Orchestra Troubles

For classical music lovers, some disturbing news headlines:

• Minnesota Orchestra's Fall Performances Wiped Out with Lockout
• St Paul Chamber Orchestra Managers Reject Union Contract Offer
• Indianapolis Symphony Cancels Season's First Performances
• Striking Musicians Walk Out on Chicago Symphony Orchestra
• Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Stops Paying Musicians, Locks Them Out of Facility

Many major orchestras around the country are in the middle of serious labor disputes. Management claims ticket sales are down and donations have dried up and they need to cut salaries. Musicians just want to play, and to pay their bills. What the hell is going on here?

Every situation is different, but there appear to be some commonalities. First, the economy; it's affecting everyone, and is pinching both discretionary income and charitable donations, on which many municipal orchestras rely. Second, the management of many of these orchestras appears to be more interested in the bottom line than in the music; I suppose this is to be expected, but you'd also expect those in the music business to be at least a little bit interested in the music. And third, it's possible, just possible, that classical music is a declining (dying?) art form that has little or no mass appeal in today's uneducated, of-the-moment society, and those few that continue to have interest are literally dying off, leaving their empty seats behind.

I don't know all the details of all these situations, although I do know musicians in both the Minneapolis and Indianapolis organizations. These are all good folks, talented musicians, earning decent but not exceptional salaries commensurate with their years of training and standing in their industry. We're not talking about the money-grubbing 1% here; these are your neighbors down the street who just happen to bow a string or bang a timpani instead of sitting behind a desk or punching a time clock.

I'm most familiar with the Minnesota Orchestra situation. First, some background. The Minnesota Orchestra is one of the top symphonic orchestras in the country, if not the world. If this were a sport, this would be a top-tier NFL team, staffed with the top players in their positions. The Orchestra has a stellar history, dating back to 1903, and continues to lead the way artistically in the 21st century, both at home and abroad. This isn't your normal community orchestra, folks; this is truly a world-class organization, and one that's uniquely supported by an arts-loving community.

Orchestra management is in the process of renovating Orchestra Hall, where the Orchestra plays. It's a truly beautiful building, but could stand a little sprucing up. Management has raised more than $97 million in its current Building for the Future campaign, including $14 million in taxpayer funding for the $50 million Orchestra Hall renovation. So there's some money there.

Under the Orchestra's previous contract, which just expired, salaries grew by 3% - 4% per year. That's not a lot but it's not nothing; at least it kept up with inflation, more or less. Going into the current contract negotiations, however, Orchestra management didn't propose similar small increases; instead, it proposed to cut the average musician's salary by $46,000 a year. That's a 30% to 50% pay cut, depending.

Think about that. How would you react to having your salary cut by a third? How would that affect your household budget? Would you still be able to pay the bills? Or would you be dusting off your resume, looking for something better?

Yeah, that's a huge pay cut. Huge. And it's not as if these world-class musicians are earning a fortune, either. The average Minnesota Orchestra musician earns $135,000 (many less than that, of course), so the pay cut would bring that average down to $89,000. Again, we're talking world-class musicians, the very best in the world at what they do. These are not NFL-level salaries, folks; at the current salary level, a Minnesota Orchestra musician makes less than a typical dentist, or about as much as a captain at a regional airline. Good wages, yes, but not anywhere near excessive.

What happens if management gets their way and salaries get cut almost in half? Well, a lot of these world-class musicians will simply leave. Other orchestras will pay them what they're worth, even if the Minnesota Orchestra management won't. And that means that the Minnesota Orchestra will no longer be a world-class orchestra. Yes, there are lots of talented folks graduating every year from way too many quality music schools, but filling a chair vacated by a player with decades of experience with one just out of music school will not result in the same level of performance. The quality of the music will suffer -- and the audience will suffer for it.

