The story so far: Spam comments flooded this and other ArtsJournal blogs. Inside them was evil code, very hard to root out, which infected ArtsJournal with malware. Google then marked ArtsJournal (and all its blogs) as attack sites, and many people were blocked from reading us. This was fixed. But how can we keep spam comments away? The captchas -- those word puzzles you had to solve before you could comment -- don't work anymore. Evildoers hire people in the third world to solve them by the thousand. And so the solution seemed to be...A … [Read more...]

One problem classical music has is anonymity. Might seem strange to say that, given how famous some classical stars are, but for the most part, we're trained to hide our own light, and cast a  … [Read more...]

Don't forget that I'm vitally interested in solutions to classical music's problems -- new approaches, things you've tried, things that worked, even things that didn't work, because I'm sure we all can learn from those, as well as from things that succeeded. And things that fall in the middle between apparent failure and apparent success. And note the "Solutions" page on this blog site, where (with help from Doug Laustsen) I archive solutions -- mine, and many from other people  -- that I've posted here. Send me yours!So here's a … [Read more...]

I have two new blog posts today -- one called "Gatekeeper alternatives -- do it yourself," and another (which I admit logically comes first), "The trouble with gatekeepers." Both bounce off an exchange I had on Twitter about how best to promote events and careers, through traditional means (working through old media and established classical music institutions), or by using new media, and bypassing the standard gatekeepers. Or else bringing them in after you've laid the groundwork on your own. For all kinds of reasons, the "alternatives" post … [Read more...]

So here's a test case, derived from something my wife Anne Midgette and I encountered during a university residency a few years ago.We were asked to meet with a faculty chamber ensemble, made up of terrific musicians, who were scheduled to make their New York debut. And they had a simple question to ask us. How could they get a review in the Times?The answer, unfortunately, was equally simple. Almost certainly, they couldn't get a Times review. There's too much competition. Too many concerts. Yes, they'd have a better chance if they'd scheduled … [Read more...]