“Amazon, which in March launched a cloud music locker service, has tried over the years to chip away at Apple’s dominance in the digital music download business by pricing most of its songs below what they go for at iTunes. So far, however, Amazon’s market share remains where it has been the last two years, around 10%, while Apple continues to have about 70% of the digital download music market.”
Tag: 05.01.11
Long-time Major Sydney Symphony Funder Reconsiders Its Support
“A ten-year sponsorship agreement that has enabled thousands of people from regional and rural NSW to watch the Sydney Symphony Orchestra is under threat from the new state government’s program to review the spending of energy companies.”
NEA Study: We See Our Arts As Social Experience
“Primarily, a good number of the 1.5 million Americans who go to an arts performances on an given day bring someone along. Less than 7 percent go alone — 41 percent have a companion and 54 percent bring a family member. They usually spend 2.7 hours at the event.”
Debate: Should Smithsonian Show Commercially-Excavated Treasure?
“It was a commercial transaction, which is a no, no. But this is one of the most important discoveries over the last 50 years. I don’t think we can miss the chance to tell this historic story. We can create a teachable moment.”
Playwright Edward Albee At 83 (It’s All About The Bio)
“You may not need reminding, but a lot of people do. A playwright or any creative artist is his work. The biography can be distorting, or it’s just gravy. The work is the essence of the person.”
Why Harper Lee Has Been Silent All These Years
“Lee, who turned 85 last week, has not been entirely absent from the public record since, and her neighbours in Monroeville, Alabama, wouldn’t agree that she is a recluse, either. Politely refusing to talk to journalists since 1964 is not the same thing as withdrawing from society.”
The Movies You Don’t Like But “Have” To See (They’re Good For You)
“As a viewer whose default mode of interaction with images has consisted, for as long as I can remember, of intense, rapid-fire decoding of text, subtext, metatext and hypertext, I’ve long had a queasy fascination with slow-moving, meditative drama.”
Documents Show Controversy About Tate Purchase 30 Years Ago
“More than 30 years after Andre’s 120 bricks provoked outrage, newly released documents show how bitter that debate became and how the embattled Tate fought its corner. They reveal how the gallery was shocked by the ridicule it was subjected to after buying what appeared to be ordinary bricks.”
Boston Ballet Rises Again
Mikko Nissinen vowed to have Boston Ballet back up to speed after two years. And it is — sort of.
The Perfect TV Season (It Was 1982)
“But as antsy TV executives gear up to preÂsent this year’s new shows at the annual network upfronts, and we all prepare, as a society, to mercilessly mock whatever turns out to be this year’s answer to the Geico cavemen sitcom, we shouldn’t feel as if the perfect (or near-perfect) season can never happen. Because it did.”