September 2008 Archives

What's the over-under on the number of "The Sun has Set" headlines we're going to see because of this? From the USA Today obituary for The New York Sun:

Many readers also found its arts section sophisticated and accessible.

Fair enough.

This I appreciate:
 

The old Sun was also known for its "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus" column -- its response to an 1897 letter from an 8-year-old girl asking if there really was a Santa Claus.

My versions of Santa Clauses these days are the many talented bloggers who will carry/are carrying the torch.

On Fridays, I'll post interviews with folks far more knowledgeable than myself on specific marketing and publicity subjects. This week, ArtsJournal's own Douglas McLennan on marketing your blog, the changing face (or platform) of journalism, and why the world doesn't need publicists - gah!

Douglas McLennan is an arts journalist, and the founder/editor of ArtsJournal.com, which just celebrated its ninth anniversary. He is also the director of the National Arts Journalism Program (NAJP), and speaks and writes frequently on issues in digital culture, the arts and journalism.








When did you start ArtsJournal?

The site launched September 13, 1999.


How many readers does the site get daily?

We probably have about 45,000 users every day.


Have you ever considered selling your newsletter list to arts presenters? I'll bet they've asked...

We have 33,000 newsletter subscribers, and it's a great list. I certainly have had requests to sell the list, but I'd never do that. I also get requests to have me send out messages to my list but I haven't done that either. But we offer advertising in the newsletters, and they've been really successful and most of our advertisers are repeat business.


What software do ArtsJournal bloggers use?

We use Movable Type Open Source. The whole site runs on it. I've hacked the code for the main site, but the blogs are pretty straightforward.


Would you recommend that platform to other bloggers? Why yes or no?

MT has been great. There's lots of flexibility and it's a very stable platform. I do wish it were even more configurable. I think blogs are a transitional form, and so the software needs to be ever more adaptable. So far, MT has been great at evolving. I'd definitely choose MT over Blogger. They're both free, but MT is much more flexible. I haven't played much with WordPress, but people love it and I like some of the modules they use. You can be up and using MT in about an hour and looking great, so it's not very difficult.


How do you/have you market(ed) ArtsJournal to the world-at-large? For example, when you launched the site, who did you reach out to?

I've never really done any marketing for AJ. When I launched the site, I sent emails to people I thought might be interested in it, but I haven't done anything more than that. It's really been word-of-mouth and links elsewhere on the web. One interesting thing is that many of our newsletter subscribers forget there's a website. They think of AJ as a newsletter. There's yet another group that gets AJ as an rss feed and another that sees it embedded in other websites. So about a year ago I stopped thinking of AJ as a website and more as a service. If I just think of it as a website, I'm missing a huge number of users who never see it that way.


What is your advice to new bloggers (not necessarily on ArtsJournal) on how to market/publicize their blogs?

I tell them to make sure they're listed in blog directories. I tell them to email all their friends and people/organizations whom they think might be interested. And I tell them that getting on as many blogrolls as possible helps their search engine rankings. Mostly, though,  I tell them that the way to get the biggest audience is to post as often as possible and to be consistent about it. If you post every day and then suddenly skip a week, you lose most of your readership. But you can post once a month and if you're consistent, you'll capture a set of readers. The big numbers though, go to bloggers who post often.


Do you think we'll reach a point where blogs/bloggers need publicists and/or marketing consultants? Advising them on where to advertise their blogs, advocating for them to other blogs and publications? Are we already there?

Interesting question. I actually think there's a revolution in thinking about marketing. I think you can't think about marketing in the usual way - it can't be all about just "selling" you something. We're mostly numb to those kinds of messages. I think the new marketing is about building communities around whatever it is you're trying to do and making it possible for that community to interact with one another through you. It isn't just about buying a ticket to this concert or that play. That's only part of it. The other part is making it possible for people who are attracted to whatever you're doing to interact with others who are interested in your work too. That's what helps make the experience really meaningful. Look - sell a ticket to somebody and they'll come to the concert and maybe never come back. Get them interested in the experience and the others who are there for it, and you've got a follower. I think there will be no need for publicists or pr people in the traditional sense. I think there will be big demand for people who think about audience relationships and strategies for how to build communities.


Who/What do you think is ArtsJournal's competition for readers? Other blogs? Or do you think ArtsJournal readers are primarily print newspaper readers? Do you send out reader surveys to collect demographic information?

That's a tough one. I don't really think about it at all. I see myself as a curator; someone who sifts through a large universe and picks things I think are important. I've never been driven by competing against anyone. I don't think AJ readers are primarily newspaper readers. I think they're people who are interested in culture in a larger context. I haven't done any demographic research but anecdotally I think I have a pretty good idea who the readers are. But I have to say, I don't really write the site with a firm idea of who the reader is. I choose things because they interest me.


When do you think newspapers will croak for good? At some point Jonny Greenwood or whomever is going to declare that Radiohead no longer wants to be reviewed in print because it's bad for the environment, and that will be the end, right?

I think there are already artists and arts organizations that have given up on newspapers. Hard to argue with their logic. I don't think newspapers will ever really go away. I do think that 2-3 years from now it will be the exception for local newspapers to have staff critics. They'll still run some form of writing about culture. But it won't mean much. Really a shame. I think newspapers have hurt themselves greatly by the ways they've come to think about arts coverage. There's a huge audience out there, but newspapers have pursued a dumb strategy when it comes to A&E coverage.


I feel like I came to the blog party circa five years late. Ah well. Are blogs over? Close to over? What will be the next big thing?

Blogs aren't over. But blogs don't have some magical property. Blogs are merely a quick publishing platform that allows the world to see what you write. They're like a pen is to paper - a tool that enables you to write. What you choose to do with it is entirely up to you. There are as many kinds of blogs as there are people. Some of the bigger blogs are starting to look more and more like traditional publications. Some traditional publications are looking more and more like blogs. Some are very journalistic. Many are like personal diaries.

What's next? I think there won't be a huge revolution. Changes will be incremental. Video, audio, collaborative. Etc. The next immediate thing is the explosion of mobile use and interactive multi-media. I think this will very much change the way we use the web today. It will make how we use the web/create for the web today seem like the Dark Ages. Any artist, arts organization or journalist who isn't thinking about the way mobile use is going to change things, is going to be left in the dust.


Final and most important question: who's your favorite ArtsJournal blogger? ((cough::cough))

Favorite, eh? You know me, I'm shy about offering my opinion...

