January 2009 Archives

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 of America and a composer-performer.
 








You're one of the last remaining Directors of PR at a classical record label! How does it feel? Is Naxos weathering the storm, so to speak?
 
Not quite ... but I am lucky to work for Naxos. And while I may be Manager of Press and Media for Naxos of America, I'm part of an 11-member marketing team.
 
Naxos is a multi-faceted label, which is why it is so successful. First off, it's global, with offices around the world. Also, we've been poised for the changes in the music business for years ... for example, we began digitizing our catalog in 1996.
 
Our business model is diverse enough to help cushion the company in bad economic times and to keep us focused on the future of the music business. Naxos isn't just a "label"--it is the largest distributor of premiere performing arts labels in the U.S.. We have been at the forefront of the digital explosion, with Naxos imprint and our distributed label titles available on all the major DSPs and e-retailers. We also have our own download site, COL (ClassicsOnline.com), which offers more than 22,000 DRM-free albums at 320 kbps. We also are going to be adding select lossless downloads in the coming months.
 
Naxos Music Library, available by subscription, is the world's largest streaming collection of classical, jazz, wind band, and choral music. We recently added Nettwerk Music Group titles to its offerings, expanding into independent popular music. We also have regular Podcasts (which include interviews with artists, discussions about repertoire, and samples of music), not to mention our own online e-retail outlet, Naxos Direct, and we license our recordings for movies, television, commercials, and so on. And--this is very, very important to the general health of music in the U.S.--we partner with orchestras and music organizations and sell, wherever permitted, our artists' recordings at the concert venues where they are performing.
 
There are so many ways to make music available to consumers and to generate revenue. The great strength of Naxos is that we have never stopped thinking of new ways to market music and to get it out there to retailers, consumers, and the press. In short, if you think the only way to make money is to sell physical CDs, you're in trouble--and we still sell thousands of discs every week, BTW.
 

Roughly how many albums does Naxos release per month?
 
It varies. January's catalog had approximately 25 Naxos CDs, one Marco Polo, and three Naxos DVDs--not to mention all of the distributed label titles we carry. The January catalog ran 52 pages. (BTW: I e-mail it out each much as a Virtual Paper document, along with an order form. We send very few physical copies nowadays).
 

How are you dealing with the shrinking numbers of classical critics? Do Naxos artists and your colleagues understand?
 
There are so many ways to get reviews, and these days, nobody relies solely on print media. While one major goal is to see a review in a big newspaper or magazine, we also work closely with bloggers and online music sites with a regular review schedule, so it isn't a matter of anyone understanding. The business has changed--the world has changed--and anyone reading a newspaper (online or not) understands that marketing concert music is a different animal than it was even a year ago.
 

How is pitching a record different than pitching a concert?
 
It can be hard to pitch both. I once worked on a project with a fabulous string quartet (they've since disbanded). They were a first-rate ensemble with a terrific program, concept, and concert planned at Merkin Hall. They should have received a review, but they didn't. There is no magic bullet. Sometimes concerts are a bitch to promote, particularly for a new artist who hasn't been on the critics' radar long enough. With recordings, it is always helpful if a new release is tied to a concert or another event, but it isn't necessary. But it has to be the right recording, and that is something of which our marketing department is very mindful. And, let's face it, not every recording is going to be reviewed or featured. I don't want to jinx anything, but we've had a great year getting our recordings--and those of our distributed labels--reviewed.
 

Is it just me, or are record reviews getting shorter?
 
No, it isn't just you. But these cuts are not news anymore. It was over five years ago, I think, that major changes in culture coverage were first announced at The New York Times. Of course, it has gotten worse all over the country with the current economic climate, job losses, and major cuts in culture coverage. However, many former newspaper critics have started their own blogs and still cover recordings and events, or they are working as freelancers. And there are still many magazines and publications that continue to cover CDs and DVDs on a monthly basis. Also, there are a number of wonderful online review sites--I'd mention them by name here but if I forgot one, I'd get an e-mail!
 

In your experience, how much does album art affect the commercial and critical success of an album, if at all?
 
