“For much of its two-decade long life, the CD single has existed as the music industry’s latter-day version of the Betamax tape — technologically advanced, high quality — and a commercial flop… The industry is looking to change all that. As of last week, HMV stores around the country started heavily promoting singles in their stores, encouraged, no doubt, by an industry suddenly willing to supply a product it had once been hesitant about… So why the singles pitch? The short answer is crisis, says Brian Robertson, president of CRIA, which has been studying a marked downturn in music sales. File-sharing, music downloading and home CD-burning is bleeding revenue away from the music industry at an alarming rate, he said.”
Tag: 11.20.02
Orange In The Red
Throwing a major festival of new and unusual arts and music is always a dicey proposition – throwing one in an upper-crust suburban county is beyond daring. But for the last four years, the Philharmonic Society of Orange County (California) has done just that, staging Eclectic Orange, a multi-disciplinary festival of music and theater. Unfortunately, the fest lost $434,000 on the latest festival after spending millions to bring in a French equestrian troupe, and will likely have to scale back such plans for future seasons.
Staging Area (For Departure)
Some of the UK’s best stage talent is leaving the country. “While we prostrate ourselves before anyone who comes stamped with the Hollywood seal of approval, we allow much of our best directorial, design and writing talent to slip out the back door, unnoticed and virtually unlamented.”
The Anonymous Postcard Scramble
“A host of artists, designers and musicians have put brush to paper to create potential masterpieces for the annual Secret Postcard exhibition at the Royal College of Art… But buyers bid for the postcards without knowing who the artist is because all works are displayed anonymously and are only revealed once sold. The exhibition creates a great deal of interest from the public who have the opportunity to buy cheap art which could one day net them a fortune.”
Bellesiles Stands Fast
Michael Bellesiles, the historian who resigned his professorship last month after a panel of his peers concluded that he had made up much of the information and many of the sources for his controversial book on the history of guns in America, remains defiant about his scholarship, insisting that his facts are good, and that he was not motivated by anti-gun political leanings. He denies that Emory University paid him off to go quietly, and continues to carry on a vigorous e-mail debate with some of his sharpest critics.
Regressing to Harry
Everyone has read Harry Potter by now, of course, and the franchise shows no signs (so far) of waning in popularity among all age groups. But why are adults so interested in these books aimed at children? Certainly, they are well-written and exciting, but what is it about today’s world that is making grown-ups more interested in reading about sorcerers and witchcraft than about love, sex, tragedy, and other more traditional ‘adult’ literary subjects?
Desperately Seeking Sanders
A British art historian claims that she has found records proving the existence of John Sanders, an actor and painter thought to be responsible for the only living portrait of William Shakespeare. Trouble is, the painter Tarnya Cooper has ‘found’ is not the right John Sanders, judging from his age and relative inexperience at the time the portrait in question was painted. Still, historians feel that Cooper’s John Sanders may well lead them to the John Sanders they’re all looking for.
They May Be Broke, But They’re Good
The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra might be struggling under mountains of debt (the orchestra’s executive director recently threatened that that bankruptcy would be a possibility if local donors didn’t step up the level of their fiscal generosity) and wondering how to replace outgoing music director Mariss Jansons, but out-of-town reviews of a recent East Coast tour seem to suggest that, artistically, the PSO has never seen better times.