First, a note about the silliness of the classical music industry:

The Gramophone Magazine Awards are being announced across the pond today - perhaps even AS I TYPE THIS BLOG ENTRY - and I'm expected to write a press release about the winners. Fine, fine - just tell me how many people voted, give me the list of the awards, etc.. What am I told at 6 am this morning? "This information is under embargo till today's lunchtime". UNDER EMBARGO!! Am I waiting on the Gramophone Awards winners AND Bush's solution to America's financial crisis? Under embargo. Give me a break. How much of the population woke up this morning - giddy with anticipation - leaped to their feet and Googled GRAMOPHONE ARTIST OF THE YEAR? ~Nobody. Whatever. I know who the Artist of the Year is already. And if I know, you should be able to figure it out.

I have been thinking a lot lately about anticipation. I started seeing Iron Man DVD previews on The TV last week, and was like, September 30th - yes - sign me up. This year, however, I will not tell everyone I know that I want a copy, since a similar announcement last year resulted in not one but four Ratatouille DVDs for Christmas. I was actually giddy with anticipation about (and then devastated by) the Sex and the City movie this summer; I wasted a truly embarrassing amount of time trying to find different versions of the trailer online. ((LAME)). I'm seriously excited about the new Deerhoof CD, since I've been hearing about it and seeing it everywhere since July.

When was the last time you were really excited about a classical CD? Was anyone in this wide world like, "I hear Hilary Hahn is recording a definitive Schoenberg disc...can't wait!" No, they were not. They learned about it when I or the Director of Publicity at Deutsche Grammophon sent out a a press release, maybe two months before the release. No one leaked recording sections, Hilary never performed sections live on the radio, I never offered any blogs exclusive mP3 downloads. I'm not complaining about the response to the disc, but how amazing would it have been to really gear people up for it?

The Metropolitan Opera does an excellent job via their posters around the city getting folks excited about productions; the Satyagraha posters are especially memorable. But why don't they videotape Atomic rehearsals and "leak" them on YouTube? The people who know what Doctor Atomic is about/sounds like are...few. Perhaps if folks saw clips of rehearsals, the "not your grandfather's opera" point would be driven home. I already asked Eric if I could come to a rehearsal. Maybe I'll sneak in a Flip camera.

You also don't see teaser ad campaigns often in classical music. I wasn't going to bring this up, but I thought the "ad" "campaign" (me hanging up flyers at like, Collis Commonground) for our production of Pippin at school was pretty good: basically, we pulled quotes from the musical ("Sometimes the fornicating I'm getting isn't worth the fornicating I'm getting." "Think about your life."), typed them up in big, bold white letters on black backgrounds, printed 8.5/11 sheets and on the very bottom in small type said "Pippin the Musical" and the date (which I have since blocked from my memory). Then, the week of the show we printed flyers in the same font that had the actual performance and venue information. The "Be Kanye" ads (for Absolut Vodka) and the bus ad campaign for the recent Die Hard movie ("Yippee Ki Yay Mo - John 6:27") are real-world examples of this. In retrospect, I should have come up with a banner ad or window card campaign using the "unplayable" tag on the Schoenberg concerto.

Incidentally, the more creative you are with your teasers, the less money you have to spend. The "Be Kanye" ads are made to look cheap, and the Die Hard ads were simple white text on a black background (perhaps they saw Pippin at Dartmouth...).

HIlary Hahn is Gramophone Artist of the Year, by the way. One down, one to go. Was this entry enough pre-buzz for that announcement?

Alex Ross is on Gawker today!

Many congratulations to him for achieving mainstream digital media recognition. Oh, and on winning that award thinger.

Or, "Am I Going to Get Arrested?", by Amanda Ameer.

Would you believe me if I told you that I received an album request from the company that apparently handles "in-flight entertainment" for...Air Force One? They asked for a CD for consideration - I'm not telling you which one. I e mailed back, "Like, the President's plane?" ((consummate professional)), she's like, "Yep, that's the one!", smiley face. "Um, yeah, I'm sure that's fine."

Now, I don't think I have to spell out the comedy for you, but I can't help but wonder:

1. The President and his people have time for in-flight entertainment?? According to The West Wing, everybody's supposed to be working on these plane trips. Aren't C.J. Cregg and The Press Corps on board??

2. "Which President?"

3. What other albums should I sneak into the package "for consideration"? I am overwhelmed with possibilities. If this were a blog on which people participated en masse ((sob)), I would encourage suggestions. For the time being, I think I'm going to slip in: Godspell (2008 Off-Broadway Original Cast Recording), Lucky Soul - The Great Unwanted, The King's Singers - Gesualdo, Tenebrae Responsories for Maundy Thursday, and Margot & The Nuclear So & So's - The Dust of Retreat. And McCain/Palin are getting Hair/Spring Awakening, respectively, if it comes to that.

1. Why does everyone keep telling me there are no freelancers? I would think the city would be crawling with freelancers, since all the staff writers are getting laid off.

2. I neglected to mention how cool this was last week. Pshaw to The New Yorker for simply printing excerpts of John Adams' autobiography; here we have the esteemed Michael Tilson Thomas previewing his own concert! I could do without the mini-me paragraph openers ["It was thrilling, but it fed on itself." "By the early '70s he realized the danger." "These were the years of the tours from hell." "His music took a darker cast."], but I don't think MTT is quitting his day job any time soon, and I'm something akin to the Princess of Run-On Sentences [Exhibit A], so it's fine.

Nico Muhly can review reviews of his own music, and Michael Tilson Thomas can preview his own Carnegie Hall performance in the Times. I'd call this the best of all possible worlds.

While looking for contact information on their website, I stumbled upon the Orange County Performing Arts Center's "Interactive Seat Buddy". Heeey, buddy! You select the theater, the level and the seat, and your new computer pal shows you the general view from that location. This is perfect for first-time ticket buyers who can't picture where their seats are going to be or what the stage is going to look like, and might not buy because of it; one small step toward making the classical-concert-going experience less daunting.

Orange County: 1
Detroit: 0

It seems like years since I've posted an interview here, which, I assure you, is my fault and not my subjects'. The good news is, we have an exquisite line-up for the next few Fridays. For those of you just joining us now, on Fridays I'll (try to) post an interview with someone far more knowledgeable than myself on specific marketing and publicity subjects. This week, FatCat USA label manager Anna Bond on record placement in iTunes vs. stores, being a girl, and how the industry needs to reinvent itself.


Anna Bond has been co-label manager of FatCat USA for two years. She has worked in the music industry in NYC for just over five years, and has spent time in artist management and retail in addition to record labels. The only things she likes more than records are vegetables.







Can you please tell the scores of Life's a Pitch readers about the classical imprint on the label? First, what is an "imprint"? What was the reasoning behind creating it?

130701 was created in order for FatCat to release modern composition records that didn't fit with the aesthetic of FatCat proper. Artists released on the label include Max Richter, Sylvain Chaveau, Set Fire To Flames, and Hauschka. "Imprint" means different things, technically, depending on where you are, but for FatCat, it's simply a genre marker - the same folks work on promoting and selling the records as for all FatCat releases. At a major, an imprint might be a subsidiary label with an entirely separate staff and office.