Amanda, are you really going to ask me that old question about Naxos cover art? [Yes I am. I'm obsessed with cover art.] Personally, I think the way something looks does affect people in some subliminal way. But a pretty picture won't make a bad performance into a good one.
 

When and why did Naxos launch a blog? Do all the label employees contribute? Is it just one more thing to do, or is it fun?
 
The blog launched in late 2006, I believe. Blogging is a great way to get the word out, pure and simple. And, yes, the label employees contribute, and it is, indeed, fun.
 

How about the Naxos Twitter account? Who on staff "tweets"? Does tweeting sell albums?

Yes, we have a Twitter account, but our Facebook network is far more important than Twitter. 

 
I'm strangely fascinated by the "Music for Movies" section of your website. Was that developed as a promotional tool? To show that classical music - Naxos recordings, specifically - are omnipresent?
 
Yes, it shows how many Naxos recordings appear in films (I'm not sure this link is up-to-date though). However, as I said earlier, the licensing part of our business extends to commercials and television as well--and here's one for you--musical greeting cards (you know, the ones you buy at the drugstore). Our recordings are used in very creative ways.
 

As you know, a lot of artists are self-releasing albums these days. What is your best advice to them for getting reviews? Is there any chance of getting a New York Times review, or should they aim smaller?
 
There is no one answer to that question. You need to have a decent web site, if you can afford it, or at least a website; you need to be on Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter; and, of course, you need sound clips and upcoming events, posted on your site. As for reviews, the most important thing is for an artist to build a following, which can happen in many ways: network with other performers and composers, attend their concerts, and invite them to your performances, no matter how small. The bigger your personal network, the better. CD Baby is a great tool if you have a self-released recording. Include a link on your website to CD Baby or to an e-retailer where your music can be purchased. And, please, please, please have your recordings at your concerts. The best way to get that review is to promote your performances and/or your music. It may not happen immediately, but the more you are out there, the better your chances.


Would you recommend that artists self-releasing albums write press releases in their own voice (first person) or in the third person? Should they send out press releases under their own name, or a general account?
 
Hey, some of the coolest press releases come directly from artists.


Ideally, how long should a press release about an album be?
 
Sometimes I write long releases, because it is special project, or a release that truly requires extensive explanation. "The shorter, the better" has always been the general rule, but I don't always follow it. Also, we send our press releases in our physical press kits (along with the CD), as e-releases, and also in these unbelievable e-cards, which our marketing department creates and sends to press, consumers, and e-retailers. A writer can digest as much of a release as he/she wants.  Note: if you are e-mailing a release, the subject line really does count. It is often the only thing that will get your press release read. As you know, writers get tons of e-mails from PR and marketing people pitching this or that. If you don't have a clear subject line, that delete button might be hit pronto. (I'm still working on this.)


In your opinion, what is the most important thing an artist self-releasing an album can do to get press attention?
 
Please network. After all what goes around comes around. Support your colleagues and they will support you. And, while I really hated that movie, this quote really does apply: "If you build it, people will come." Including the critics.


Correction, 1/30, 10am: Naxos actually has THREE blogs. They are here, here, and here. 
 

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.

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.

I was looking at Playbill.com and got very confused by the top banner ads:

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 Olympic athletes swim fifty meters of a pool in 22 seconds (it took me longer than that to write this sentence), we don't comprehend what it really means.

Last Saturday night, I made my concert debut in a world premiere performance piece by a Pulitzer Prize-winning composer in New York City. Go big or go home, I always say. In the interest in full disclosure, composer David Lang, who I work for, and visual artist Suzanne Bocanegra created a piece for 50 "violinists" who had never played the violin before. I was one of them, and I was terrible. I must have asked our teacher Todd Reynolds to show me how to hold the bow four times, in addition to glancing conspicuously at the girl to my left who seemed to know what she was doing. I was the only person in the whole group who Todd Reynolds had to physically correct, and when I asked David how I did later on he said, "You had the best posture of anyone when you weren't playing."

