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March 2013

With the accelerating pace of technological change, the League posts a monthly summary of relevant news and information regarding changes, trends and developments that may affect the electronic media activities that orchestras use to achieve their institutional missions.  If you have questions about this material or any other electronic media topic, please contact Michael Bronson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and Joe Kluger at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .

1.    25 billion served up: iTunes reaches milestone

Apple has announced that it has sold its 25 billionth download.  It took the Cupertino, Calif., company almost 10 years to reach the milestone. Customers download an average of 15,000 songs a minute from the iTunes music store, which was launched in April 2003. The digital retailer's catalog is 26 million songs deep.   (Source: Yahoo News)

2.    ABC Works on an App for Live Streaming Shows to Mobile Devices

The Walt Disney Company, while sorting out the future of the online video Web site Hulu, has an app in the works that may render Hulu passé for some people.  The app will live stream ABC programming to the phones and tablets of cable and satellite subscribers, allowing them to watch content while standing in line at Starbucks or riding a bus home from work. The subscriber-only arrangement, sometimes called TV Everywhere in industry circles, preserves the cable business model that is crucial to the bottom lines of broadcasters, while giving subscribers more of what they seem to want — mobile access to TV shows. The arrangement could extend the reach of ads that appear on ABC as well.  (Source: New York Times)  

3.    A Success in HD, but at What Cost?

Peter Gelb, the general manager of the Metropolitan Opera, now says that it was not the most fortunate choice of words when he recently attributed a decline in attendance at the house to the “cannibalization” of the audience by the company’s high-definition broadcasts.  Yet that comment gained attention because it taps into some reservations that many opera buffs and critics have had about the project, which started in 2006, and has been an indisputable success.  The concern is that, if f opera fans in the greater New York area get used to the convenience and affordability of seeing performances in their local movie houses, will they eventually stop coming to the Met? And will live video performances, with close-up camerawork, vivid sound systems and intermission interviews, become more appealing to some than seeing an opera from a top balcony seat in a big house?  (Source: New York Times)

4.    Viewers Are Flocking to Streaming Video Content — And So Are Advertisers

With its new array of online options for viewing media — not to mention the increasing amount of original content created for online audiences — the internet has become a disruptive influence on the traditional television business, plain and simple. Even the staid Nielsen ratings standards have finally announced plans to include online streaming audiences in their metrics starting this fall. Now after years of talk about “cord-cutting” and the collapse of TV as we know it, a new report is suggesting that the rapid growth of the online audiences will fundamentally change not only the way viewers approach video content, but the way that advertisers do.   (Source: Wired)

5.    What Is 3D Printing? And Will It Change the World?

3D printing, futuristic name notwithstanding, is a pretty simple phenomenon: the conversion of a digital file into a physical product. With detailed instructions and the right materials, in theory and -- more and more often -- in practice, you can manufacture objects from a little machine on your desk. So we can now 3D print parts for machines and home appliances. In the latest episode of PBS's "OffBook" series, entrepreneurs and journalists discuss the future of the technology, considering not just how 3D printing can change the way humans create, but also how it can change our assumptions -- about manufacturing and retailing and economic efficiencies, about food production and even human production.   (Source: The Atlantic)

6.    3-D printing produces a fresh creative outlet for artists

Despite the chicken-in-every-pot hype over consumer-level 3-D printers, the technology still has a long way to go to be usable, or useful, for the average Joe.   But for some artists, 3-D printing has been a revelation. The ability to design and build objects layer by layer, rather than through traditional methods such as casting or handcrafting, has created a new level of freedom.   (Source: Los Angeles Times)

7.    An upbeat trend for classical pubradio despite audience slide

In public radio, the number of stations dedicated to classical music has rebounded, with a 40 percent increase from 109 in 2011 to 178 2012. The conversion of commercial classical stations to public radio has been one of the driving forces behind this growth.  This total, for the first time, included not just radio broadcasters’ primary signals but also their HD Radio multicast streams.   But while the number of classical music outlets is up, the format still faces major challenges in bolstering its listenership.  Of the 15 largest metro markets with a single classical station, 13 saw audience declines and one – Seattle’s KING-FM – recorded a slight increase.   (Source: Current)