Do you think record labels have become literally-labels? For example, if pianist Max Richter was on Decca, he would be classical, but because he's on FatCat, he's "indie"? Conversely (or, similarly, depending on how you look at it), when an artist on a classical label does anything in another genre sphere, they are immediately labeled as (and often criticized for being) "crossover".

This is a tough question. To an extent, I think the answer is yes. Some music buyers notice and even follow labels, but I think the importance is more in the industry realm - retail, press, and radio, who will all influence the way an artist is perceived by the music-buying public, are more likely to know different labels and their rosters, and therefore have notions of what to expect from them. Labels who become closely identified with one very specific type of music, like Americana or heavy rock, may have a tough time shaking those preconceptions, and releases outside their mold may suffer.


How do you submit an artist like Max Richter to iTunes? To record stores? Are we dealing with different genre labels for those different platforms?

Lots of record stores don't have classical sections, or if they do, they don't carry modern composers - just your Carmina Burana, all the big guns, La Boheme, and the holiday stuff, because that's all that will sell in a lot of markets - so we use our wiggle room as an "indie" or rock label to classify Max Richter as "rock" for retail solicitations, so that those stores who don't buy classical don't ignore the record. Once store buyers do read our solicitation materials, they'll know what the music is, but in order to get them to that point, we can't be under the classical heading. And honestly, that's an appropriate genre classification for a lot of the buyers of his music: sure, avant-garde heads will pick up the CD, but a lot of our sales will be to folks who are also looking for Sufjan Stevens, Yeasayer, or Godspeed.

The digital realm, on the other hand, presents its own challenges and opportunities. Placement on sites like iTunes and eMusic is very competitive for rock releases, especially for crowded fall release dates, but less so for classical, so in the digital realm, we find it more advantageous to group it with classical releases, where we have a much greater chance of featured new-release placement - and a greater chance of reaching curious fans of classical music. With digital, we don't have to worry about a retailer choosing not to carry the release due to its genre classification.


Are indie record sales as bad as classical record sales? Do you think the whole industry will actually croak? When? Exact date and time, please.

Sales overall have obviously decreased, but there are pockets of hope everywhere, especially with vinyl and special packaging. I think the music industry will continue to change radically - to the extent that it may be unrecognizable to many in, say, ten years - but it's hard for me to believe it will dissolve entirely. That could be wishful thinking, though.


How many rock/electronica critics are women? How many managers? Publicists?

I'm not sure exactly, but I'd estimate roughly that no more than 25% of the writers we send to are women. I have long noticed that women are disproportionately represented as managers and publicists vs. in other areas of the industry, which I can't help but attribute to our acculturation as nourishers and communicators.
 

How many women artists are on FatCat? The indie rock industry seems very male-dominated to me, but then again, so does the classical music industry. And...life in general.

FatCat has several women on the active roster, including two of our highest-profile artists, Vashti Bunyan (she is on FatCat in the UK only) and Nina Nastasia. Also Silje Nes, members of Múm, Welcome, and Vetiver (again, Vetiver is on FatCat in the UK only)... once you include the inactive roster and the split series, there are lots more. But there are definitely more male artists, by a wide margin.

Yes, the music world is quite male-dominated, but so is pretty much everything except like, elementary school education and social work. My theory about this would take pages to expound, but I think one reason most popular bands are male is because the most passionate music followers are male.

This is not because men are innately more passionate about music than women, but because women are pressured to cast aside hobbies and passions like record-collecting or insatiable music-listening earlier than men are, in favor of practical responsibilities like, say, getting one's career sorted before it's time to have babies.

On the same token, it's likely that these pressures also discourage musical women from pursuing the slow grind toward making music as a career.

It's hard to make this claim without sounding flippant or reductive, but it's certainly been my experience, and that of my close women friends, both in and out of the music industry.


Between you and me and whomever's reading, do you ever leak albums? Like, send them to bloggers from a secret Gmail account or whatever?

Nah, they leak soon enough on their own. Though I have noticed that the lag between mailing and leak, even for relatively high-profile releases, has increased. Maybe leaking for leaking's sake has gotten old? I'm not sure.


What press is considered the Holy Grail for your albums? Pitchfork? Why does everyone keep saying Pitchfork is over? I'd really like to know...

Pitchfork is a big one, but I don't think there is a Holy Grail. It's a combination of attention across the board from print and online press. For a couple of years - 2004-2005 maybe? - Pitchfork was a massive sales driver, with the ability to launch careers seemingly out of nowhere. But the record had to appeal to enough people who sought it out after the Pitchfork review to become a real phenomenon like the Arcade Fire or Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - I'm pretty sure William Basinski's Disintegration Loops didn't sell 100K after getting Pitchfork's Best New Music, and I know that Max Richter didn't. Though both releases undoubtedly received more attention due to the Pitchfork review than they otherwise would have.

Now there are simply so many review sites, mp3 blogs - so many sources for reading about music - that it's impossible for one site to have as much impact anymore. Getting a high Pitchfork rating is still a boon in terms of press attention and sales, but it's definitely not going to guarantee success, especially for artists who are more left-field.


Our friends at Sequenza21 offered three free Max Richter track downloads, but, to my knowledge, that was one of the first times a classical blog has ever done that. Do the blogs you usually work with offer free downloads all the time? How does giving away product for free like that affect album sales?

Rock sites do a lot of mp3 download giveaways and streaming audio samples - it's standard at this point. We generally offer one or two mp3 download giveaway tracks for each record, and we consider the attention drawn to the music by these early previews an upside greater than any downside in terms of sales.


Have you found an online equivalent to flipping through CDs/records/tapes in bins at record stores, or do you think that's irreplaceable?

I am going to be totally honest with you: I can count on the fingers of one hand how many albums I have ever downloaded. I'm a dinosaur. I work at computers - why would I want to shop for records at one? I love record stores, possibly to a fault in terms of my marketing perspective, and definitely to a fault in terms of my wallet. There is no substitute for walking into a friendly place, checking out the new release rack, looking at employee suggestions, asking the person behind the counter what's good and new...I know it's not how everyone prefers to shop for music, but to me, it's absolutely irreplaceable.

Well, this happened.

Who knew an American orchestra wielded that kind of power. That's more shocking than the news itself to me, actually.

Below please find an exchange with my sister not one hour ago. I like how "Aliza Ameer" is in quotes when I cut and paste, like, allegedly that's who's sending me e mails.

On 9/17/08 12:11 PM, "Aliza Ameer" wrote:

Yeah, that's definitely true, I almost called Detroit, just to see if I could request tickets for $1 and what they would say.  Then I decided not to, but they don't put any instructions down for how it works. 

