Hilary Rosen is stepping down as head of the Recording Industry Association of America. Rosen has been the industry’s spokesperson in its battle against music downloading. “Rosen’s departure comes as the organization sought to soften its image among Internet consumers, many of whom viewed the RIAA and Rosen personally with antipathy over incessant pressure for crackdowns on sharing digital music over the Internet.”
Tag: 01.23.03
Who Is She, Anyway?
Hilary Rosen is not as naive as you might imagine. In fact, she believes that MP3s are the format of the future, and spends a good deal of time trying to convince record executives of it. What she and the RIAA have been fighting for is a file-sharing method that upholds the profit margins of the industry by communicating to consumers the basic idea that taking music without paying for it is wrong. “But by moralizing the issue… Rosen and her colleagues have failed to grasp the fact that they’ve already lost. File-sharing has become part of pop culture.”
Escalating the War in Houston
The musicians of the Houston Symphony have filed an official complaint with the National Labor Relations Board, accusing their management of bargaining in bad faith, and of planning to impose new working conditions on the musicians by declaring an impasse a few weeks from now. The management wants to slash salaries and eliminate five string players outright in an effort to deal with years of financial problems, but the musicians insist that they should not be forced to bear the burden of management’s past mistakes. For a start, they’d like a look at the orchestra’s financial records, but so far, orchestra executives have refused to open the books.
How Literary…Or Is It?
“What constitutes literary publishing? Is there such a thing as a purely literary publishing house? Is there a literary DNA or special skill set required to publish so-called literary fiction and nonfiction as opposed to broad mainstream books? Some publishers can be driven absolutely crazy by the notion that they aren’t considered literary enough. The reality is that there is no longer any such thing as a purely literary publishing house.”
Bestsellers Before The First Page Is Published
Books like the upcoming Harry Potter become bestsellers long before they even hit stores. “The growth of pre-sales is an interesting development in publishing. Of course in the eighteenth century an author could pre-sell his book by subscription as a way of supporting himself, but this is a different kettle of fish. Publishers love it because it lets them lock in sales without having to worry about returns. With enough hype or a strong enough brand name the whole enterprise can turn into a form of print-on-demand. It’s quite a testimony to the importance of marketing.”
Would You Pay $5 To Check Out A Book?
Would you pay $5 a book to check out books from your public library? That’s what the State of California proposes. Under Governor Grey Davis’ proposal released Friday, “the state would cut in half the amount of money it gives California’s 179 library systems, reducing annual subsidies from about $32 million to $15 million a year. To recoup some money, Davis proposed legislation allowing county libraries to charge $1 to readers who check out books in libraries outside the county where they live, and $5 to readers who have a book sent to their home library from another county.”
Should Australia Boost National Broadcaster’s Budget?
Australia’s ABC network wants a $250 million increase in its $675 million budget. ABC is supposed to serve television to all of Australia, but “at present it’s not doing it very well. Yes, its share of the television and radio audiences has risen. But in the overall scheme of things, it remains a distant fourth in the TV ratings – although its metropolitan radio stations are doing better.” Maybe it ought to drop plans for its digital service?
Christo Gets Okay For Central Park Project
Since 1979 Christo has been trying to get permission for a big project in New York’s Central Park. Now the city has approved it. Mayor Michael Bloomberg says “the project would attract some 500,000 visitors and generate $72 million to $136 million in spending. ‘When our natural instincts are to retreat to the comfortable and the familiar, we have to reassert the daring and the creative spirit that differentiates New York from any other city in the world’.”
Prokofiev Reconsidered
Fifty years after his death, Prokofiev is being re-examined. Why did he leave the West to return to the USSR where artists were stifled? “He was only semi-successful in the West. He didn’t attain the degree of fame that would satisfy his ambitions. In the West, he tried to be even more avant-garde than he was naturally, and it didn’t work. He was going along with the tastes of fashion, but it was against his nature. Then, when he returned to Russia, he wrote the ballet Romeo and Juliet, identified with it and produced an absolute masterpiece.”
Where Music Is Commodity… Like Pork Bellies?
The European music industry’s winter meetings are going on in Cannes. “No one at Midem talks about art or passion or even, heaven help us, music. They talk about money. I have to confess that I find it all incredibly disheartening. With more than 10,000 delegates of 3,604 companies from 89 countries touting their wares to one another, it genuinely does not seem to make a blind bit of difference whether what they have to sell has any quality whatsoever.”