8.    The Improbable Rise of NPR Music

With 2.7 million unique monthly visitors, 1.4 million podcast downloads every four weeks and an additional 1.4 million iPhone and iPad apps in circulation, NPR Music (npr.org/music) has become a sought-after stop for both aspiring and established artists. More broadly, it has become a rising power in the music industry.   (Source: Wall Street Journal)

9.    Playwrights Horizons First New York Theater to Offer Ticket Sales via Facebook

Playwrights Horizons has announced the launch of AVTiki, an innovative online sales channel that will give theater patrons the ability to purchase tickets without leaving Facebook.   (Source: AudienceView)

10.  What’s Billboard’s No. 1? Now YouTube Has a Say

The Billboard Hot 100, the magazine’s 55-year-old singles chart, has taken a revolutionary step and will now incorporate YouTube plays into its formula.   (Source: New York Times)

11.  Google Grants to increase maximum bid rate to $2.00

Google has increased the maximum bid rate for Google Grantees to $2.00 USD Cost Per Click (CPC) as of January 28, 2013. This is a tremendous change for Google Grantees, as it will allow for better placement of advertisements. However, Google Grants ads will now be shown below paying advertisers.   (Source: LinkedIn)

12.  Preparing Your Organization for Facebook Search

Facebook recently began the rollout of social search, a powerful tool that will allow users on Facebook to obtain search results with built-in friend endorsement. Some suggestions for ways arts organizations should prepare for this new feature include:

1.    Make sure your “About” section is up to date, complete, and keyword-rich.
2.    Focus on getting more “Likes”
3.    Encourage users to post about your organization on Facebook  (Source:  Capacity Interactive)

13.  Chicago Shakespeare Theater uses rich media messaging to build mobile database

Chicago Shakespeare Theater used rich media messaging to engage opted in audience members with a campaign that helped bring a famous painting to life and drive awareness for an upcoming performance.  The theater group sent exclusive video content on their mobile devices that could be shared on Twitter and Facebook, driving viral awareness of an upcoming production. More than 14 percent of opted-in users shared the rich content they received on their Facebook page while more than 17 percent agreed to receive future updates from Chicago Shakespeare Theater.   (Source: Mobile Marker)

14.  Copyright Protection That Serves to Destroy

In commentary in the Wall Street Journal, critic Terry Teachout urges Congress “to straighten out America's confused copyright laws,” which absurdly allow sound recordings to be "protected" by a prohibitive snarl of federal and state legislation that insure even the oldest U.S. recordings, dating from the late 19th century, will not lose their copyright protection until 2067 at the earliest.  He says that “intellectual property rights have become a sensitive issue in the age of instantaneous digital distribution, and rightly so. But copyright law was never meant to allow such rights to be restricted indefinitely. A time eventually comes when all books pass into the public domain. That's part of what makes a great book classic—the power to reprint or quote from it at will. Each time we do so, we fertilize our own culture, thereby helping to preserve it for future generations. Why can't we treat sound recordings the same way?”  (Source: Wall Street Journal)

15.  Museums Make Bigscreen Push

The success of bigscreen fine-arts cinemacast “Leonardo Live” has spurred its producers, PhilGrabskyFilms.com and BY Experience, to team with alternative content distributor NCM Fathom Events to present a series of museum-based cinemacasts called “Exhibition.”   Launching in April with “Manet: Portraying Life,” a look at an exhibit of the Impressionist painter’s art on view at London’s Royal Academy of Arts, the “Exhibition” programming establishes an ongoing footprint for fine-arts offerings in the alt-content cinema marketplace. Performing arts organizations have already had notable success drawing crowds to HD cinemacasts (both live and recorded) of live entertainment, with the Metropolitan Opera’s high-profile programming joined more recently by legit troupes including London’s National Theater, which in June will present a live cinemacast of Helen Mirren topliner “The Audience.”   With “Exhibition,” art museums muscle in on the turf that for other arts orgs has become a fruitful means of brand expansion — as well as a new revenue stream.   (Source: Variety)

