The bank said more than 600 of its customers had come forward to report being scammed, losing an average of £332 each - with some losing £1,000. It added that 90% of the reported ticket scams started on Facebook. - BBC
Although streaming remains the dominant music format, physical media has been a growing niche where the industry can cater to so-called superfans, who express their dedication to artists by shelling out big bucks for collectible versions of new releases, sometimes in multiple quantities. - The New York Times
The current superintendent of La Fenice in Venice, Fortunato Ortombina, will take over in Milan this September. For the first year, he will work alongside outgoing La Scala superintendent Dominique Meyer, who departs in August 2025. Music director Riccardo Chailly will remain until 2026. - AFP (Yahoo!)
The company saw reduced support from the Arts Council of Wales and lost all funding from Arts Council England, which helped pay for tours to several English cities. Planned runs next year in Bristol (England) and Llandudno (Wales) have been called off, as has one production in Cardiff. - BBC
Bell has announced the extension of his tenure as music director of the Academy of St Martin in the Fields (ASMF) through to August 2028. He began the role in 2011, after first working with Neville Marriner and the ASMF in 1986 as a 19-year-old soloist. - The Strad
A flop year remains valuable for the feedback it gives us. Remove the noise of a once-in-a-lifetime, Beychella-esque headline performance and you can take stock of the tradition as a whole. - The Guardian
In the wake of last week's Vulture/New York magazine article reporting details of an alleged drugging/rape while the orchestra was performing in Vail in 2010, Philharmonic management has confirmed that principal oboe Liang Wang and associate principal trumpet Matthew Muckey will remain offstage for the time being. - The New York Times
GenAI can benefit musicians as well as the general public. Songwriters are no longer limited to the instruments they can play or a recording process they know, and beginners can more easily learn a new instrument with natural language processing and through conversational prompts. - ZDNet
The audio streaming company is developing tools that would allow subscribers to speed up, mash up and otherwise edit songs from their favorite artists, according to people familiar with the discussions. - The Wall Street Journal
Even now, "some employees, particularly female employees, continue to feel unsafe. A current member of the orchestra told me about an incident this past February in which her male colleagues spoke negatively about Asian women performing with the orchestra." - Vulture (MSN)
"What might a young music director mean to an orchestra and to a city when an amazing crop of international and, for the first time, diverse young maestros and maestras is upon us? The implications go far beyond that." - Los Angeles Times
“Here it’s looked on with great suspicion. That drives me nuts, I have to tell you. England is a haven for culture whether it is pop culture or classical culture, literary culture, theatrical culture, this is one of the great addresses and yet we’re embarrassed by it.” - The Guardian
On April 30, Kosman will flip his critic’s notebook closed for the final time, retiring from the newspaper at a crucial juncture for classical music in the Bay Area. - San Francisco Chronicle
The five-concert tour to Guangzhou, Nanjing and Shanghai, led by outgoing music director Jaap van Zweden and running from June 27 to July 3, will be the first visit by a full U.S. orchestra to the People's Republic since 2019. - AP