This is not a situation we would tolerate in the world of sports. We're building a new football stadium up here, just as they did back in my old home town of Indianapolis. That stadium, of course, will be financed with taxpayer money. (And don't get me started on why overburdened taxpayers have to pay for new stadiums so that multi-million dollar team owners can make a little bit more money than they were previously; that's inexcusable, in my book, but a different subject for a different day.) The Vikings will not be asking their players to take a 30% - 50% salary cut to move into the new stadium. The public would go absolutely apeshit if their beloved team were to cut salaries and lose players. Just wouldn't happen.

But that's exactly what's happening here in Minneapolis. We're plowing $50 million into a revamped concert hall and then driving away the musicians that helped build that support by forcing them to cut their salaries almost in half. The result will be the classical music equivalent of turning an NFL quality team into a semi-pro team. Instead of having the Vikings play in the stadium, we'll be hosting the Minnesota Sting instead. Sports fans wouldn't settle for that, and neither should music lovers.

I don't know all the finances of the Minnesota Orchestra; few people do, as they haven't been made public. But what Orchestra management is proposing is tantamount to professional suicide. If management wins in these contract negotiations, the Minnesota Orchestra as we know it will cease to exist. We'll be left with a semi-pro pops orchestra, which is maybe what management wants; maybe they'll still sell enough tickets to cover the new lower payroll. I don't know, but it's something that our arts-loving community cannot and must not accept.

Me, I'd rather have the old Orchestra Hall and a top-flight roster of musicians than a pretty new hall filled with sub-par players. It's all about the music, folks. Asking the current musicians to live on half their current wages is insulting. The community needs to get involved and get this problem solved, pronto. (As do all the other communities affected by similar orchestra problems -- including the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, just across the river.)

If you want to learn more about what's happening in Minneapolis, from the musician's viewpoint, visit the Musicians of the Minnesota Orchestra website. For some interesting viewpoints on orchestra problems across the U.S., check out the Sticks and Drones blog, filled with insight and opinions from two professional conductors. And do whatever you can to support your local musicians; they need all the support they can get.

New Industry Stats (Good News)

Nielsen just released its Music 360 study of teen listening habits. Some good news about how teenagers listen to (and pay for) music. Some key metrics:

First off, despite all the online options, most people still discover new music via the radio:

• 48% discover music most often through the radio
• 10% discover music most often through friends/relatives
• 7% discover music most often through YouTube

Interestingly, teens listen to more music on YouTube than they do on the radio or online (is YouTube the new MTV?):

• 64% of teens listen to music through YouTube
• 56% of teens listen to music on the radio
• 53% of teens listen to music through iTunes
• 50% of teens listen to music on CD

What inspires teens to purchase music? Friends, of course:

• 54% are more likely to make a purchase based off a positive recommendation from a friend
• 25% are more likely to make a purchase based off a music blog/chat rooms
• 12% are more likely to make a purchase based off an endorsement from a brand
• 8% of all respondents share music on social networking sites, while 6% upload music.

What's a better value, CDs or digital downloads? Teens say digital, although CDs are close behind:

• 63% of purchasers identified digital albums as a very or fairly good value
• 61% identified digital tracks as a very or fairly good value
• 55% identified physical CDs as a very or fairly good value

Like I said, interesting stuff. In spite of all the digital hype, CDs and radio are still quite viable. It's a real smorgasbord out there!

EMI/Universal Music Merger

Two of the big four record labels are merging. Is the EMI/Universal merger a good thing? Probably not, as you can read here: http://futureofmusic.org/blog/2012/05/30/why-emi-umg-merger-bad-artists-and-fans.

Top Ten Artists

I was going through some posts from one of my other blogs, and stumbled across this one from back in 2010. It's two years old, but the sentiment holds. Here's how it goes:

VH1, the channel that used to play music videos, recently released their list of "100 Greatest Artists of All Time," as voted on by today's so-called artists. The list is a joke, of course, as by "all time" they mean "the rock era," as no one bothered to mention Frank Sinatra, George Gershwin, or J.S. Bach. Even taking the list as a rock-era list, however, there are some issues.