16.  Music Industry Sales Rise, and Digital Revenue Gets the Credit

The music industry, the first media business to be consumed by the digital revolution, said that its global sales rose last year for the first time since 1999, raising hopes that a long-sought recovery might have begun.   The increase, of 0.3 percent, was tiny, and the total revenue, $16.5 billion, was a far cry from the $38 billion that the industry took in at its peak more than a decade ago. Still, even if it is not time for the record companies to party like it’s 1999, the figures, reported by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, provide significant encouragement. (Source: New York Times)

17.  Philip Glass' Walt Disney opera to be broadcast live online

Can't get to Madrid for the world premiere of Philip Glass' Walt Disney Opera? "The Perfect American," a fictionalized account of Disney's final days, was broadcast live online in early February, with the video available for free up to three months after.  "The Perfect American" can be streamed on medici.tv for free; registration is required for viewing the archived video.  (Source: Los Angeles Times)

18.   Imagining a Swap Meet for E-Books and Music

The bedrock distinction between physical and electronic works for the last decade has been that, with digital goods, you are in effect only renting an e-book — or an iTunes song — and your rights are severely limited.  That distinction is now under attack, both in the courts and the marketplace.  Recently, both Amazon and Apple have received patents to set up systems for allowing users to sell or give e-books, music, movies and software to each other by transferring files rather than reproducing them.  The retailers would presumably earn a commission on each transaction, and consumers would surely see lower prices.  But a shudder went through publishers and media companies, which produce content and might see their work devalued, just as they did when Amazon began selling secondhand books.   (Source: New York Times)

19.  Study Finds That Streaming And Spyware Are Killing Music Piracy

It seems that people just aren’t pirating music the way they used to. In many cases, because they don’t have to.  According to the NPD Group’s “Annual Music Study 2012,” the number of music files being illegally downloaded was 26% less in 2012 than in 2011. What’s more, 40% of the people surveyed in the study who said that they’d illegally downloaded in 2011 did not do so in 2012.  So what’s responsible for this massive reduction in piracy? According to the survey, it’s not stepped-up enforcement – it’s the availability of free music via streaming services like Spotify.   (Source: Forbes)

Technology News of Note

February, 2013

With the accelerating pace of technological change, the League will post a monthly summary of relevant news and information regarding changes, trends and developments that may affect the electronic media activities that orchestras use to achieve their institutional missions.  If you have questions about this material or any other electronic media topic, please contact Michael Bronson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and Joe Kluger at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .

1.    UK album sales suffer 11.2% drop

Overall UK album sales fell by 11.2% in 2012, according to the British Phonographic Industry (BPI).  Figures showed CD album sales declined nearly 20% to 69.4m copies, although digital album sales rose by 14.8% to 30.5m. (Source: BBC News)

2.    U.K. digital download sales top £1 billion

Digital sales in the U.K. of music, games and films have broken the £1 billion barrier for the first time, according to new figures.  Research by the Entertainment Retailers Association (ERA) shows shoppers spent £1.033 billion (U.S. $1.6 billion) - an 11.4% rise - on downloads, with video games accounting for more than half that figure with sales of £552.2 million.  Physical sales of CDs, DVDs, Blu-ray and videogames still account for more than three quarters of the entertainment market, but sales fell by 17.6% compared to 2011.  (Source: The Independent)

3.    Cable Companies Squeeze More Obscure Channels

Independent cable channels (which are not owned by major media companies) are feeling threatened these days. Some of the distributors they depend on — Time Warner Cable, DirecTV, Verizon FiOS — are talking about dropping underperforming channels from their lineups, or at least paying them less.  Distributors have talked for years about belt-tightening, but two things are different now: potential Web competitors are creeping up and programming costs are soaring, particularly for sports channels.  Time Warner Cable recently dropped Ovation, an arts and culture channel, which “is viewed by less than 1 percent of our customers on any given day,” the distributor said.  So what’s a tiny channel to do? Some analysts have suggested that low-rated cable channels should remake themselves as freely available channels on the Web, modeled after channels that YouTube is financing. YouTube channel owners make money from advertising but not subscriber fees. (Source: New York Times)