I'm certainly guilty of leaving concerts and complaining about the quality of musicianship. It's obvious to state, but this is hard work - physical work - that takes decades of commitment to perfect. We know this in our heads when we sit at concerts, just as we know it in our heads while watching the Olympic swimmers on TV, but can we really grasp it without experiencing the physicality ourselves? 

How can orchestras give donors, audience members, and perhaps even critics a taste of what it's like to play an instrument? Would that help ticket sales? Change reviews? Increase donations?

Many industry people and classical music lovers have or still do played/play an instrument, but we don't usually play just before the concerts we now go and see. If every person in the audience was required to take a half-hour music lesson from member of the orchestra before that evening's performance, how would that connectedness alter the concert experience? Would the audience appreciate the music more because they understood the instruments better? Some might even appreciate the music more simply because they met an orchestra member personally before the concert. Similarly, when was the last time your orchestra's administration played instruments? Perhaps the orchestra members could give them lessons as well. Make it a team-building day, and see if your local paper would cover it.

I won't be quitting my day job any time soon, even though Hilary Hahn saw the photos and swore I looked like a natural (that's because she didn't see my post-concert Erlkönig impression). That said, after a one-hour group lesson, I feel like I understand what I'm pitching a bit more intimately, and will smile fondly and knowingly at my (big air quotes) fellow violinists during the next concert I go to.


Updated 3/23: Click here for a slideshow of the event.

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).

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, it may actually make a difference.

In a similar vein, here's something to chew on, from Ronen from Brooklyn Vegan from MTV: The band Animal Collective released their new album on a "deluxe double-LP 180-gram gatefold vinyl format" along with a full digital download on January 6, while the album wasn't available on CD until January 20. MTV writer Gil Kaufman incorrectly but interestingly predicted that the album would make history by breaking the charts with vinyl sales alone:

We were really pulling for Panda Bear and crew. When I wrote last week that Animal Collective might make it onto the Billboard 200 charts this week based on the first-week sales of the vinyl edition of their Merriweather Post Pavilion album (raved about this week by our own James Montgomery), the underdog quality of that potential feat was kind of exciting ... and subversive.

But, alas, despite selling out all 4,500 copies of the first run of Pavilion almost instantly across North America, with so many of those sales happening in indie shops that don't report to Nielsen SoundScan, the scrappy sonic experimentalists just didn't make the cut.

According to next week's Billboard albums chart, Pavilion officially moved 1,500 copies, which put them just outside the big game, even in this moribund time of year when the majority of the albums in the top 200 saw double-digit sales dips. Had they been able to scare up another 1,000 official sales, they might have sneaked in above the likes of former "American Idol" Kellie Pickler, Lifehouse, OneRepublic and Framing Hanley, all of whom sold in the 2,400 realm, which was enough to sneak them onto the bottom of the charts.

Better luck next week, when Pavilion is officially released on January 20, with a good chance to score an old-fashioned chart debut thanks to the flood of already rapturous reviews it's received as one of the best albums of the year so far.

In classical music - at least in the US - I think limited edition special album packaging and then digital-only releases is the way of The Future. Audience members can take home true souvenirs of their concert experiences (get their discs signed by the artist, etc.), and record labels won't have to worry about pitching physical product to a shrinking retail market. Additionally, the availability of special product at concerts gives marketing departments another reason to e mail out about their concerts to their lists - "this concert is the only place you can buy a physical copy of the new Hilary Hahn album" - and gives artist publicists and PR departments an interesting state-of-the-industry story to pitch as well. Perhaps the Animal Collective timetable is a good place to start - for a month, the album is only available in special edition form at concerts and digital, and then is released on a disc - but then again, the physical CD follow-up is becoming increasingly less of an option.

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 Mode" ("The best band names are the stupid ones, Amanda. Like Radiohead." Oh, kay.)

