister at last came through. (in Italian)

“According to the Recording Industry Association of America, only three recording artists achieved platinum sales certification on an album released in 2014. Music lovers are slowly turning away from the ownership of music, as the shift to streaming services continues. But the streaming model isn’t yet a lucrative one for musicians. So they fight, especially the older acts not tied to a major label deal.”

“How bad is this rating? Bloomberg noted it was ‘three steps above junk’. … [But] this does not mean, as some have interpreted, that the Met is three steps away from being placed in the worst possible category of borrower.”