VH1's top 10 "greatest artists" were as follows:

1. The Beatles
2. Michael Jackson
3. Bob Dylan
4. Led Zeppelin
5. Rolling Stones
6. Jimi Hendrix
7. Prince
8. Elvis Presley
9. James Brown
10. Stevie Wonder

It's hard to argue against the Beatles heading the list, of course, but there's a lot wrong otherwise. I mean, there' no way Michael Jackson ranks over Dylan or Elvis, and there's really no justification for Prince to be in the top ten at all. It's really indefensible.

The problem, as I see it, is defining "best." It's just too subjective. My "best" isn't going to be the same as yours. Heck, my own definition of "best" will probably differ from day to day, depending on how I'm feeling about things.

So, given that most of the artists interviewed for the TV show talked about how big an influence a given artist was on them, personally, I'd like to change the criteria and suggest a list I'll call the "Top Ten Most Influential Artists of the Rock Era." Here's who I'd choose:

1. The Beatles
2. Bob Dylan
3. Elvis Presley
4. Chuck Berry
5. Berry Gordy
6. Phil Spector
7.Aretha Franklin
8. Madonna
9. Joni Mitchell
10. Rolling Stones

Note that these aren't necessarily my ten favorite artists, or even the ten I'd call the "best," however that's defined. Instead, these are the ten who I think most influenced the music of the era.

As to specifics, I'd agree that it's debatable whether Dylan was really more influential than Elvis, but that's the way I see it; Mr. Zimmerman really influenced the way songwriters wrote. As to putting Joni Mitchell on the list, while she's obviously not as talented as Dylan and the Beatles, she influenced and inspired several generations of female singer-songwriters. (Without Joni, no Jewell -- which I'll forever hold against her). Same thing for putting Aretha on the list; she inspired the creation of the female vocal diva, which rules to this day. (Without Aretha, no Celene Dion -- again, I hold this against the Queen of Soul.) And the same for Madonna -- I'm not a fan, but it's obvious that Lady Gaga and her ilk are.

I put Phil Spector and Berry Gordy on the list, even though they're not performers, because as producers they strongly influenced the sound of the music of the 60s and beyond. Gordy, of course, helped create the Motown Sound, which led to the Philly Sound, which led to just about all soul and R&B music of the past 50 years. Spector's Wall of Sound influenced everybody from Brian Wilson to Bruce Springsteen to U2, so he gets on the list easy.

The others are fairly self explanatory. The Stones, while not my personal favorites, influenced generations of bad boy rock and rollers, as well as the punk and grunge movements. Chuck Berry pretty much invented rock and roll and defined R&R guitar, so there's no way he's not on there. Dylan, as noted, changed the way songs were written, so he's a given. Then there's the Beatles, who head up any list no matter how it's defined. There was pop music before the Beatles and pop music after the Beatles, and that's just he way it is.

Amateur Hour

I've been responding a bit to a message thread on Elliott Randall's Facebook page about the shift from album purchases to single purchases in the digital era. As I pointed out there, this is the industry coming full circle; for the better part of the 20th century, starting with 78 RPM discs and moving into 45 RPM singles, music was purchased one song at a time. The classic album era of the mid-60s to late-80s or so were actually a historical anomaly. Whether we're talking the Top Forty era or today's iTunes-dominated market, consumers have generally preferred to purchase single tracks instead of whole albums.

One can bemoan this fact, as many do, but it is what it is. When the conversation naturally veers into why  today's consumers prefer purchasing one or two tracks instead of an entire album, one has to recognize the possibility that maybe there are only a few tracks on any given album worth buying. Now, this certainly wasn't the case during the classic album era, when artists conceived an album as a start-to-finish project, but it was the way it was in the Top Forty era before that. Back then, an artist had a hit or two that led off the album, and the rest of the tracks were just filler. I'm not sure it's that different today, and here's why.