4.    Opera and the Internet: Making Links

In a blog entry, Fred Plotkin – host of the new WQXR show Operavore – discusses how the relationship of audiences to live theater and opera has been changed by the addictive and enslaving role of technology in our society.   Theater and opera, he believes, are real in their emotions and humanity, but not “real” as literal representations of what happens in life.  Now, in the fourteenth year of the 21st century, we are immersed in a different reality, that in which everything “virtual” is real and media are where we socialize. Our knowledge and experiences come in bits and bytes. The writer does love watching performances on YouTube of wonderful lost-and-found videos of operas from all over the world and acknowledges that viewing a day inside the Royal Opera House is “reality TV” of the best kind.  He also believes that the best use for the Internet is as a radio, as a way of listening to opera performances from all over the world.   (Source: WQXR)

5.    Regional theatre and independent cinema: collaborating in a crisis

Local independent cinemas in the U.K. are considering bringing high-quality theatrical shows from the biggest stages in the West End, New York and Moscow to the small screen. Macbeth starring Kenneth Branagh at Manchester International Festival, Welsh National Opera's Anna Bolena, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic's Wagner on Merseyside – these are all shows where a screening in an independent cinema could allow more people to see the homegrown talent and productions on offer.   (Source: The Guardian)

6.    Sony Issues Dylan CDs to Extend Copyright

In an unusual response to a new European copyright law, scheduled to take effect by 2014, Sony Music has released a compilation of early Bob Dylan recordings that – with only about 100 copies of the four-CD set produced – is bound to become one of his most collectible albums. “The 50th Anniversary Collection,” which carries a subtitle — “The Copyright Extension Collection, Vol. 1” — also comes as a downloadable version, available through the singer’s Web site, bobdylan.com, but only to fans who log on from France or Germany.  Sony explained that the point of the release was to keep the recordings under copyright protection in Europe, where currently, recordings can be copyrighted in Europe for 50 years, a much shorter term than in the United States, where recordings made since 1978 will remain copyrighted until 70 years after the death of the last surviving author.  In 2011 the European Union revised its copyright laws to extend copyright, beginning in 2014, to 70 years.   (Source: New York Times)

7.    A Growing Number of Artists Are Live-Streaming Their Shows

Whether or not you realize it, if you've ever streamed a live show on your television, iPad or laptop, you've been out on couchtour (hashtag: #couchtour), and large-scale acceptance of the practice is not far off.   Most people agree that “Couchtouring” – in which fans watch live streams of concerts from home and then tweet or share their comments on social media under the heading #couchtour – will never replace the experience of seeing a live show. But there are advantages to staying home and it doesn't matter where the show takes place: Hong Kong, Brazil, London, New York, Los Angeles or Atlanta. As long as you're awake with a WiFi connection, you can tune in.  It's also different from watching an archived live performance on YouTube, DVD or a cable TV rebroadcast; you're in the moment, sharing the experience with a like-minded community on Twitter or through a website's comment widget.  (Source: CT.com)

8.    Diablo Ballet, East Bay Dance Company, Is Crowdsourcing Its Next Piece

Diablo Ballet, the Walnut Creek-based ballet company, is hopping on the crowd sourcing bandwagon and developing a piece pulled entirely from social media. Between now and February 14, the organization invites the twitterverse to post ideas for "The Web Ballet." Seven of the most interesting suggestions will be incorporated into the choreography.   (Source: Huffington Post)

9.    Listen to Yo La Tengo's New Album Fade via Pitchfork Advance

Pitchfork has announced the launch of Pitchfork Advance, an immersive music streaming platform designed to emulate the classic album experience. Pitchfork Advance showcases an interactive listening environment featuring pre-release albums streams with dynamic graphics and a host of tools that will allow fans to engage with album art, lyrics, credits, track listings, artist info, and more while they listen.   The platform allows users to scroll through multiple screens of artwork in full-browser graphic mode while listening to a fully-controllable stream of the album.   (Source: Pitchfork.com)

10.    Live-Streamed Performing Arts Festival Opens February 19th

VirtualArtsTV (http://virtualarts.tv) has announced the WiredArts Fest, the first of its kind, live-streamed performing arts festival. Think of a Fringe Festival, but online, where the audience is global, seating is unlimited and viewers can participate in live chat discussions, interact through Twitter and Facebook, while the performance is happening. The WiredArts Fest will feature 14 shows running in repertory over 12 days.   (Source: VirtualArts.TV)

