Archives for January 2009

Yikes - it has been a long time since I posted an interview. We have some really good ones coming up, though, I promise. For those of you just joining us now, every week I get my act together, I'll post an interview with someone far more knowledgeable than myself on specific marketing and publicity subjects. This week, Naxos of America Press and Media Manager Paula Mlyn on selling records without actually selling records, that famous Naxos album art, and networking, networking, networking.Paula Mlyn is the Manager of Press and Media for Naxos … [Read more...]

There are still TWO SUPERBOWL AD SLOTS LEFT!!For the bargain basement price of $2.7 million dollars, one of them COULD BE YOURS!If you get one, you'll be in the good company of Cash4Gold. … [Read more...]

Whatever your views on the subject, the fact that Page Six cares about the behind-the-scenes drama at The Metropolitan Opera is a Gelb accomplishment in and of itself. … [Read more...]

I was looking at Playbill.com and got very confused by the top banner ads: I thought, "I can't imagine anyone calling Wicked 'ferociously funny'. And I've never seen it described anywhere as a 'new comedy'." I refreshed - refreshed - refreshed the page and, to my surprise, got to this:Why are you using the Wicked colors, Becky Shaw?? "...newlywed couple fixes up two romantically challenged friends: wife's best friend, meet husband's sexy and strange new co-worker." No one mourns the wicked, sexy and strange color-stealing co-worker!Upon closer … [Read more...]

When I was watching the summer Olympics this past August, I got it into my head that a funny segment during the TV coverage would be to show an average person swimming alongside the Olympic swimmers (running against the runners, etc.). Me, for example, in all my former New Canaan High School swim team not-glory, diving into the pool next to these women who were breaking world records. My thought was that after watching the Olympics for days on end we lose track of how incredible these people are; there are no points of comparison, so when the … [Read more...]

Gotta love that Medici TV. Tomorrow, January 24, they'll be streaming a FREE, live Hélène Grimaud concert from the Cite de la musique (whose website makes them look very cool as well). The e-concert is at 7pm UTC (that is, 1pm New York City time). Medici TV streamed Hilary Hahn and Josh Ritter's Verbier performance two summers ago, and it was really beautiful footage. I love the way the image automatically goes to full-bleed on the screen. I wonder if they'll ever start charging, or offer an e-concert subscription package a la the Met Player. … [Read more...]

I learned a lot about the Billboard charts while subbing at the record label this fall. In the classical realm at least, it's shocking how little of a difference there is sales-wise between debuting at the top spot and coming in around number four or five. All the more reason not to turn our collective noses up at coverage on targeted blogs that get 600 - 1000 hits a day: they may not have the readership numbers of your local paper, but that's 600 potential buyers already engaged in what you're trying to sell. And if 100 of them buy the record, … [Read more...]

About a year and a half ago, one of my friends from college decided he was going to drop out of his Ph.D program at Columbia and start a band. Thus began a fairly insufferable period of friendship during which everything he encountered was a potential band name. We were at his parents' house for a mutual friend's wedding and his mom said something about packing up a porcelain horse carefully: "Porcelain Horse!!" he blurted. "That's an awesome name for a band." I believe another name possibility was "Rocket Ship" (??) and yet another was "Jungle … [Read more...]

From Wonkette:CNN Sends Very Important Press Release At 11:37 AM On Inauguration DayHey so like half an hour before our very first black president EVER was sworn in, which is to say, when there wasn't a whole lot going on, anywhere, CNN decided to notify various press outlets that they had released a rush transcript of Wolf Blitzer explaining the techmologies behind their new space alien spybot in the sky... On today's special coverage, The Inauguration of Barack Obama, Wolf Blitzer explained the satellite CNN is using to capture the … [Read more...]

Does everyone know about the fantastic daily newsletter 'You've Cott Mail'? If not, I highly recommend getting yourself on the mailing list.On January 13, Alvin Ailey Director of Marketing Thomas Cott wrote:Trendwatching: "One Day Sale"FROM TC: This season, I've noticed more and more major regional theaters have announced a "one day sale," offering low-priced tickets to their productions.  Some recent examples include: American Repertory Theatre (Cambridge, Massachusetts), Arena Stage (Washington, D.C.), Dallas Theater Center  … [Read more...]

Have you heard the one about Kathleen Battle?The one where she's in the back seat of a town car and calls her manager's office?You know, the one where she says, "Can you tell this driver to turn the air down?"______It takes a village, as they say, to manage an artist's public image. If I am rude or unresponsive to a journalist regarding one client, the others suffer slightly as well. If my artists' record labels, presenters, management companies and I don't put forth a unified message, that's bad public relations in a crucial way. If I take on … [Read more...]

The New York Philharmonic has a new logo:Questions, comments, concerns? I do like this (new?) iTunes cover flow view-esque feature in the About Us section of their site, though: Love the natural-but-professional photos, love the quotes, love the flip animation. The design doesn't quite match the rest of the section, but we'll take it.Update 1/14: the new Philharmonic logo is being analyzed over at Logo Design Love dot com. … [Read more...]

For those of you playing at home, we're officially living in a post-post blog world: As old media races to catch up with the Web and figure out how to successfully monetize print content online, one publication is taking a drastically different approach: web to print.The Printed Blog, a startup founded and funded by former business productivity software entrepreneur Joshua Karp, is launching a twice-daily free print newspaper in cities across the country aggregating localized blog posts.  "Why hasn't anyone tried to take the best content … [Read more...]

My friend is in Detroit and sent me the following iPhone photo: That would be a Leonard Slatkin's head silkscreened on a t-shirt in a bookstore window. (I thought it was another Slatkin hologram.) Now, I say in the mission statement of this very blog that we should imitate successful marketing trends outside of our industry in classical music - I stand by that and thus don't have a leg to stand on -  but just so we're clear: … [Read more...]