Yeah, they definitely should have a tkts booth of sorts.  Why couldn't they just join in with the normal tkts company and have them do it for them?  That makes no sense, I think a lot of tourists would be more inclined to go see a Philharmonic show if they could buy last minute, cheap tickets. 


On Wed, Sep 17, 2008 at 12:05 PM, Amanda Ameer wrote:
But it's ridiculous - they don't explain the system at all! And why do you have to call them? No e mailing?

The Philharmonic should have a TKTS booth, is what they should have.


On 9/17/08 12:01 PM, "Aliza Ameer" wrote:

I was reading your entry about the Detroit Symphony website and I came across this on it...

http://www.detroitsymphony.com/page.aspx?page_id=463

It's a cool concept to have a "Pay what you Want"...granted it only works for certain sections and for certain performances, but it goes along with the Radiohead "Pay What you Want" thing that they did with their new CD in that it puts it on the concert goer to decide how much the concert would be worth to them, while still allowing the Detroit Symphony to sell tickets that they may not have otherwise sold.  I don't know, I thought it was cool, if any of the NYC symphonies did that I would go, if I could pay like 5 or 10 dollars for my ticket.  The question would not be why, but why not! [This last bit is an "inside joke" from our...wait for it...swim team days.]

And then, just now, Hilary's manager e mails me this, since he knows how I've longed for a classical music TKTS booth. Today is looking up, my friends, today is look-ing-up.

File under: Grrreat. The Newark Star-Ledger might go out of business. On the one hand, a city without a paper could force higher quality online content slash save trees (or "gardens", I guess, in New Jersey's case). On the other hand, I really like Bradley Bambarger, so that's too bad. His review of one of our Wordless Music orchestra concerts back in January was really thought-provoking (a thought-provoking review??): incidentally, I was at a Goldfrapp concert last Friday thinking about how every performing arts genre besides classical music has a sense of aesthetic and goes out of its way to create atmosphere. More on that at a later date.

Is Time Out New York next? (Former) Music Editor Mike Wolf left (air quotes up to you) a few weeks ago, making Steve Smith the hardest working man in showbiz. Since I have records coming out of my ears these days, maybe I'll offer myself up as a freelance TONY reviewer.

About a week ago, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra launched a new website. Props to them for caring about their online presence, which is more than I can say for some people. But, sadly, the site is strange, distracting and illogical.

I like the homepage, which uses the facade of the building as navigation. This is useful because 1. it's intriguing to see what Flash magic is going to happen when you click on a door [SPOILER ALERT! Nothing happens.] and 2. it (hopefully) leads folks to recognize the real life facade as the home of the symphony when driving/walking by. The rollover calendar on the left is really nice, since there are few things more annoying than waiting for calendars to load, and I think the faux marquee is cute. Cool and cute. Coote.

When you click on a door, however, it doesn't virtually take you in the door, it just takes you to another page. As a friend pointed out, if you're going have fun with a site, might as well carry the theme all the way through.

And then, like most things, it gets complicated. If you're on any given page, you have the option for both quicklinks and five boxes of navigation at the bottom, both of which unexpectedly scroll up and down into the mainframe, and neither of which is fully or partially expanded at any given time. Some links lead you to virtual rooms - but not all links - and it's challenging to figure out how to get from one "room" to another (you click on the colorful subject boxes at the bottom and select "x homepage" at the top of each menu). But then the clickable navigation features in the rooms don't quite line up with what the site wants you to do. Would I know to click on the Blackberry on a restaurant table for Contact information? Probably not. Should I have to rollover everything on a page to find what I want? Definitely not, hence the need for a very clear, text-based navigation bar that stays consistent throughout the pages.

Website navigation is complicated: you need to appeal to the greatest number of peoples' logic while (hopefully) maintaining the creative features and aesthetics you desire. Usability should always be king, though, since websites - especially those for presenters, artists and orchestras - exist primarily to provide information.  The CGI rooms are entertaining for circa 5 seconds, and then the user thinks, "No seriously - where's the number for the box office?"

I also think that, when we get ahead of ourselves in fancy land, small-yet-noticeable mistakes are made. Like the use of two different fonts in the HTML sections:

And a few typos, like MEET THE MUSICIAN, a (very useful) category later listed as MEET THE MUSICIANS:

I say all this out of love, I really do, because I hate to see presenters spend money they don't have and miss the mark. We all know what good websites look like - we use them every day to function. Try too hard to be cool/different/unique/"groundbreaking", and you're probably not going to be. And think about your users; you want to draw people further and further into a site, not frustrate them. It's great to include interactive features, but not at the expense of usability.

UPDATE - a few minutes into 9/17 - Stardate 40234, I have just discovered the rhyming Slatkin hologram that (who?) pops up when you click on "Meet the Director" widget on the homepage. I can't decide whether he reminds me more of this or this.

Aren't you glad that you work in the performing arts industry and never had any money to invest, anyway?

And who would have thought "freelance classical music publicist" would end up being a more stable career choice than "investment banker"? I knew I avoided Econ classes for a reason...

It's that time of year: the city is completely covered in Metropolitan Opera opening night ads. Buses, bus stops, banners, phone booths...you can't swing a dead Venus worshiper without hitting one. This year, the campaign has a slogan: "Let yourself go", which I think is rockin'. It paints going to The Met as a guilty pleasure, a message that the sultry Renée Fleming Thaïs photo completely supports.  "Come on, you know you want to...buy tickets to the opera," Ms. Fleming seems to suggest with the one eye that isn't covered by kinked blond hair.

I've been thinking a lot about how, when a blockbuster movie comes out, you see imagery and actors from the film everywhere. If there is a feature on the movie in a magazine, there are also ads in the magazine. If an actor from the movie is on Letterman, the movie is advertised during the commercials of that broadcast.

Until recently, I thought that ads and press were interchangeable; that is, if we can get a feature on an album in this publication, we should put our ad dollars elsewhere. I don't think that's correct, though. Better to advertise in the publication in which the feature appears, so when readers flip the page, they see the ad and feel familiar with the product. The same is true in reverse: if they've seen an ad and then see the profile, readers/viewers feel like they "have seen that somewhere" and actually read the piece.

In classical music, we don't always (*ever?) have the luxury of ad dollars, but this can and should be done in some places. Local (and some national) blogs, student newspapers, etc. all still offer ad space within most presenters' and labels' budgets. Pitch stories to the outlets at which you can afford advertising, and also run ticket/CD giveaway contests. That way, your product will be visible in at least three spaces, so even if the publication or blog is not uber high-profile, you build a consumer base that recognizes your brand and is exposed to it repeatedly.

Gramophone Artist of the Year voting has closed, but I'm kind of terrified to report that you can still Vote for Hilary!

Playboy's Sexiest Babes of Classical Music - could I/would I make that up?

I'm actually pretty impressed with their description of Hilary! I've read presenter ad copy about her far worse than this. It's quite well-written and accurate, actually. Maybe I'll start reading Playboy for the articles.