11.    Pandora Public Performance Royalty Settlement for Sony/ATV Musical Works

The rights to publicly perform musical compositions had until very recently been relatively straightforward. All a broadcaster, digital media company or other music user needed to do was to pay ASCAP, BMI and SESAC the uniform compulsory license fees set by government agencies.  With Sony ATV withdrawing from ASCAP and BMI, music services have one more rights organization with whom they have to negotiate in order to play music. And this publishing company is free to set royalty rates as it sees fit, not supervised by a government agency or rate court.  Pandora may be getting a taste of this increasing difficulty, having to pay significantly more money to Sony ATV music publishers than it had previously paid for that same music when it was licensed by ASCAP and BMI.   On the sound recording side, there have been defections from the SoundExchange collective – though driven by the music services' desire to lower rates, rather than the music copyright holders' desire to raise rates.   What this fracturing of music licensing does is to make life more complicated, especially for smaller copyright holders and licensees in the music universe, who benefit most from the compulsory license systems.  (Source: Broadcast Law Blog)

12.    As Music Streaming Grows, Royalties Slow to a Trickle

A decade after Apple revolutionized the music world with its iTunes store, the music industry is undergoing another, even more radical, digital transformation as listeners begin to move from CDs and downloads to streaming services like Spotify, Pandora and YouTube.  Spotify, which began streaming music in Sweden in 2008, lets users choose from millions of songs over the Internet free or by subscription, and is increasingly seen as representing the future of music consumption.   As purveyors of legally licensed music, they have been largely welcomed by an industry still buffeted by piracy. But as the companies behind these digital services swell into multibillion-dollar enterprises, the relative trickle of money that has made its way to artists is causing anxiety at every level of the business.   (Source: New York Times)

13.    Theater Gives Free Seats to Viewers Who Tweet Performances

While seat-kicking and talking in a theater will likely incite the ire of fellow seatmates, using your smartphone may soon lose its taboo status.  The Providence Performing Arts Center in Providence, R.I. has designated a section of its theater for "tweet seats" since last spring. Located in the back two rows to avoid distracting patrons, the seats are free for those who promise to live-tweet a performance.  (Source: Mashable.com)

Tech News December 2012

With the accelerating pace of technological change, the League posts a monthly summary of relevant news and information regarding changes, trends and developments that may affect the electronic media activities that orchestras use to achieve their institutional missions.  If you have questions about this material or any other electronic media topic, please contact Michael Bronson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and Joe Kluger at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

1.    What Is Going on with the Record Industry?

Andy Doe, former head of classical music at iTunes and COO at Naxos, blogs about the state of the recording industry, triggered by a list of 10 things he wished people said more often.   Some of the more provocative on the list include:

1. Almost everything you read about the state of the record industry is totally useless.
2. It does not matter how the market is doing. Stop asking.
3. Every genre’s market is basically the same shape.
4. There are many reasons to make a record.
5. Your choice of business model depends upon your goals and your resources.

(Source: New Music Box)

2.    So You Want in on the Music Biz? Fred Wilson Has 4 Things to Tell You

Union Square Ventures partner Fred Wilson, the godfather of the New York startup scene and a music lover, has laid out four guiding principles for those wanting to make money from companies that straddle music and technology:

1. It’s more expensive than you think, and it takes longer than you want.
2. No matter how many users you have, massive valuations are fleeting if you can’t make money – even if you are Spotify and Pandora.
3. That said, Pandora has the right idea. Advertising dollars will move increasingly to internet radio, and artists will start to make money from their music.
4. Selling virtual goods might be a better business than selling music.