Back in the 50s and 60s, and maybe even early 70s, music was made by professionals -- at all points in the process. An artist chose a set of songs written by professional songwriters, then hired a group of professional studio musicians to record them. The recording was made in a professional studio by a professional recording engineer, and the whole process was overseen by a professional record producer. The results were, not surprisingly, uniformly professional.

Today, however, there aren't a lot of professionals in the process, especially when you're talking about the typical indie recording. First off, all the songs are written by the artist, who is seldom a trained or skilled songwriter. (There are lots of reasons for this self-writing phenomenon, including money -- in the form of songwriting royalties -- and artistic hubris.) The artist plays the music himself, and if it isn't quite as good as the studio pros might have done it, it can always be touched up in Pro Tools. Needless to say, the artist does his own recording, typically in his own "home studio" (re: basement or bedroom), and serves as his own recording engineer and producer. There are no professionals anywhere in the loop to add that extra touch or refinement, and no outsiders period to do any editing or provide useful feedback.

The result is, more often than not, a self-indulgent, amateurish mess. Today's typical album contains too many songs (you can put 70+ minutes on a CD, so you might as well fill them all up) that, frankly, aren't all that listenable. Oh, today's computer recording technology can put a nice sheen on the thing, but the underlying songs are dreadfully dull and unmusical, and the recorded performances uninspiring. Without valuable professional input at all stages, the resulting product just isn't as good as similar recordings made decades ago.

Given the substandard quality songs, performances, and recordings common today, it shouldn't be surprising that the average indie album sells fewer than 2,000 copies (according to Billboard; Soundscan pegs it closer to 500 units). This also may explain why consumers buy just one or two tracks piecemeal from an album. There isn't that much that's worth spending money on; maybe there's a good track or two, but the rest is filler, at best.

Before anybody gets their knickers in a bunch, of course there are exceptions to this. There are lots of musicians who have the innate talent to produce quality music in today's do-it-yourself environment -- but there are lots more who don't. All you have to do is listen to enough new music today, and you'll see what I mean.

I value the contribution that professional songwriters, musicians, engineers, and producers can bring to the table. I wish there were more of it. It's certainly worth considering that the declining quality -- and sales -- of music today could be reversed with a little more professional input.

But that's just my opinion. Reasonable minds may disagree.

Windows 8 for Digital Music Playback

So, how good is Windows 8 for playing music? It all depends.

First of all, if you're a Windows Media Center fan, know that WMC isn't included in the basic build of Windows 8. Microsoft figured not enough people used it to warrant adding the costs for all the codecs into the basic version of Windows, and thus made WMC an optional and extra component to the Win8 Pro version. You can easily add the Media Center pack from within Win8, for a negligible cost (rumored to be in the $10-$15 range), but it's still an add-on, not part of the core operating system.

Even if you add the Media Center pack, know that you can't boot Win8 directly into WMC, as you can with all previous versions of Windows. Microsoft is so damned hell bent on forcing the Metro tiled Start screen experience on everyone that you can't bypass it, not even to go into Media Center. This is close to a deal killer for anyone using Windows in the living room; you don't want to have to mouse and click to the WMC environment, you just want Media Center to be there when you boot up and all the time after. It's a real kick in the ass for music lovers, HTPC enthusiasts, and anyone trying to use their computer as part of an audio/video system.

That said, you can reprogram your universal remote to click your way through the damned Start screen and launch Media Center. From there it's the same Media Center you're used to -- really, the exact same one, since Microsoft effectively killed all future WMC development with the Windows 7 version. If you like what you got now, that's fine.

That said, the Metro-style Music app built into Windows 8 (being rebranded as "Xbox Music" as we speak) may be a good-enough solution for many music lovers. The Win8 Music app looks and feels a lot like the Music component of WMC, and offers much of the same functionality. And, believe it or not, the touch-enabled Metro interface functions pretty well as a ten-foot interface, too. It's all those big tiles that work great on tablets; they work great at a ten-foot distance, too.