Perhaps it's because I've had this evening marked in my Entourage calendar as LOST COMES BACK for the past 9 months, or perhaps for another reason, but this Flavorpill listing for a band called Previously on Lost caught my eye. They have a fairly prestigious quote sheet,

"Great job y'all, its a good treble vocal sound on that, and there's a lot of depth to that production!" - Michael Emerson of LOST

"It was like seeing the Beatles for the first time!" - A nice lady at the Kennedy Center

"The songs are hilarious and cool, somewhat like a frantic mash of Frank Zappa and Flaming Lips with a dose of old Disney musicals for good measure." - Wired.com

...and 1566 friends, including John Locke, Matthew Fox, and Tom. The song (the single?) "The Island Won't Let You Die" has 22,701 plays. Fair enough, Previously on Lost. Fair enough.

Another band name that caught my attention recently was Trampled by Turtles; no reason, really, it's just appealing to me. Of course there's a special place in my heart for Alarm Will Sound; any ensemble I'm forced to think about every time I exit the subway did a darn good job picking a name. 

What's the point of band and ensemble names? We rarely know what they mean, or where they came from, so what is the artistic effect or marketing purpose? Hard-hitting investigative reporter that I am, I put my iPod on shuffle, and here were the first five band names that popped up:

Supergrass

Gorillaz

(Hair original Broadway cast recording...what a nerd)

The Jealous Girlfriends

Yo La Tengo

(Kathleen Edwards)

White Rabbits

I like all those bands, but out of the five, I only know where Yo La Tengo's name comes from (c.f. Wikipedia).

Is the point of a name to get your attention or to keep your attention? That is, should a name be eye-catching or memorable? Must the name be clever - Alarm Will Sound - or can it simply invoke something that the group hopes to achieve musically - The Emerson String Quartet, for example? Should there be a eureka moment involved that makes for interview material - "My mom was packing up a porcelain horse..." - or can it be as simple as "we just thought the name fit"? How necessary is accurate advertising? Previously on Lost is...exactly what you think it is. Supergrass? Perhaps less so.

I don't know the answers to these questions, but am interested in a discussion: how important have names been in the success or failure of classical ensembles (and bands, for that matter) in the past, and are names increasingly or decreasingly effective as the music industry changes? 

From Wonkette:

CNN Sends Very Important Press Release At 11:37 AM On Inauguration Day

Hey 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 crowds gathered on the National Mall. A full transcript follows.

The image will be part of the photosynth CNN is creating in partnership with Microsoft. Learn more at www.cnn.com/themoment.

Please credit all usage to CNN

Full Transcript

THIS IS A RUSH FDCH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: I also want to let our viewers know we're going to be doing something rather extraordinary in the next few minutes. We've ordered an exterior shot of the Mall from way up in space. A satellite image will take a picture of what's happening here in Washington, D.C. GeoEye 6 satellite, to be precise. We're going to get the view from space. We're going to turn that picture around as quickly as we can, and you're going to see what this would look like if you were flying overhead from space, from a satellite. It's going to be, Anderson, a pretty amazing shot. I don't think -

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: How do you work up a satellite?

BLITZER: David Bohrman, our Washington bureau chief...

COOPER: If anyone knows how to call up a satellite, it's David Bohrman.

BLITZER: ... does that. He just makes a phone call. He says, get me the picture from that satellite. And we're going to show it to our viewers in the United States and around the world. We try, as all of our viewers by now know, to do some unusual, extraordinary technological -

COOPER: Hopefully, there won't be clouds.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: CNN "Tries to do" Unusual, Extraordinary Technology!

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  (Dallas, Texas), Huntington Theatre Company  (Boston, Massachusetts), and Portland Center Stage (Portland, Oregon).  Is this merely another sign of the bad economic times or is this a trend in arts marketing?

As I've said before, arts organizations need to embrace recession-era lingo. "One Day" sales are a great idea; someone also mentioned having a "Clearance Sale" at the Chamber Music America conference on Saturday, which I love, to promote concerts. "All Tickets Must Go!" "Liquidation Sale!" "All Inventory 60% Off!": these are words we're starting to see everywhere, so why not incorporate them into your marketing materials?

