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.”
Tag: 04.20.06
Iconic Painting Slips Away From Aussie Museums
Australia’s museums fail to acquire an iconic work by John Brack. “One thing is certain: it is a painting lost to the people of the city whose recent past it documents in luminous panes of brilliantly executed light; not just a bleakly witty record of the six o’clock swill, but one of the most exquisite moments in Australian — Melburnian — modernism. Gone.”
Renzo Piano And Harvard’s Museum Transformation
Harvard has announced “a comprehensive transformation of its museums that will integrate the collections currently housed in separate facilities, and eventually add a second permanent facility for modern and contemporary art in Allston.”
French Galleries Sales Boom
“French art dealers have been cheered — and rather surprised — by the results of a study released last month, which showed that art galleries in France turned over five times more than auction houses in 2004.”
Parents Buying More CDs Than Kids
“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.”
Julia Roberts – So How’d She Do?
“Though Ms. Roberts gives a genuinely humble performance, there is no way that this show is not going to be all about Julia. Ms. Roberts is the sole reason this limited-run revival, which ends on June 18, has become the most coveted ticket in town. Mr. Greenberg’s slender, elegant play from 1997 about familial disconnectedness and the loneliness of intimacy has certainly never known — and probably will never know again — such fame and fortune. On the other hand, it’s almost impossible to discern its artistic virtues from this wooden and splintered interpretation.”
Overlooked – The Piano Duo
“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.”
A Royal Collection No One Sees
Queen Elizabeth’s Royal Collection of art is vast. “It has 7,000 paintings, 500,000 prints and 30,000 watercolours and drawings. Apart from these few rooms off Buckingham Palace, you can also see parts of the collection in the other Queen’s Gallery at Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh, and in the various royal palaces that are open to the public. But this is a fraction of the whole. Furthermore, it remains unclear precisely what is in the collection, and where it is displayed (or not). There is no publicly accessible inventory of the Royal Collection.”