Hilary Hahn

Who she is:
A serious-minded violinist who isn't afraid to find partners outside classical music

She'll play a Bach partita and then join Josh Ritter for a duet, but for all her adventurousness, Hahn is still an appealing all-American girl. Her first album was entirely of solo Bach works, which showed she meant business, and she recently scored an iTunes hit with Arnold Schoenberg's crunchy Violin Concerto. If classical music needs its sexy librarian, we recommend Hahn for duty in the stacks.

Meanwhile, I will be waiting by the telephone until the magazine runs a Naughty PR Girls of Classical Music piece.

Update! September 16, around 11:30 am - OPERA CHIC endorses dark horse candidate Hahn for Sexiest Babe of Classical Music! Eat our dust, Netrebko.

The unnervingly lovely Renée Fleming releases her newest album next week, and combing through her press materials to promote it, I stumbled upon this:

Master Chef Daniel Boulud has created the dessert "La Diva Renée" (1999) in her honor, and she has inspired the "Renée Fleming Iris" (2004), which has been replicated in porcelain by Boehm.

She also has a Coty (synonym for "fancy") perfume coming out if/when The Metropolitan Opera Gift Shop reopens this winter called  "La Voce". My Coty perfume, "Life's a Spritz" (2008), will be coming out around the same time, and will be exclusive to The Metropolitan Opera marketing department offices. You'll have to submit a proposal and go in for a meeting to design their banner ads or whatever to buy it.

Anyway, the iris, etc. got me thinking: Stephen Colbert prides himself on his many namesakes, but Renée Fleming, a mere opera star, is a surprisingly strong competitor:

Renée:

• Daniel Boulud dessert
  
• Iris
• Porcelain Iris copy
• Perfume

Stephen:

• Flavor of Ben and Jerry's ice cream
• Bald Eagle
• Aptostichus stephencolberti (a "trapdoor" spider)
  
• Leatherback Turtle
  
• Ontario Hockey League mascot

Both Renée and Stephen have their own desserts, but while Renée-influenced species seem to stem (...zing!) from the flora arena, Stephen has focused his efforts on fauna. If interested, her fauna solicitation efforts would involve birds, one presumes, because they...sing. Insofar as hockey team possibilities for Ms. Fleming, might I suggest approaching the Potsdam Bears or the Potsdam Junior Hockey Association, since SUNY Potsdam is her alma mater. The Aria Readies, perhaps?

It's really too bad Stephen Colbert isn't popular enough to have his own flower or cologne. He's young, though. There's still time.

In commercial (or, more specifically, consumer-brain) shorthand, classical music and opera = high-end, expensive, classy. If you buy a car that was advertised with opera playing on the TV, you are one cultured, loaded guy.

I think a lot about how the "industry is dying" but classical music and opera are still omnipresent. I'm sure if I had a different job, I would still passively hear classical music once a day. So my ears always perk up when opera comes out of my television, but when this Jeep commercial came on last night during Frasier, I was extremely confused. First of all, since when do Jeep Grand Cherokees try to be classy? Isn't their whole shtick driving through the mud or whatever?  I suppose everyone in the commercial is still doing manly, Jeeply things, they're just...singing opera while they do them? I love my Jeep so much I...bust out Boheme? Nothing says "I just freed a fox" like Rudolfo's aria.

I suppose none of this matters, because it's an ad and it got my attention. Objective achieved.

[Also, are those even the right words? My official opera consultant is out of town, but I don't think they are.]

Last week, I saw the extremely funny What's That Smell: The Music of Jacob Sterling in previews at The Atlantic. The show is being billed as "an absurd musical satire that charts the career of eternally up-and-coming (and fictitious) musical theatre composer Jacob Sterling", and, while ostensibly about a guy who can't get a break (SPOILER ALERT: his Broadway debut is pulled because of September 11th), it's actually about a guy who just writes bad music, and thus "can't get a break" ("  ").

There were (are) many talented artists at IMG when I worked there, but maybe fifteen out of about one hundred and sixty were classical superstars, guaranteed to be booked with all the top orchestras, opera companies and presenters. Perhaps at every management company, there is a group of artists who are constantly labeled as "the next generation", "stars of tomorrow", "young artists", or, to borrow from What's That Smell, "up-and-coming". Is an artist considered "up-and-coming" because he or she cannot get a break or doesn't have the monetary means to achieve a break, or is it because he or she is simply just not as good as the superstars? And if you're, say, 25, can you still be billed as a "young" artist, or are you just billed that way because your career isn't where you/your manager wants it to be? Yes, 25 is young, in the grand scheme of things, but are you really a "young artist" at 25 if you've been playing since you were 4? Most importantly, when does an artist cease being "up-and-coming", and why or how?

Something I've noticed is that young artists are often inconsistent (I never worked on the management side at IMG, so this is simply based on personal observation at concerts): said "next generation" artists would deliver an out-of-this-world performance one night and a scattered performance the next. Who can blame them, they're young, after all! From what I can tell, the child prodigies who made it big were the ones who were solid every time: no distractions, no mood swings, total focus.

But even if an artist is focused and has, for all intents and purposes, the makings of a star, how does he or she get there? Step one, they're represented by a top management company. But they don't have recording contracts, and they can't afford publicists.  The artists who can afford publicists don't need them (well, they do but they don't - you know what I mean), and the artists who can't, do. The same artists who can afford independant publicists also have the in-house publicist at their record label at their disposal (cf. yours truly for Renee Fleming, Lang Lang, and Anne-Sophie Mutter, at the moment), as well as the means to produce great websites and marketing materials.

So where does that leave us? Should the "stars of tomorrow" simply wait for a major cancellation and hope for the best? Of course they're not just waiting around...they're working hard and presumably improving performance/press/exposure-wise with every concert, but is that enough?

Would a free publicist help? Before I took the label day-job and started blogging my little heart out, I had planned on asking for applications and offering a season of free publicity for the artist who wrote the best essay on how to save classical music or whatever. There would have to be requirements: the artist has x number of concerts per year, makes under a certain amount of money, has a manager (so the publicist wouldn't become the default manager), has an interest in bettering the industry as a whole...I hadn't thought it all through, but you see the direction. Then I would have a committee ((my friends)) from the management and presenting arenas help select the candidate. Now, however, I'm thinking that for next season, 09-10 (gah!), it might be interesting to recruit other publicists - all the classical music publicists in New York, for example - to each take on a pro bono client for a season, and also serve as the selection committee. Artists would be selected and then assigned to the publicist who best fit their needs.

It's hard to get press for classical musicians, even for the superstars, so I'm not sure this will work. But every little bit helps, right?  Publicists of New York, Unite!