You can't walk around New York City without being bombarded by 'Sale' signs. I took the bus across town to The Whitney on Sunday, and walked from 66th and Madison up to the 74th and Madison, a stretch that includes some of the most expensive, high-end clothing boutiques in the country. Literally ever single store had a sign in the window:




...and then when I got to The Whitney, a membership sale:

I walk by The Miller Theatre on the way to the gym...let's pretend "daily"...and there are no 'Sale' signs. If I saw a season poster outside a New York City venue that said TICKET CLEARANCE SALE, it would both get my attention and blend in with surrounding shop windows. I'm not sure the world-at-large knows that arts organizations have trouble selling tickets - it sounds silly, but I really don't think folks outside the industry have any idea.  Not only would 'Clearance sale' signs outside of venues and in brochures be funny, but they would provide an acknowledgment that we're all in this together - even the classical music you associate with rich people and fancy concerts is affected by the times.

We all know that Pre G. Depression Take Two, arts organizations hardly had ad dollars to spare, but I'm hopeful that the added pressure of the economy will result in a - can I say "renaissance"? - of arts marketing. Organizations will have to seriously consider where and how they spend their limited funds, and look toward community-building promotions and free marketing outlets to support their products. Marketing interns spending your days on blogs and Facebook, take note! You're about to become the most valuable member of your department.

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 an artist or project that I don't care very much about, the implication is that I'm not passionate about anyone I'm representing. It's all wide-reaching, omnipresent and complicated. When Doug asked if I'd ever thought about blogging, for example, I asked each client and their managers for permission; if one of them had said no, I wouldn't have done it.

There are less obvious things, however, that result in bad artist PR. Artists can be busy, tired, and sometimes just plain bizarre and obnoxious (as can the rest of us), but it's an artist's team's job to absorb those things and present a calmer, more grounded front to outside parties.  Why do I know that Kathleen Battle story? Because it's archetypal diva behavior that screams "tell me!", and about ten different people have.  But that was a conversation between her and the people who work for her, so no matter how ridiculous, it wasn't intended for public consumption. Keep it under wraps. 

Managers who walk on eggshells around their clients and expect the rest of the known-universe to do the same are also guilty in their own way: the artist is actually not as "something" as the team has made him or her seem. I'll work with the front-people and then finally meet the " " artist we were all so concerned about, and he or she will be great. Through overt efforts to shield artists from bad PR, we are sometimes generating it on other levels.

Artists do, of course, share some of the responsibility. We had a day of interviews planned with The King's Singers in early December, and I met them at their hotel in the morning. I showed up and there they were, all six, bundled up and ready to go. They had flown overnight to get to New York, and I had visions of at least part of the group dragging a little. "I'm so impressed you're all here," I said. "We're British!" the bass Stephen Connolly replied. It seems trivial and obvious, but knowing that your clients will get to interviews when and where they're scheduled is important: I work hard to set up interviews, so to have an artist just not show, or be forty-odd minutes late, would be crushing. I'm also fortunate that not only do they show up on time, but at the interviews my clients are all articulate, intelligent and charismatic. I cannot imagine having to babysit a client during an interview for fear of what they would say. I tag along to interviews sometimes for logistical reasons, but I would never sit in the room or interfere. 

All the retainer money and prestige in the world could not convince me to work for an artist who publicly misbehaved. That, I would not be able to absorb and re-present to the world-at-large. On Saturday night, my friend Maureen and I braved the snow and went to Gypsy on Broadway. PATTI LUPONE GYPSY, as I believed it was actually billed.  Maureen had never seen a production of the musical and was especially excited to be at the last Saturday night performance of the run. "She's really gonna give it her all," we both smiled smugly, and when Lupone entered there was a full three minutes of applause. I had seen the same production at City Center, and knew she was about to earn all the preemptive clapping the crowd wanted to give her.

She was pretty hoarse the whole time - I also saw Caroline, or Change near the end of its run, and I remember the same thing happening to Tonya Pinkins. It was fine, though, since Patti Lupone hoarse is still a more powerful voice than most. And the whole cast was clearly having fun. So all was better-than-well until we got to the two hour and thirty minute mark, Mama Rose on stage by herself, having a breakdown. We earned it, let's bring it home.

