{"id":217,"date":"2009-03-19T12:22:31","date_gmt":"2009-03-19T12:22:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/wp\/?p=217"},"modified":"2009-03-19T12:22:31","modified_gmt":"2009-03-19T12:22:31","slug":"if_a_cd_is_released_in_the_woo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/2009\/03\/if_a_cd_is_released_in_the_woo\/","title":{"rendered":"If a CD is released in the woods"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week, Anthony Tommasini of The New York Times <\/i>wrote a feature about CD box sets<\/a>. In it, there’s a fascinating quote from Nonesuch president Robert Hurwitz about Nonesuch’s recently released Elliot Carter collection:<\/p>\n

Mr. Hurwitz expects this set to sell satisfactorily, he said. But if it
\ndoes not, so be it. “We have had a lot of longstanding relationships
\nwith important composers and performers over the years,” he added. “At
\ndifferent times it seems to me to make sense to put together recordings
\nwithout thinking about a target audience.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Releasing recordings (or producing a concerts) “without thinking about a target audience” is at once noble, pure and completely idiotic. Both sides could be – and have been – convincingly argued; where is the give-the-people-what-they-want line, and when does artistic integrity suffer? If the audience (or potential audience) is ignored, are recordings\/box sets\/concerts simply vanity projects? If the sales numbers are paid too much attention, is creativity dead? <\/p>\n

The idea of a “target” audience in this quote is also noteworthy. Do we get so caught up financially and mentally attempting to reach the target audience that we ignore anyone not within the confines of that pre-established target? That is, once an audience is identified, who then gets ignored? I often find that in our attempts to reach “new audiences”, we forget about the audiences that already exist; the consumers who would buy an album if only it was brought to their attention, no salesmanship or clever marketing tricks required. We spend so much time trying to connect with non-traditional audiences that the X percent of the population (3%? 5%?) that already cares about the performing arts is overlooked. 5% of the US population is…still a lot of people. <\/p>\n

This reminds me of an excellent post by playwright Jason Grote<\/a> on an ArtsJournal group blog<\/a> I worked on for the National Performing Arts Convention (NPAC) last June. His essay corresponded to an NPAC session called “Stop Taking Attendance and Start Measuring the Intrinsic Impact of Your Programs”, and was about audience surveys. The entire post can be found here<\/a>, and below is an excerpt: <\/p>\n

I generally think that surveys measuring audience response are a bad
\nidea.  I care very deeply about what my audience thinks or feels, but I
\ndon’t feel that surveys are the best way to assess this, and so don’t
\nuse them.  If the theater wants them, I consent, but I don’t read
\nthem.  This is not because I am a snob who is disinterested in what my
\naudience thinks – on the contrary, I care very much – but because I
\nthink our contemporary culture has a weird fetish for quantifying
\neverything, and something so delicate and ineffable as the relationship
\nbetween artist and viewer can’t even really be expressed verbally, let
\nalone numerically.  I am, in many cases, a believer in the wisdom of
\ncrowds and a fan of most open-source projects, but theater isn’t
\ncomputer programming or the collective hive-mind of Wikipedia.  I find
\nit much more instructive, actually, to watch an audience watch my work
\n(as was easy to do at the Denver Center’s in-the-round Space Theater in
\n2007), a technique recommended by the filmmaker Francois Truffaut,
\namong others.  Collectively, an audience is very intelligent, but not
\nnecessarily in a way that individual members can articulate – often I
\ncan better tell whether or not a play is working by observing body
\nlanguage.  When are people laughing, crying, shifting, on the edge of
\ntheir seats, dozing off, walking out?<\/p>\n

…The best art polarizes as much as it unites.  Most art that seeks to
\nplease everyone is doomed to failure, mediocrity or, at best, a sort of
\ntemporary popularity. This is not to say that genre art can never be
\ngood – I’m a fan of The Wire<\/i>, Philip K. Dick, sketch comedy, comic books and pop music as much as I am of, say, Lawrence Shainberg’s novel Crust<\/i>,
\nthe poetry of John Ashbery, opera, or performance art, and often the
\ntwo categories are not mutually exclusive (note the references to Flann
\nO’Brien’s The Third Policeman<\/i> on the TV show Lost<\/i>, an
\nincident that caused the postmodern novel to sell more in the last year
\nor so than it did in the entire 20th Century).  What I object to is the
\nattempt to domesticate and commodify a process that tends to sour at
\nits very contact with such concepts.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I am interested to hear from marketing departments at both record labels and arts presenters on this subject. How often do your A&R people or artistic administrators ask your opinion before releasing a record or booking a performance? Is it a discussion, or are projects simply handed to you to market from above? Even if there is discussion, are your marketing opinions taken into consideration or largely ignored?<\/p>\n

As a side note, I have to respectfully disagree with Anthony Tommasini about the Nonesuch Philip Glass box set<\/a> (“a six-inch-square box, an oversize thing adorned with glossy photos and too bulky for a standard CD shelf.”), also highlighted in the Times<\/i> box set article. I, for one, think it’s just the coolest thing: I especially love the five fine art interpretations of Glass circling the box and the book(let) that includes “appreciations” by people such as David Bowie, Chuck Close (obviously), Martin Scorsese and Robert Wilson, whose appreciation I have scanned:<\/p>\n

\"Robert-Wilson.jpg\"<\/span>I’m also glad no one was around when I first opened the box, because I squealed like a little girl who had just been given a pony when I saw that the inside panel design matched Glass’ website<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\"Glass-Box.jpg\"<\/span>Of course, I’m the target audience. And my only hope is that all the labels don’t go under before Nonesuch gets around to releasing a “We Do Not Belong Together” Sondheim box. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week, Anthony Tommasini of The New York Times wrote a feature about CD box sets. In it, there’s a fascinating quote from Nonesuch president Robert Hurwitz about Nonesuch’s recently released Elliot Carter collection: Mr. Hurwitz expects this set to sell satisfactorily, he said. But if it does not, so be it. “We have had […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-217","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=217"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}