New Zealand's national airline is attempting to pay bald men to advertise on their heads. There's creative thinking and then there's good old-fashioned weirdness. Although...

Thanks to Bill Kirby for the link!

The opera blog Parterre Box is looking for critics to cover The Met's gala opening night, critics ("  ") not necessarily employed by a newspapers, and perhaps all the more critical!

La Cieca is looking for a member of the cher public who is already planning to attend the opening night gala at the Met and is willing to write about it for parterre.com. Your doyenne will need 400 - 600 words by 11 AM on Tuesday, September 23 for publication that day with your byline. If you are willing to commit to getting in a review of the night's festivities by this deadline, contact lacieca@parterre.com.  Preference will be given to regular commenters, and attendance at the "La Voce Renée Fleming" launch party is a definite plus, but not required.

The site is also looking for people-on-the-ground to cover the HD simulcast and the Sirius satellite radio broadcast of the opening night. More good play-within-a-play journalism stuff: regular people reporting on the multiple forms of event media coverage on a blog. ((boom))

Perhaps crowdsourcing will save the day when all the critics disappear.

The festivities have begun already. Thanks to Randy, Larry and the rest of the Schoenbergs of LA, we have (exclusive) photos from past Schoenberg family birthday parties to kick things off:

I am all-for copying good marketing ideas: if something works in another industry or for another company, apply it to your own and see how it goes. But there's copying a concept - if a talking duck can sell insurance, why can't a talking gecko? - and then there's...stealing, which is frankly just too comical to be effective.

A few things I've noticed around town in the past week:

1. This suit company on 32 and Broadway, whose ads look...exactly...like iPod ads and commercials.


2. The new Verizon FIOS TV commercials with the cool ("  ") young guy installing Verizon and the lame chubby bearded guy (un)installing Time Warner Cable. Hi, I'm a Verizon and I'm a Time Warner Cable.

3. The Brooklyn Academy of Music's Next Wave Festival and The CW's Gossip Girl ads: twins separated at birth.


[I don't actually think BAM "copied" The CW, but it's amusing nonetheless.]

4. The Broadway production of A Tale of Two Cities using the Les Miserables font in their print and web advertisements. It's an embarrassment:

And speaking of embarrassments, is this a typo on the homepage of their website? "Conept" Recording? Do they mean "Concept" Recording? Perfect.

5. Rent live-broadcasts in movie theatres, a la The Metropolitan Opera. This is actually a good copy-cat move, and frankly, I'm shocked that Broadway is just starting to do it now.

Be on the look-out for successful advertising and marketing campaigns, but emulate while maintaining your organization's identity. As with anything in this-here-life, simply applying someone else's model to yourself - no matter how effective it may be - just isn't going to work. Oh, and spell things correctly on your homepages.

Thus endeth the life lesson.

I am in Las Vegas this weekend, and thought I could collect all sorts of good ideas to report from the marketing capital of the country. Unfortunately, the take-home messages have been as expected: sell via lots of skin and sparkling lights - which I totally do already - so nothing gained there.

I did notice that various smells were being pumped into the streets outside the casinos: bakery smells outside the Paris, orchid smells outside the Mirage, so on, so forth. Forget music, Carnegie Hall - pump croissant scent onto 57th street and the industry will be saved!

What else. The casinos love Trajan Pro, but everybody loves Trajan Pro (most notably Aaron Sorkin, who used the font for time/location stamps on both The West Wing and Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip...I mean, come on now). I even saw a few advertisements for post-concert artist meet-and-greets, which I think are essential in our business, but again, no lessons learned:

I did learn something, however, about ticket prices. Before we left for the trip, my father sent my sister and me the following text message: "Got Beatles tickets 4 Fri. Bad news have 2 pack our own food 4 trip, tkts 2 much, no more money." The tickets for the Cirque du Soleil Beatles Love show were undoubtedly expensive: $168 each, to be exact. The fam and I had seen two Cirque du Soleil shows before, though, and were duly impressed; it was worth it ("  ") to see another, we decided, and Dad approved the costs.

Worth/value is a complicated issue. What's worth X dollars to you may not be worth X dollars to me, and vice versa. Visions of new purses and good dinners-out danced in my head as the slot machines ate my twenties, whereas people who love to gamble are happily paying for the thrill of the win; that's "worth it" to them. Meanwhile, the rigatoni alla ricotta at Pomodoro's on Columbus and 71st is worth it to me every time, while someone else might cry, "Make it at home, you lazy girl!"

So value is complicated, but sitting through the phenomenal Love, I thought, "Would I pay $168 of my own money to see this again?" As three VW Bugs and a guy on trombone-stilts went across the stage, Paul, John & Co. silhouettes were projected on screens around us - magically talking to each other during their "rehearsals", speakers were in our seats, and the annoying made-me-think-I-should-have-dropped-by-Pilates-before-I-left-New-York girls were flipping around on ribbons, I thought, yes, this is worth it, if we were staying in Vegas longer, I would go again on my own dime. The creative forces behind Cirque du Soleil are so impressive to me. I pay attention, but I'm convinced that if I saw any one of these shows three, four, five times, I still wouldn't notice all the impeccably designed details that lead to a plotless-yet-full final works. And what must these custom-designed costumes and props cost? And the electricity to run shows like that? And the production team? And the acrobats/dancers? And what of the music, in this particular case? The Beatles singing their own songs, plus archival footage and voiceovers throughout the show? My $168 would probably cover the rights to the first chord of "A Hard Day's Night" for one evening of performance. Adopt-a-Chord.

My point is that in my experience, Cirque du Soleil consistently puts forth virtuosic, passionate, unique and completely thought-out productions, and that's worth high ticket prices to me. Can the same be said about your local symphony orchestra? In New York, top tickets to the Philharmonic are $100-plus; am I guaranteed an awe-inspiring performance every time? Again, we get into matters-of-opinions here, but in my experience, no. That doesn't mean I haven't seen amazing Philharmonic concerts, it just means that I wouldn't spend over $50, probably, because I'm not fully confident in the product.

High classical music ticket prices are often blamed for the lack of young people/new audiences at concerts. And now a question, which I realize is complicated: why are classical music concerts so expensive? You watch Love, and it looks expensive - The Beatles are talking to you, for Lennon's sake! You watch an artist in front of a stage of people; yes, all those people need to be paid, the soloist is impressive, and one assumes everyone's instrument is pricey but...$104 dollars for two hours? You even see a Broadway show and, while I think it's rare that Broadways shows are worth $100 for two hours, you see all the pieces and think, that show is expensive to put on every night. I am not - not not not - saying that orchestras need Star Wars projected behind them while they accompany Ewoks on screen to somehow prove they're suitable to spend money on, but I understand why an outsider would look at a standard classical concert and think, that's not worth it.