 "Here she is, boys! Here she is, world! Here's Roooose!"

"Curtain up...light the lights..."

"No. Enough. ENOUGH. Stop. Stop. You have taken three pictures. You in the third row from the back. Didn't you hear the announcement? They said no pictures in the announcement! Three pictures. I won't have it. I want him out of here."

Patti Lupone, not Mama Rose, shouting at an audience member, at the most - some might say only - important part of the entire musical. What followed was a ten minute lecture on our contemporary society's "lack of public manners". "This is the the-atre!" she exclaimed as if this were a Saturday Night Live skit about a Broadway diva. "I won't go on while he's still in this theatre." "Turn on the house lights, I must see that he's gone." "WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE." "I simply won't go on." Screaming. Storming around the stage. Screaming and storming, the hoarse Broadway diva playing Mama Rose on the last evening show of the run, Patti Lupone: a cliché within a cliché.

Yes, it's rude - illegal, even - to take photographs at a Broadway show, but Lupone knows the drill at this point in her career. Pull yourself together. Have some degree of respect for your fellow cast members, orchestra members, audience members. Tell someone backstage that you won't go on for the scene unless the person is taken out of the theater. Simply walking off stage would have been better. Breaking character like that? Yelling at us? Ready or not, here comes Patti.

It seems my friend and I were in the minority in our disbelief and disappointment. The audience went absolutely nuts when she broke character. I thought the dancer boy in front of us was going to pass out from the thrill of it all. Why? Because Lupone was in the right? Of course not. The audience loved it because now they can go back to NYU or New Jersey or Minnesota and tell their very own, first-person, crazy Patti Lupone story. For most, that PR disaster was worth the price of admission.

Me? I want my money back, and from here on out will believe she's earned all the bad diva press she gets.


Update 1/16 2:30pm: It's "LuPone" not "Lupone". Please don't eat/kill me, Patti.

Update 1/19 11:58am: My sister has found a recording of the incident. The quality is quite good. Apparently, Ms. LuPone had bigger things to worry about than someone taking photographs. 

The New York Philharmonic has a new logo:


Questions, comments, concerns?

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 and bring it offline?" said Karp, who thinks print media is far from dying.  (from Wired.com)

You can't see me, but I'm rolling my eyes dramatically.

There are many funny things about printing blog entries, top of the list being that somehow "getting" one's words in print validates blogger-as-writer, whereas having a blog, no matter how high both readership numbers and quality of content are, does not (yet) carry the same distinctions. This makes sense, of course, because anyone can have a blog and presumably not everyone can be hired by a publication (though, technically, anyone can start their own publication, Exhibit A above), so there's a level of selection involved. But, at this point, I believe we're all thinking a bit more broadly about these things.

Tone, entry ("essay", "column"?) length and hyperlinks are interesting to consider when printing blogs as well. The kind people at Gramophone printed an entry from this blog in their September 2008 issue (imagine my surprise when Simone Dinnerstein was on the cover and not I, but whatevs), and it was truly bizarre to see the entry in print! First, I was a little embarrassed by my own chatty tone. Great, I thought: I'm in Gramophone and I wrote "What the Joshua Bell...".  I'm not embarrassed by such things in a web format ("Maybe you should be!" -Commenter Meanie Goat), so do I have a double standard? Given the choice, would I have written a "better", or at least more serious, essay for a publication? Other strange bits about my entry in print form: obviously the hyperlinks, an important part, were gone, and there was no comment field, though I suppose 'Letters to the Editor' serves as kind of a long-range comment field. There were comments attached to the entry when the editors pulled it, so I was actually curious to see if they would include them in the print version. They didn't, which begs the question: is a blog entry complete without the comments that go with it, and more specifically, do the comments actually become part of a blog entry?

Speaking of Gramophone, they've launched an online archive! Woot woot! Every single issue (from April 1923 to the present) is available and searchable. It's also free, which was a good call on their part.

So now my blog entry has been picked up, printed, and placed back online. Circle of life, my friends, circle-of-life.

