Music sales are up this year (and profits too) but that isn’t stopping Big Music from suing downloaders. “The Recording Industry Association of America said Tuesday it is suing another 532 people — including 89 on university campuses — in its latest wave of lawsuits against alleged file swappers. Since September, the industry trade group has tried to sue 1,977 people in various parts of the country for allegedly trading music illegally on file-sharing networks. Most of the suits are pending. This time, the RIAA made a point of targeting people who trade on university campuses, who are most likely students.”
Tag: 03.23.04
A New Yorker In LA
Where do most of the New Yorker magazine’s readers live? Obvious, right… but only if your answer was California. According the magazine’s “latest publisher’s statement, almost a million copies were sold during the second half of 2003. During the same period, the magazine’s total paid circulation in California reached 167,580, exceeding sales in New York for the first time. (Paid circulation in New York for that period reached 166,630.)”
Capitol Idea – A Record Company That’s Growing
Capitol Records is that rare music label that has been expanding even as the music business has contracted in the past few years. “Since taking over nearly three years ago Andrew Slater and his very hands-on approach to music making — from rerecording parts of songs to dissecting new videos — have transformed Capitol from a languishing heritage label best known for the Beatles and Frank Sinatra into a company that can once again develop hit artists.”
Museums Form Alliance Of Art
Three American museums – in Chicago, New York and Los Angeles – are joining forces to “acquire finished works together and to organize shows as the cost of buying art and producing exhibitions has risen.”
Meeting The Enigmatic Mr. Pletnev
Pianist and conductor Michel Pletnev is “a prime example of one who protects under layers of mystery the emotions and the brilliant, albeit sometimes provocative and idiosyncratic sparks of imagination that fire his piano playing.”
France’s New Rough And Tumble Art Market
Three years ago France opened up its art markets to foreign sellers, ending a long-standing ban on foreign auction houses operating there. Many predicted that in the new era, the big international auction houses would swamp the French firms. “However, the reality has proved very different and in less than two and a half years Paris has evolved into the world’s most unpredictable and fiercely competitive art market centre.”
Vettriano – Popular But Scorned
Jack Vettriano – the self-taught Scottish painter – is a hugely popular artist in the UK. But no public museums have interest in showing his work. Why? “The proposition that Vettriano cannot be slotted into a spectrum of art that runs from Titian to Damien Hirst and Sarah Lucas is just risible. Why Pop Art but not Popular Art? If the National Theatre can reinvent itself by staging popular musicals and also populist shows like Jerry Springer – the Opera, then why cannot our galleries do likewise?”
Why The Whitney Gets A Pass?
“This year’s Whitney Biennial may have escaped serious censure in part because there’s no one at the Whitney to kick around anymore. In keeping with its sorry tradition of revolving-door directors, the museum lost its former head, Maxwell Anderson, last September and its affable new one, Adam Weinberg, bears no responsibility for this survey’s selections. No one has yet been churlish enough to pummel the triumvirate of earnest, low-profile young female curators who made this year’s picks.”