Concerns have been raised that artificial streaming - where devices run chosen tracks on loop - is hindering the music industry, with JP Morgan executives estimating as much as 10% of all streams are fake, according to the Financial Times. - BBC
"The 42-year-old Dudamel has been music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic since 2009, a tenure that will end after 17 seasons when he starts in New York. … (He) will become The Oscar L. Tang and H.M. Agnes Hsu-Tang Music and Artistic Director Chair starting with the 2025-26 season" - AP
We have an odd situation. The slow tune is no longer dreamy music for couples, but sad, lonely music for the isolated and depressed. It doesn’t help that handheld devices, earbuds, and other pervasive technologies have turned music into something consumed alone, not communally as it was in past. - The Honest Broker
"The (opera), which will be written by the Ukrainian composer Maxim Kolomiiets, with a libretto by the American playwright George Brant, tells the story of a mother who makes a long and perilous trip to rescue her daughter, who is being held at a camp inside Crimea." - The New York Times
While he's still scheduled to conduct the orchestra's season opener on Sept. 28, he has cancelled all performances from late October through the end of 2023; he will undergo further treatment between conducting engagements for at least the first half of 2024. - AP
"The orchestra members voted definitively Sunday to reject the Philadelphia Orchestra and Kimmel Center Inc.'s 'best and final offer,' which came after three full days of bargaining. Eighty-five of the musicians voted against the offer, and two abstained. None voted in favor." - MSN (The Philadelphia Inquirer)
The census finds that despite high levels of education and training among professional musicians – 70% have a degree or higher, and 50% have a music degree – more than half the respondents have to cobble together a living through a variety of jobs. - The Guardian
South Dakota’s may plausibly be considered the most genuinely innovative, most inspirationally forward-looking professional orchestra in the United States. It is also the happiest professional orchestra I know, and the most engaged. Fulfilling Theodore Thomas’s credo, it “shows the culture of the community.” - The American Scholar
Apple Music is now eight years old, but there’s no indication that the business is profitable. They need strategies to reduce costs, and substituting cheap music for expensive music is the most obvious way of doing this. - The Honest Broker
The theatre, which had been a civilian shelter, is "a symbol of Russia's war crimes," says the city's exiled mayor. "To turn the theater into a tourist destination and to sing on the bones of the dead is incredible cynicism and disrespect." - The New York Times
Think of major Finnish conductors working around the world today — there are a disproportionate number of them — and chances are they studied with Marja Kantola-Panula. - The New York Times
The Tiny Desk series became a prime venue for artists seeking an authenticity baptism. The series built its audience organically, getting bigger bookings and finding frequent viral successes. But for pop artists, it has become a tool with a very specific utility: demonstrating in-the-room chops. - The New York Times
Streaming has thrown together two old business models (retail and radio) and thrown them into one pot, pretending lean-back and lean-forward consumption are the same. They are not. This move will go a long way to disincentivising the commodification of consumption by rewarding active listening. - Music Industry Blog
"The stories of repression, resistance, and activism that follow are those of three young Afghan musicians who now live abroad and who continue to perform and study music for those who no longer have that right." - Van
The Monterey Jazz Festival was founded in 1958 by Jimmy Lyons and has been run for 32 years by Tim Jackson. Next year he passes the reins to Darin Atwater, founder of Baltimore's Soulful Symphony, who will be the first Black musician to lead the organization. - San Francisco Chronicle