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:

I just re-read a press release I sent out about David, and the "For Immediate Release" in the top left corner of the e mail looks ridiculous. What is that?? Why do we start releases that way? Of course it's for "immediate release"; I'm "releasing" the news right now. Does it come from back-in-the-day when press releases were - what's the word - mailed? So the journalists could tell when the news was actually announced? How many classical music press releases are that time-sensitive, though. Come on now.

Anyway, it's irrelevant with e mailed-releases. I'm taking it out from now on. Who's with me.

'Twas the week before Christmas, and I went to see my friend Rob Moose and his string quartet OSSO perform at (le) poisson rouge in the West Village. They played just after pianist Gloria Cheng, whose program Allan Kozinn from The Times describes:

The program Gloria Cheng played at Le Poisson Rouge on Monday evening was drawn from her most recent Telarc recording, a compilation of the complete (if slim) piano music of Esa-Pekka Salonen and Steven Stucky, along with a Lutoslawski rarity, the youthful Sonata (1934).

But other threads bind the works as well. Ms. Cheng is friends with Mr. Salonen, who composed "Dichotomie" (2000) for her. Mr. Salonen, who as a conductor has been a champion of Mr. Stucky, persuaded Ms. Cheng to include Mr. Stucky's "Four Album Leaves" (2002) on her disc. Mr. Stucky, who published a monograph on Lutoslawski, put her onto that composer's Sonata. And as it turns out, the piano music of all three composers draws heavily on the harmonic language and textures of the French Impressionists.

"When you play works by composers you know," she said at the start of her set, "you see more in the music because you know the person; but you also see more in the person because you know the music."

The threads that bind a program of music by living (and recently deceased) composers that Kozinn details above are useful to include in a review.  They are also, of course, useful in program and liner notes, either written by the artist or written by someone who knows the artist and the composers involved well enough to write an approaching-first-person account. Kozinn only mentions Cheng's verbal introduction to her set, but in fact she talked the whole time, which was fantastic. She talked about being backstage with Salonen at the LA Phil and him saying, "I want to write a little piano piece." (I believe the final piece was 17 minutes long in two parts.), she talked about how in one part of piece she thought the machines - the general subject of the composition - "go nuts". It was the kind of backstage intel I feel so privileged to discuss with my artists, and there it was, all over the concert. Of course it helped that Cheng was extremely articulate, clearly serious, and very funny without that familiar "Thanks folks, I'll be here all week" tinge.

My friend from IMG who's a friend of hers was there, and he introduced us after the concert. "I loved the way you talked about the pieces!" I blurted, of course. "Really?" she replied, "I just found out today that there wasn't going to be a program!" But this was far better than a program: Some branches of trees were saved, no one was reading during the concert, the familiar paper shuffling and crinkling was decidedly not missed, and most importantly, the audience got a sense of the artist's personality, musical perspective, and role in the creation of contemporary classical music in an organic way.

I recently learned at a visit to MOMA that you can now download an MP3 from their website or connect via WiFi on your iPhone/iPod Touch at the museum rather than pick up an audio guide to an exhibition. So let's say I was going to the OSSO/Gloria Cheng concert, and wanted to know what I was about to hear in the artist's own words. I could download an audio file of Cheng talking about the pieces, telling little anecdotes about hangin' backstage with EPS, put in on my iPod, and listen on the 1 train en route to the performance. I, personally, would do that for every concert I could - new music or otherwise - and actually, venues could charge for it: add an audio program note package to your subscription, buy the program note with your ticket, etc.. If more venues' sites supported this, an artist could produce one "note" at the beginning of a recital tour, or for a concerto they were going to play throughout a season, and their management or publicist could distribute to presenters. If this wasn't something an artist could pre-produce, perhaps presenters could team up with local classical radio stations and produce them while the artist is rehearsing. Audience members would learn that, on the day of a concert, an audio program note would be available for them to download from the presenter website to listen to in/on the car/walk/bus/subway on their way the concert.