(Source: Wired)

3.    Copyright on Imported Works

The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case about whether copyright holders — publishers, filmmakers, musicians and creative artists of all sorts — can sell their copyrighted works abroad at prices different from what they charge in the American market and rely on copyright law to help maintain the separate pricing without having importers profit from the difference.   An Op-Ed in the New York Times makes the case that allowing the “first-sale doctrine” (which says that copyright owners cannot control the distribution and pricing of works, like books, after the initial sale) to apply to imported works is inconsistent with the intent of the Copyright Act changes Congress made in 1976 to protect against unauthorized imports of copyrighted works by so-called gray-market sellers.   (Source: New York Times)

4.    N.A.A.C.P. Opposes Effort to Change Online Royalties

The Internet Radio Fairness Act, a federal bill supported by Pandora, Clear Channel and others that would change the way online radio royalties are set, has come under new opposition from the N.A.A.C.P., which said in a letter to members of Congress that the bill would “unfairly deprive artists and performers of fair pay for their hard work.”   The bill would direct a panel of federal judges to use the same standard in setting royalty rates for Internet radio that they use for satellite and cable radio services, a change that Pandora and others believe would substantially lower their rates.  It already has been opposed by music industry groups, as well as by the A.F.L.-C.I.O. But the N.A.A.C.P. letter adds new pressure, portraying the issue not just as a business dispute, but as a civil rights matter.  (Source: New York Times)

5.    Don't 'Gut' Our Royalties: Artist's' Open Letter to Pandora and Congress

Big name popular artists, such as Katy Perry, Maroon 5 and Rihanna, are also opposing Pandora's lobbying of Congress to approve the Internet Radio Fairness Act.   (Source: Hollywood Reporter)

6.    Future of Music 2012: A fight over Internet radio scraps

During the recent annual Future of Music Summit, the conversation about revenue in the digital music industry sounded like a scrum over crumbs, a desperate fight over an increasingly shrinking pie.   The post-Napster era is now more than a decade old, and the digital reinvention of the music industry continues with countless new tastemakers and middle men in positions of power and influence while jostling with (or in some cases stepping past) 20th Century gatekeepers: iTunes helped make Tower Records obsolete, Pandora on-line radio elbows in on the listenership once exclusively commanded by terrestrial conglomerates such as Clear Channel, and Pitchfork has surpassed the clout of Rolling Stone.   For many musicians, little has changed from an economic perspective. Less money is being made from recorded music, and payments from promising digital streaming services such as Spotify are doled out at a rate of fractions of pennies.   The latest hot-button debate in this increasingly contentious arena: The newly crafted Internet Radio Fairness Act.   (Source: Chicago Tribune)

7.    Making Cents

Damon Krukowski of Galaxie 500 and Damon & Naomi bemoans the meager royalties currently being paid out to bands by streaming services and explains what the music business' headlong quest for capital means for artists today.   By his calculation it would take songwriting royalties for roughly 312,000 plays on Pandora to earn the profit of one-- one-- LP sale. (On Spotify, one LP is equivalent to 47,680 plays.)   (Source: Pitchfork)

8.    Facebook offering e-retailers sales tracking tool

Facebook has begun offering a new tool which will allow online retailers to track purchases by members of the social network who have viewed their ads.  The tool is the latest of the new advertising features Facebook is offering to convince marketers that steering advertising dollars to the company will deliver a payoff.   The conversion tool is specifically designed for so-called direct response marketers, such as online retailers and travel websites that advertise with the goal of drumming up immediate sales rather than for longer-term brand-building.   (Source: Reuters)

9.    HOW TO: Upgrade Your Nonprofit’s Pinterest Profile to a Business Account

Pinterest rolled out business accounts for brands and the best news is that there is a new “Institution/Non-profit” category. The new business accounts do not change the design or functionality of your nonprofit’s Pinterest profile, but it will give you access to new tools and case studies for brands as they become available. It also allows you to stop having to use a personal profile as a brand (i.e., first name Amnesty, last name International).   (Source: Nonprofit Tech 2.0)

10.    Cleveland Orchestra musicians, Ensemble HD to make live album at Happy Dog

The Cleveland Orchestra musicians who perform at the Happy Dog Saloon are embarking on a mission to lay down a record. A vinyl record.  To keep their enterprise moving forward, they're taking a technological step back, producing a double 12-inch vinyl album tentatively titled "Ensemble HD: Orchestral Manoeuvers Live at the Dog." To fund the project, they're using the more modern service known as Kickstarter.    (Source: Cleveland Plain Dealer)

11.    Is union helping or hurting film, TV composers?

More than 500 musicians, composers and others active in the Hollywood music biz recently heard a panel of experts warn that film, TV and videogame scoring continues to leave L.A. because producers are unwilling to meet union demands.   If work continues to dry up at the current rate, they speculated, one or more of the three remaining large scoring stages (Fox, Sony, Warner Bros.) could close "within the next two to five years," leaving London as the new scoring capital of the world and cheaper locations like Prague and Bratislava as second and third choices.

