The UK Music Archive warns that with a proposed copyright extension, some of the country’s valuable historic recorded music archives could be lost. “The library’s Sound Archive cannot copy audio from fragile or obsolete formats for posterity until copyright runs out. The library said a ‘significant’ part of the collection could ‘decay and be unavailable for future generations’.”
Tag: 09.25.06
Was The “Reality” Maria Fixed?
Andrew Lloyd Webber is defending against charges that the results of the recent reality show to cast a Maria for a new West End Sound of Music were fixed. “We had no idea who was going to win it. I don’t see how you could fix it. I didn’t know until three minutes before the end of the show.”
The On-Air Pirates
“The rapidly proliferating scofflaws — and there are now hundreds of them broadcasting at any given moment in this country — are usually only audible within a few miles of their “home-brewed” transmitters. They find unused sections of the FM dial, fire up their mini-transmitters, raise their antennas and set up their station. Some opt to broadcast on the internet as well, opening up their audience to the entire globe. Costs typically range from about $250 to $1,500.”
Performances – Live And On Computer?
Computer software can now recreate a recorded performance live on a piano. “The concept of a dead pianist somehow giving a ‘live’ performance opens up a Pandora’s box of issues. Who owns copyright on a pianist’s keystrokes? Is it appropriate, using this technology, to improve on a recorded performance? How are today’s young pianists to compete in a world that can hear concerts by the greatest interpreters of the 20th century? And in a classical-music culture that already suffers from a chronic lack of newness, isn’t this just fetishizing the past?”
iTunes’ Movie Bind
Apple CEO Steve Jobs recently announced that iTunes would start offering movies on iTunes. But only Disney is making movies available. “Jobs’ problem is that the rest of Hollywood still fears alienating retailers, especially Wal-Mart Stores Inc., that sell and rent DVDs, producing half of Hollywood’s revenue. Studios are reluctant for now to publicly endorse something that could speed the killing of the goose that lays the golden eggs.”
Pacific Symphony – Lost In (Cyber)Space
The Pacific Symphony opened in its new concert hall last week. But why wasn’t the concert streamed on the web? Demanding web fans wanted to know…
What Top Arts CEOs Earn
The heads of medical foundations top executive compensation. In the arts in America in 2005, “highest pay went to Michael Kaiser, president of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., who brought home $1,029,691. The survey put Munitz just behind Kaiser with $962,526 in compensation.”
Conductor Armin Jordan, 74
“Mr. Jordan was a rare breed: an international conductor who spent the majority of his career conducting in his native Switzerland and in France. His best-known association was with the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, based in Geneva, where he was music director for 12 years, from 1985 to 1997. He did not make his North American debut until 1985.”
Tapping A Growing Hispanic Reality
Young American Latinos are “a fast-growing demographic whose taste in entertainment runs from English to Spanish, from American to Latin, and back. And MTV is giving chase.”
Is The Internet A Counterculture Revolution?
“A decade ago the cultural critic Mark Dery suggested in his book ‘Escape Velocity’ that the PC revolution could well be called ‘Counterculture 2.0.’ Other writers have also pointed out uncanny overlaps. And some of the anecdotal evidence is familiar.”