If we wanted to take the artists out of the equation, since schedules, interest in participation, and personalities often get complicated, why not have members of an organization talk about programs? This is the dramaturg discussing the play you are about to see and here is a clip from the play; here is the artistic administrator talking about why (s)he booked this show; here is the music director of the orchestra...so on, so forth. Again, this could be something a local radio station would probably be happy to produce in exchange for sponsorship credit.

And if your artistic director sounds anything like Philippe de Montebello, you've struck gold.

If you're in town on January 17th, come keep me company at the Chamber Music America conference; it's really awkward if the PR person doesn't have attendees. I'll be yammering away about good arts marketing and publicity for little-to-no shekels at 1:30 in something intriguingly called the Manhattan room. My points are going to be that this is actually a really easy time to be saving money on arts promotion - there is no way I could have afforded to do artist publicity on my own ten years ago...I don't have company letterhead, I rarely spend money on postage - and that tightened budgets should be viewed as opportunities for pooled resources and community-building.

Incidentally, this will not be held up as an example of any of those things:

Some 150 million 3-D glasses will be given away so Super Bowl viewers can watch a three-minute sneak preview of the big-screen animated feature "Monsters vs. Aliens."

Although 3-D telecasts are nothing new, this is the first time one has been done for such a large audience. DreamWorks Animation chief Jeffrey Katzenberg called the stunt "perhaps the biggest media-advertising event in history." He wouldn't give a hard figure on the cost, but said it "involves tens of millions of dollars. (Washington Post)

Snore/groan. What is interesting, though, is that the move Monsters vs. Aliens comes out on March 27th, and here we are reading about it on January 6th. The Superbowl is - hold on, I have to Google that - on February 1st, so this modern-day Merchant Ivory film gets press on account of an announcement of a promotion in early January, then press on the first of February for said promotion coming to fruition, and then presumably will get more press for another publicity stunt in early March, or at least then start sending the stars involved to the big TV programs and buying up major ad space. That is a long time for the masses to be seriously thinking about Monsters vs. Aliens.

I've mentioned this, but I rarely find out about a classical album or concert that I'm not working on before I start seeing press about it, or sometimes ads in the week or so before it releases/occurs. Obviously, labels and organizations don't have the financial luxury of taking out ads so many months in advance, but it is worth applying or adapting the model of these stretched-back awareness campaigns to our own projects. If anyone has an example of a concert or disc they really started promoting over three months in advance, I'd love to hear about it. Actually, tell us what you're working on NOW for three MONTHS from now, and in doing so you'll be getting coverage of some form three months in advance and we can all participate! See what I did there?

Here is the first annual Best-of Publicity and Marketing list! I thought about prizes, and it's really only fitting to go meta and make free marketing the prize. So I will ask the boss man if winners can advertise on this blog one week at a time. In some cases it won't be applicable/doable, but...you get the idea.
 

Best Publicity Move
Jeremy Denk interviews Sarah Palin.


Best Review
Ron Rosenbaum walks out of The Metropolitan Opera.


Best Artist Interview
Angela Gheorghiu goes nuts in Opera News.


Best Feature Story
Mark Swed refuses to talk dirty about "elitism" in The Los Angeles Times.


Best Album Art
Nico Muhly, Mothertongue (Brassland), for being literal:

 















Best Advertisement
Pink's hot dog stand in LA serves up Dudamel Dogs.


Best New (in 2008) Music Blog
Mark Adamo Online


Best Overall Classical Music Coverage in a Blog or Newspaper
The one-two punch of Opera Chic and Parterre Box.


Overall Best Moment in Publicity and Marketing in 2008
The Washington Post actually hires a classical music critic: Anne Midgette takes over for Tim Page.


Woot woot! Congratulations!

Aside: The New York Philharmonic goes to Pyongyang deserves a mention somewhere on this list. I had forgotten that happened in 2008, actually - as did you readers, apparently - until I read Steve Smith's Time Out NY round-up.  There was a week or so where that news was everywhere: I remember sitting at a bar and totally freaking out when I saw mention of it on the CNN news ticker! In my lifetime, at least, I can't recall a symphony orchestra receiving that level and amount of national press. Well done.