Union officials, who were not present at the meeting, are disputing the version of facts as presented. They say that although work is down, a larger percentage of current film work is actually staying in the U.S. They deemed it "no coincidence" that the meeting was held just as the American Federation of Musicians was negotiating with the AMPTP for a new film and TV scoring contract.   (Source: Variety)

12.    Mary Meeker sees Web trend toward consumer access

CD wallets, bookshelves, DVD towers and even garages may be fading away as a new generation lets technology affect the way it thinks about ownership.  Citing the rise of services such as Spotify, ZipCar and Netflix, venture capitalist Mary Meeker of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers is calling attention to what she says is a trend being embraced by the “asset-light” generation.   Using these kinds of services frees up time and physical space in users’ lives, Meeker said in her annual Internet Trends report, which she presented at Stanford University recently. Stepping into the shoes of a 25-year-old, Meeker sketched out the life of a consumer who is more focused on services than goods.  (Source: Washington Post)

13.    Partnership Offers Support for Media Entrepreneurs

Can the nascent entrepreneurial ideas bouncing around Silicon Valley help reinvent public media?   Matter Ventures, a start-up accelerator that will provide four months of financial and logistical support for budding media entrepreneurs, will be unveiled Monday by its partners: KQED, a public television and radio station operator; the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation; and the Public Radio Exchange, known as PRX.  KQED, based in San Francisco, and the Knight Foundation are each investing $1.25 million in the initial $2.5 million fund and will have an equity stake in any projects that become viable businesses. PRX, based in Cambridge, Mass., is contributing strategic and management support. (Source: New York Times)

14.    Why arias in the multiplex fall flat

Cinema, the cry goes up on all sides, is the future of opera. This is the technological crutch that can prop up an increasingly frail art-form, the digital panacea that can restore life to a cultural anachronism. Statistically the figures seem to bear this out. The Financial Times recently estimated the Met's annual income from its screenings at $11 million, and last year their worldwide audience numbers reached around 3 million. But as so many operatic heroes learn, riches always come at price.
Opera has been offering this all-encompassing artistic stimulation for more than 400 years, with 3D as standard – no special glasses required. When we take this sprawling, generous art-form and flatten it into the confines of a cinema screen, however, we rob it of its live excitement and emotional impact.  In outsourcing opera to cinemas, we leave a demanding art-form at the mercy of second-rate sound-systems and flat acoustics that simply can't carry the weight of singers trained to fill huge halls without amplification.
Opera companies claim their broadcasts will attract a new audience, enticing the young and culturally timid where traditional methods have failed. A 2008 survey by OPERA America however identified just 5 per cent of the audience for Met live broadcasts as those who had never been to live opera.  For many regional opera fans, or those in remote areas, the opportunity to see live opera is small, and these broadcasts tap in to an audience for opera that might not otherwise exist. It's a compelling argument, but one whose very strength may be the downfall of opera. What happens when digital audiences routinely outnumber live ones? Surely the temptation will be to start catering to this new format, designing productions around what works best in the new medium, casting according to Hollywood's standards rather than musical ones.   (Source: The Independent)

15.    YouTube videos make people money, but songwriters rarely see any of it

A little over a decade ago, the income streams for a professional songwriter were pretty straightforward. There were basically three of them: sales of records and downloads, radio play and, once in a while, a synch for a movie soundtrack or an ad.  Not so with most of the rest of the streaming digital music services. As collection societies, labels and publishers are forced to sign non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) covering the deals they make with services such as YouTube and Spotify, the artists and songwriters they represent are not allowed to know how much, or on what basis, they're supposed to be paid.   Their only option is to look at their royalty statements in an attempt to figure out how much each service pays, and trust that they've been paid correctly and fairly. In the case of YouTube, songwriters could only conclude that the rates the company pays are ridiculously low, at about $40 per million streams (if the song was written by a single writer).   (Source: The Guardian)