Let's think about the costs. I will probably forget some. Salaried, health-insuranced orchestra members, music director, commissions of new works (though I highly doubt American orchestras are breaking the bank, there), union costs, production team, administration, house-management, advertisement, Playbill printing...soloist fees? Are soloist fees the root of the problem? I think my artists deserve every cent they earn, but it's certainly a lot of money. [Meanwhile, Paris Hilton gets paid 50K-odd dollars to simply show up at a club; Itzhak Perlman doesn't deserve at least that to play for 45 minutes?] "Deserve" rivals "worth" for complication, of course. A friend of mine once asked if my artists ever got annoyed that they worked their entire lives on one instrument/artistic pursuit, and a pop star could be discovered and processed and make more in a year than Joe/Jane classical artist would see in a lifetime. Maybe, I replied, but I don't think they let themselves get caught up in that.

So orchestras and presenters blame high ticket prices on high artist fees. Is that it? Game over? It is a valid point. Should these unbelievably talented and hard-working artists take one for the industry team and solve this thing?

But then there's another problem, which I was reminded of by an article in this month's Vanity Fair that referenced a former Stella Artois slogan: "Reassuringly Expensive". If ticket prices for classical concerts were decreased, would the current audience come? Or would they think the quality had somehow been lessened with the cost? Does the industry actually benefit from being expensive?

What I learned from Love, ultimately, is that with or without VW bugs and trombone-stilts, a great show is worth money, and if the highest caliber of performance is put forth every time, audiences will come and pay.

In celebration of Arnold Schoenberg's birthday on Saturday, September 13th, and with the help of the estimable HappyCorp, we're launching a custom-designed YouTube channel for Hilary that will include new video content she will create in response to fan questions about her most recent album - the violin concertos of Schoenberg and Sibelius - as well as a collection of past performance and related videos.

We're not entirely sure how this is going to work out, but she's ready to film answers to your questions, so send them our way! I even set up an exciting new e mail account for the occasion: questions@firstchairpromo.com. Happy Birthday from us to you, Arnie.
 
Twenty fan questions will be selected and posted here at 12:01 am and throughout the day on September 13th. So don't expect any blog posts on the 13th, team.

Please note, this may be the dorkiest pursuit I have ever been involved with (other than, you know, becoming a classical music publicist...and Photoshoping a hat on Arnold Schoenberg), but as Hilary once assured me, "Music dorks rule!"

Sometimes, I'm ashamed of my race.

I've heard tales of publicists pitching writers about an artist who the writer had literally covered the month before, publicists sending out mass e mails to any writer they can find on a publication's website (one classical journalist told me she was contacted about a local football game), and publicists asking journalists if they had ever written about the artist he/she was pitching. I mean, if you don't have your own artist's press kit in front of you, let's do some brisk Googling; let's not go ahead and ask the journalist. And who can forget the NYC venue that misspelled its own name in a press release, a story I've mentioned before. One journalist told me that he got a thank-you note from a publicist for his "kind words", for a review of a performance he had canned; did she even read the review? I'm sure I've made these mistakes - and many, many others - myself, so I'm not throwing stones; just, sympathizing with our comrades in the press.

Here's an e mail from a close-to-top symphony orchestra that a journalist friend received and sent me this morning:

Whether your publication is interested in concert and event coverage, musician, board and philanthropic profiles, education and outreach or society news, I hope you will consider utilizing the X Symphony Orchestra as a source of current up-to-the-minute news and features.

No pitch? Just a quick, "Keep us in mind!" for good measure? Seriously? "What shall I have my people write about today," muses Joe Editor, "I know! That symphony orchestra press person told me they had concert and society news, should I need it..." 

But then I sometimes feel bad for my own kind as well. Both a manager friend and I were fairly-to-moderately appalled to receive a mass e mail from the editor of a well-known music magazine yesterday:

If you've heard any good stories, or know of any good projects or new happenings, please let me know.

Oh sure, I heard a good one the other day: The Pope walks into a bar...

Are publicists and editors really so busy that neither party can do their homework? The levels of vagueness on both the symphony PR person and the magazine editor's parts represents a total lack of respect for the receiver of the pitch: my time is more valuable than your time, you do the research. The magazine editor could have, at the very least, customized her e mails for record labels, and then management, and then publicists, and the symphony could have included a list of concerts or some general information about their (preferably new) education programs and philanthropy efforts. It's great that your news is up-to-the-minute, but...what is it?

These two examples from the last 24 hours have spurred me to be overly specific in my own pitches going forward. "You last reviewed The King's Singers' performance of X composers in Y year at Z venue. This is what they've been up to since then. This is what they are doing now. Here are some angles you can bring to your editor", etc. etc.. Yes, we're all very busy, but let's step back and think about what we're e mailing before we click send. We'd all give pitches a little more thought if we had to handwrite them and drag ourselves over to a fax machine, or pick up the phone and say what we had to say on the spot, so why not give the same attention - or any attention at all - to e pitches?

I like this free tickets to the dress rehearsals of fancy things trend. And this one comes with a coupon! Who doesn't like a coupon. Wednesday, September 17th in New York City:

9:45 AM: FREE Dress Rehearsal
Join us as Music Director Lorin Maazel, Sir James Galway and the Philharmonic rehearse the evening's concert, a program featuring Berlioz's Roman Carnival Overture, Ibert's Flute Concerto, and Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 4.

Free general admission tickets will be handed out on a first-come, first-served basis, starting at 8:00 a.m. that morning, on Lincoln Center's Josie Robertson Plaza in front of Avery Fisher Hall. All who attend the dress rehearsal will receive a discount coupon for a future Philharmonic concert.

For more information, visit nyphil.org.

Not to be outdone by the The Metropolitan Opera, it seems the Carnegie Hall ticket website is down. Single tickets went on sale at 11 am this morning, so I assume the demand crashed their servers? I called "Carnegie Charge" to see what was up [What's got two thumbs and is a hard-hitting journalist? THIS GUY.], but obviously the line has been busy all morning.

While I'm genuinely thrilled that the public-at-large is clamoring for tickets to Carnegie Hall, one wonders why they couldn't, what's the saying, "Make it work"?

As my friend and client who shall remain nameless pointed out, if radiohead.com could handle millions upon millions of album downloads in a single day, surely carnegiehall.org can handle single ticket web sales?

Update 9/2, 4:39pm - I just tried to buy tickets for Eric Owens' not-to-be-missed recital (shameless, shameless!), and the site is up-and-running. "Carnegie Charge" is still busy, though.

New York, NY - Our special, special industry has made it onto Stuff White People Like. I'm like a proud mama bear.

If a white person starts talking to you about classical music, it's essential that you tread very lightly.  This is because white people are all petrified that they will be exposed as someone who has only a moderate understanding of classical music...Therefore it is essential that even if you possess a massive amount of knowledge about classical music, do not share it with a white person regardless of how much they profess to love it.  It's a recipe for disaster and shame.

