Category: music

It’s 4’33” and it’s not as daft as you might think. “With a swipe of the i-hand on the interface – which records your realisation of the piece, mapping it on to the durations that Cage provided for the three movements of the work – you can hear 4’33”s from all over the world.”

“Major radio stations are playing less music than ever before, according to playlist data now surfacing. And the reason is simple: fewer, more familiar songs keep more people listening more often, which means higher ratings and more advertising revenue.”

Alex Ross talk with composer Laurie Spiegel, whose composition Harmonices Mundi, which is on the recording attached to the space vessel, “is a realization of Johannes Kepler’s hypothesis that the motion of the planets can be translated into a ‘never-ending polyphonic music’.” (includes audio and video)

Digital album sales and a surge in streaming boosted total digital revenue in 2013 to £365m – up from £326m (a 45.5% share) in 2012.

“KCRW is acquiring KDB, a longtime Santa Barbara classical music station at 93.7 FM. The bottom line appears to be that KCRW gets a stronger signal along the Santa Barbara coast, using 88.7 FM, while classical music will continue at 93.7 in a partnership between KDB and KUSC.”

“In the UK, music streaming increased by 33.7% in 2013 and now accounts for nearly 10% of revenues from recorded music. In the last year 7.4 billion songs were streamed via premium or ad-funded music services.”

“While it’s understandable for any artist to want to be able to make their classic works available for new audiences on the formats that young consumers especially are using, it’s unlikely that De La Soul actually controls the rights to the music they’re giving away, so they could be putting themselves at significant legal risk.”

Holly Mulcahy: “One of the most important things being overlooked at music schools is practicing, maintaining, and cultivating happiness. Happiness is habitually pushed aside until an individual’s ideal goal or job has been achieved. With many musicians and artists I know, there is often an unspoken ‘law’ that individuals deprive or deny themselves of happiness until they have ‘made it’.”

Citing money concerns, Fort Worth Opera will cut back its 2015 festival from four to three productions, indefinitely delaying the planned world premiere of American composer Libby Larsen’s A Wrinkle in Time.