Tag: 05.27.07

New Life For CDs That Got Lost In The Market

Perhaps there’s a market for classical CDs that never quite found a niche in the record stores. Selling over the web, one label brings back some classics. “Of late, the Web site is focusing on the large amount of great music that went nearly unnoticed in the hectic 1980s-early ’90s heyday of the compact disc. Interestingly, its reissue priorities are based on the frequency of play on radio stations, which keep deleted titles in their libraries.”

Credit Card As Art

“Some consumers have come to see the credit card as an emblem of something other than an albatross of monies owed. A few months ago, a company called CreditCovers started selling “skins,” with special designs that consumers can stick over the fronts of their cards, theoretically transforming them from mere financial tools to emblems of identity and potential conversation starters.”

Atlanta Journal-Constitution Defends Arts Coverage

The paper recently axed much of its arts staff. “Will there be a reduction in the number of reviews? That’s not the goal. We’re seeking to increase coverage overall, in local arts news, features and criticism. We know this is difficult for some who see criticism as the most significant role for a newspaper in covering arts. But we believe that we would not be fulfilling our obligation to fully inform a broad readership of the importance of arts if we sliced our coverage that narrowly. So we’re going to continue the trend we started several years ago of trying to satisfy those who want strictly criticism as well as those who want more stories about artists, arts institutions and the impact of both of those on our society.”

My Generation: An Internet Hit

The Zimmers are a 40-strong band with a combined age of over 3,000, brought together by the documentary-maker Tim Samuels as part of the BBC’s Power to the People series. And they have a hit, as propelled by YouTube, with the Who’s 42-year-old hit that includes the line: “I hope I die before I get old”

Why Hollywood Loves 3D

“Obviously, 3-D is not exactly a post-modern idea, and for most people it first brings to mind thoughts of wacky, red-lens-blue-lens cardboard glasses –or even of the headgear that Imax offered when it started showing 3-D flicks on its giant screens in the 1980s. But 3-D is clearly coming into its own, and its cinematic aspect is just one element of technology’s broader march toward a new era of make-believe super-realism.”

Now Here’s A Niche: San Diego Dance

“Dance San Diego, a bimonthly that debuted this month, is also a niche publication. But the San Diego dance community seems a tenuous base for an advertising-supported magazine. Looking at the nine dance companies recently funded by the Arts and Culture Commission – the largest, best-established troupes in town – their combined 2006 income was less than $4 million.”

What The Closing Of Two Indie Imprints Means

“For Perseus Books Group, which recently acquired Carroll & Graf and Thunder’s Mouth Press as part of its acquisition of Avalon Publishing Group, it was a dollars-and-cents issue. The company decided that the two were no longer distinctive enough to thrive in a competitive market. But the New York-based Perseus pointed out that it has also made a multimillion-dollar investment to support independent publishers.”

A Hit Play That Never Found Its Audience

“Plays old and new flop on Broadway with a regularity that surprises nobody in the theater business. But the failure of ‘Journey’s End,’ R. C. Sherriff’s 1928 drama about British soldiers in the trenches of World War I, has been an unusually resounding one. The play received some of the best reviews of the season when it opened in February.” But “the show never found an audience and played to some of the smallest houses on Broadway this season, at times dipping to about 25 percent capacity at the Belasco Theater.”