Just think, some of those opera singers and conductors might be forced to reduce their fees, shock horror.
With CD sales in free fall and legal downloads yet to fill the gap, the music industry has reluctantly embraced the file-sharing technology that threatened to destroy it. Qtrax, a digital service announced today, promises a catalogue of more than 25 million songs that users can download to keep, free and with no limit on the number of tracks.
The service has been endorsed by the very same record companies - including EMI, Universal Music and Warner Music – that have chased file-sharers through the courts in a doomed attempt to prevent piracy. The gamble is that fans will put up with a limited amount of advertising around the Qtrax website’s jukebox in return for authorised use of almost every song available.
Thoughts, folks?
MEANWHILE, the Arts Council has been forced to say 'er, right, maybe that wasn't our best idea' and is promising a reprieve to some of the groups whose funding it wanted to slash for no immediately obvious reason - this may include the London Mozart Players. We haven't yet seen the name City of London Sinfonia on the list, but are hoping that that is simply an oversight on the part of newspapers that don't know what a chamber orchestra is.
ALSO, from comments received on JDCMB recently, it's obvious that certain people in Philadelphia are still ogling beloved Vladi. He's back here this week, conducting at the RFH on Wednesday. Paws off our maestro!
7 comments:
I am delighted -- and astonished -- to hear that the Council appears to be having second thoughts. I hope to see confirmation that this includes restoring funding to the LMP and the CLS. Mind you, that will do nothing to mitigate the general sentiment of my previous post on this subject.
I think you right to worry about Philadelphia. Jurowski's first meeting with the orchestra was something in the way of a coup de foudre, and that was back in 2005. A lot of players wanted him from that moment on, and critics also. That the blush of first love has not faded after two years or more says an awful lot.
Continuing thanks for the pleasure and stimulation of your blog, Jessica. Philip
Thanks, Philip. I'm not remotely worried about Philadelphia, as it happens. Just because the orchestra and the critics want VJ, it doesn't mean they'll get him. As I've said before, he can go there if he wants to; the question is whether he WILL want to. Will he want to do the American PR shmoozing thing that music directors must do there? Will he want to restrict his fascinating programming, which more and more accentuates the unusual, the neglected and the new, down to the tastes of American sponsors? Will he be willing to uproot his family from Berlin, where they seem extremely happy and where his daughter's at school? We'll have to see, but I will say right here that personally, I doubt it.
As an expatriate who still occasionally delivers a verse or two of 'Maybe It's Because I'm a Londoner', I very much hope you are right. You have, I must say, delivered a welcome corrective to my thinking. Implicit in my comment was the assumption that if offered the post, VJ would very possibly take it. I think that assumption came to the fore of my mind because at the back of it there is always lurking my abhorrence of those conductors, no need to name them, who, aided and abetted by certain agencies, and we know who they are, sacrifice music to mammon and set out to see how many plums they can get in their baskets, regardless of other considerations, musical or personal. The loss of Neveu, Kapell and Cantelli is not the only damage air travel has done to music. You know VJ, and you rightly remind me that some conductors have their priorities right. Yes, if he did go there, or anywhere else in the States, he could not possibly escape the schmoozing and politicking. And in JV's case, no small part of the politicking would be negotiating the very occasional performance of Ligeti, Schnittke, Turnage....
So, a catalogue of 25 million songs will be available for free download.
Ford, Microsoft and McDonald's have signed up to advertise - so far.
I assume this is how Qtrax will make financial gains.
Where do the musicians fit into all this....?
Except now AP is reporting that EMI, Universal, and Warner are all denying that they have licensing deals with QTrax. My thoughts are much the same as usual: you can never trust an online music subscription service, or expect a workable corporate solution for music downloads to come from the record industry majors.
Jumping back to VJ, it may well be that he would not go to Philadelphia just yet, to Peter Dobrin's immense disappointment. OTOH, if the reports of the artistic chemistry between Mr. Jurowski and Philadelphia are true, and nothing appears to indicate otherwise, that kind of artistic connection is the kind that cannot be faked. It either happens or it doesn't. I doubt that Jurowski would want to sever all ties with Philadelphia, even as "just a guest conductor", although one suspects that to many of the musicians, he's not just any guest conductor. I recall reading that when Eschenbach took the orchestra to Berlin in 2006, Jurowski visited them backstage.
It is true that compared to a UK orchestra, there's more schmoozing with the high and mighty. But with respect programming, again if Philadelphia gets a thrill of working with him, I don't think they'll put too much in his way with regard his ideas. Plus, from looking at several of Jurowski's programs with the LPO, he knows when to go avant-garde and when to go populist.
Besides, he's still young; assuming that America hasn't collapsed by then from the disaster of the last 7 years, Philly can hire VJ when he's over 45 :) .
Like I said, PAWS OFF OUR VLAD!
Still, by the time he's 45 he'll probably be in such demand that the UK won't be able to afford him any more...
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