Viewing your digital music library with Windows 8's Music app.

Playing a track in Windows 8 -- looks a lot like Windows Media Center.

So, should you use Windows 8 for your digital music needs? Maybe. Try the built-in Music app to see if it fits your needs, and if it does, great. If not, you can always add Windows Media Center back into the mix, even if you can't launch directly into the WMC home screen. That said, WMC's days are obviously numbered, so some sort of ten-foot interface replacement will be needed eventually.

Amazon Cloud Player Updates

If you read my book, The Ultimate Digital Music Guide, you know I'm cautiously enthusiastic about so-called cloud music services, where you upload your own music to cloud-based music servers and then have it served back to you, on any connected device. One of the first and most popular of these cloud music services is Amazon Cloud Player. As I noted in my book, the original Cloud Player service wasn't perfect (limited to just MP3 and AAC files, not WMA), but offered some pretty good features, all in all.

Well, Amazon just upgraded the Cloud Player by giving it "scan and match" functionality. What this means is that instead of having to upload all the tracks in your digital music collection, Cloud Player scans your collection and tries to match it with tracks in its official digital collection. If a match is found, Cloud Player doesn't have to upload your version of the track; instead, it serves you back the copy of the track housed in Amazon's library. If your track doesn't have a match in Amazon's library, then Cloud Player uploads your track to its servers. This is the way iTunes Match works, and it definitely saves on upload time, assuming most of your tracks are common enough to be included in Amazon's master digital library.

With this new functionality comes higher-quality playback. All scan-and-match tracks are served back to you at 256Kbps, which, while not lossless quality, isn't bad. Pricing, however, changes. The free service is now limited to a paltry 250 tracks; if you have more than this in your library (and you do), you'll have to subscribe to Cloud Player Premium for $24.99/year. This lets you store 250,000 tracks, not including any Amazon MP3 purchases, which don't contribute to the limit.

(BTW, Amazon is pushing the new 256Kbps streaming as an upgrade to its previous service, but it's not, not really. Previously, Amazon would play back your tracks at the original bitrate they were ripped at, so if you ripped at something higher than 256Kbps, this new option is actually a downgrade. Of course, if you ripped or purchased a track at a lower bitrate, then the new 256Kbps playback is an improvement. I guess it all depends, eh?)

To add scan-and-match functionality, Amazon had to work out licensing agreements with all the major record labels, as they view any serving of their content as something they get to charge for, even if it's your own purchased music played back by you, personally. (What a bunch of asses.) Hence the new subscription scheme; Amazon has to pay the labels, and this is how.

Anyway, this positions Amazon Cloud Player, even with the Premium option, quite favorably compared to Apple's iTunes Match service. iTunes Match charges the same $24.99/year but only lets you store 25,000 tracks. You also get the new ability to scan-and-match not just MP3 and AAC files, but also WMA, FLAC, and OGG format files. (You can't upload these formats to serve from the cloud, but Cloud Player will find them on your hard disk and match them to other-format versions in its library.)

If you want pure cloud service from the original tracks stored on your computer's hard drive, the Google Play Music cloud service is still the better choice. It's free (for now, anyway), and uploads all the major formats -- MP3, WMA, AAC, FLAC, and so forth. You are limited to 20,000 tracks, however, which could be an issue for those of us with larger libraries.

Then there's the serve-it-yourself option, which you have with apps such as Audiogalaxy and Subsonic. These programs turn your home PC into an always-on cloud server, and thus let you serve your own library from your own PC to any connected device, no middlemen involved. This option is a bit more technical, but worth checking out.

Still and all, Amazon's new Cloud Player developments are interesting and make sense for a lot of music lovers. That $24.99/year fee is a small price to pay to access your whole library from the cloud, and get up and running quickly.