Among the damning claims levelled by BBC Singers Acting Co-Directors Jonathan Manners and Rob Johnston is that a “recurring narrative of toxic culture now exists at the BBC, reflected in the working environment from the Director General downwards.” - Deadline
Paul Hughes, former director of the BBCSO and the BBC Singers: "The BBC's timing is as calculated as its strategy is callous: ensembles struggling to recover from the pandemic, exhausted from keeping the show on the road throughout, three of the ensembles without a director and all contractually gagged." - The Guardian
Worries about music today ignore every development in the transmission of music in the past. “I mean, when recorded music first came out, people were like, nobody’s ever going to learn how to play anything ever again. Then came radio and nobody’s ever gonna go and see live music.” - The Guardian
Vinyl revenue grew 17% and topped $1.2 billion last year, making up nearly three-quarters of the revenue brought in by physical music. At the same time, CD revenue fell 18% to $483 million, the RIAA said. - NPR
The pit orchestra "will disappear along with the show. It holds 27 full-time musicians, 11 of whom have been with Phantom since it opened in the late 1980s." Those musicians have built comfortable lives, which are about to be upended. - The New York Times
"I worry about how moods are being targeted in music by a company’s algorithms. But I know he loves this music, albeit in a very different way to me. I wonder why I spend so much time worrying." - The Observer (UK)
"Just in case you're only feeling partially exercised at the evening's pending legit controversies and fashion disasters, let me give you one more reason to sharpen your hashtags. I'm here to argue the obvious: The Academy is getting its best song category all wrong." - NPR
"At first, the Minnesota Opera planned to adapt The Song Poet as a youth opera—part of a program then called Project Opera. But in 2020, that changed with the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic and a racial justice uprising that challenged representation in the arts." - Sahan Journal
"Shortly after becoming music director of the L.A. Phil and not long before her death in 1964, Mehta visited Alma Mahler, the composer’s widow and a composer in her own right. 'I didn’t know her well, but I speak Viennese, ... so we got along very well.'" - Los Angeles Times
One composer "felt at home in this genre, somewhere between abstract contemporary opera and sound art, but like many composers she had to reconcile her interests with the financial pressures of a traditional career." - The New York Times
Algorithms are not neutral: they train us as much as we train them. Using them to promote local music or Canadian music may inspire a wider variety of music heard on streaming services. - The Conversation
To combat the councils decisions, four MSPs wrote to the Scottish government, asking them to intervene and save the music programmes. Over the weekend, the government confirmed it would cover the extra funding needed to keep Big Noise projects running in each area. - ClassicFM
Classical fans have long complained about how poorly iTunes and Apple Music fit the genre. So, in 2021, Apple purchased Primephonic — which designed its database especially for classical — and closed it, saying they'd integrate it with Apple's software and relaunch it. The result, Apple Music Classical, arrives March 28. - Ars Technica
While technology is making composing more accessible to more artists, there's another important shift going on: scoring Indigenous stories with Indigenous music — rather than a cliché of rattles and drums. - CBC
"The company said it pays out nearly 70% of every dollar it generates from music back to the industry. ... These rights holders include record labels, publishers, independent distributors, performance rights organizations and collecting societies ... (but) rarely the artist or songwriter." - Variety