Thanks to Tom Zydel for the link. 

In 1937, the year often considered the worst of The Great Depression, a musical called Pins and Needles combined a series of unrelated sketches in an upbeat revue centered on labor issues.  The sketches were the brainchildren of a number of authors, but the majority were written by Harold Rome, who also composed the music for the show. Pins and Needles was produced by the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU) as a part of their  social education program to create a better-rounded working environment for union members; it would became the longest running show on Broadway. I wrote my college thesis on the social commentary musicals of the Depression, but at the time, neglected to see Pins and Needles for what it really was: a total PR coup.

The Pins and Needles creation story begins with the election of David Dubinsky as president of the ILGWU five years earlier. When forced to play the dinner party game ("If you could invite 3 people, dead or alive, to dinner, who would you choose?"), Dubinsky would be first on my list. Don't get your panties in a bunch, Susan B. Anthony, you get to come, too; we're having pesto.  The idea of the "Labor Stage" grew out of the new cultural and recreational programs developed under Dubinsky. In his memoirs, A Life With Labor, he explains, "But, for me, education without some salesmanship was not education.  In my book, that meant showmanship." His marketing savvy shone through all the educational programs he created. "Our educational activities in the widest sense," he stated, "should be looked upon from the point of view of the union's public relations - and sound public relations presuppose a sound union."   The benefit of "social education", as it was called, in a union was twofold: first, the union members presumably became better-rounded, educated and contributing citizens. Second, the union made the best possible contact with the non-union public. And in the mid-1930s in America, labor unions had PR problems, problems that were worsening by the day.

In Europe, Dubinsky had witnessed a quarter million people watching an Austrian trade-union pageant. Both the concept and the reception of the trade union-pageant were quite remarkable to Dubinsky; he wondered if he could do the same thing with the ILGWU.  He hired his friend Louis Schaffer to give it a shot, and under Schaffer's leadership, the Cultural Division of the Educational and Recreational Department soon held classes in drama, acting, dance and music.  Schaffer organized local dramatic groups and set up training programs for boys and girls "from the shops."  He also began selecting plays that would be appropriate for his newly formed "ILGWU Players".  In the book Tailor's Progress: The Story of a Famous Union and the Men Who Made It, Benjamin Stolberg describes Schaffer as:

A veteran newspaperman and labor editor with a long background in the socialist movement and in business.  He is the typical New Yorker - breezy, sophisticated and extremely likeable.  His sense of publicity is far more Broadway than "proletarian." He is a sort of link between the theatrical world and the New York labor movement.

A Broadway sense of publicity applied to another industry: what a fantastic idea.

In press releases, Schaffer stressed that his new group did not intend to pose as professionals, noting that no one performing in an ILGWU production was a trained actor, actress or musician; they all literally came from behind the sewing machines. Well played, Louis Schafer. If the ILGWU shows flopped or weren't deemed worthy by the press, Schaffer had an out - they're not "real" actors!  But if the press came and liked what they saw, it would be a David and Goliath sensation.

Schaffer realized that play production could be used to carry the labor movement's message outside the confines of the ILGWU. A play within a play, publicity-wise. After producing one unsuccessful serious drama (a play called Steel about, you guessed it, a steel workers strike) with the ILGWU, Schaffer recognized 1. the need to attract a wider audience, and 2. that the only way to do that would be to create a highly entertaining product.  Schaffer had the idea of creating an amateur labor revue that was funny and witty. This idea was in complete contrast to the solemn, far left-wing proletarian dramas so popular at the time. 

Enter Harold Rome, and cue another PR coup. Ironically, the man who wrote hundreds of political skits and songs managed to avoid all political questioning at the time.  When asked if he was a leftist in the December 25, 1937 issue of The New Yorker, Rome retorted, "It's not a question of being a Leftist...It's a question of keeping your eyes open."  (I would have wanted Harold Rome as a client, for those of you playing at home.) Perhaps it was his lack of political bias that allowed Rome to freely criticize both the radical left and right and everyone who wavered in between.  Unlike many of his contemporary proletarian dramatists and writers, Rome's only political agenda was satire, satire of everyone and everything in his contemporary society.

When Pins and Needles officially opened to the public on November 27, 1937, it was generally accepted as the second in an intended series of plays performed by the ILGWU Players.  Shockingly, it ran for nearly four years and was so successful that no other plays were ever produced by the ILGWU.  The show filled the Labor Stage until June 26, 1939, when it was moved to the much larger Windsor Theatre for a year's run on Broadway.  Pins and Needles was seen in three editions: Pins and Needles (original show), Pins and Needles 1939 (April 20, 1939 to November 20, 1939), and New Pins and Needles (November 30, 1939 to June 22, 1941).   When the last road show closed in 1941, the show had run 1,108 performances, making Pins and Needles the longest running musical to date. It is interesting to note that, with each new version the Pins and Needles content was revised so that the piece remained absolutely relevant. For example, the song "Four Little Angels of Peace" was originally sung by Eden, Mussolini, Hirohito, and Hitler, but in the 1938 version, Chamberlain replaces Eden in the scene. 

What did the press think of Pins and Needles?  Only a few critics attended the November 27th opening. Rome recalled, "First string critics went to important shows, and there were a lot of shows in those days.  Pins and Needles was not an important show at first.  We also played only on weekends at first, so it was hard for critics to come."  Slow as they were, the critics did come, and within a few weeks word-of-mouth praise and glowing reviews turned Pins and Needles into a hit. (The New York Times sent its second string critic to the opening of Pins and Needles; the November 29, 1937 review was written by a certain "J.G."  Top Times theatre critic Brooks Atkinson did not review the show until January 23, 1938, when it was already quite popular. How the times - and the Times, for that matter - do not change.)

By the end of the Pins and Needles run, the Labor Stage had made the ILGWU approximately  $1,500,000 in profits, all of which went back to the ILGWU's educational programs.  This was a tremendous amount of money, considering it was tax-free and in pre-inflation dollars - oh, and that the original production costs had been $10,000.  To guarantee that all possible profits went back to the ILGWU, no independent ticket brokers were allowed.  In his article, "A New Show Business" for Hollywood magazine (February 1, 1938), writer Sidney Skolsky details his attempts to purchase a ticket to see the show when he was in New York:

I phoned the correct people to ask for tickets.  They were polite, but very sorry that they didn't have any tickets. I asked them to buy me a couple from the ticket speculators.  They told me that the ticket brokers didn't have any.  I had heard that story before.  The ticket brokers always have them, no matter how big a hit the show is.  I contacted several ticket brokers. Not one of them had a ticket...and couldn't get them. I was greatly surprised.  "Where are the tickets?" I asked a broker.  He answered: The unions have all the tickets. It's a new kind of show business.