Art is a con. That’s why it’s great. I’ve always said art should lower gross domestic product; it shouldn’t be there to bolster efficiency, or do a certain thing. It’s a shamanistic thing that is essentially founded on a belief that you can buy into, or not. - The New York Times
The nonprofit Third Coast Music has won the city's request for proposals to develop the site. Its plan is for an $80 million facility to record and produce music, primarily for film and television. The 32,000-square-foot complex will include a soundstage even larger than that of Skywalker Sound in California. - WBEZ (Chicago)
The gift from the family foundation of real estate magnate and former Chicago Tribune owner Sam Zell provides "vital" capital to reduce debt, fund retirement benefits, and pay for tours, special artistic projects and digital initiatives, said a statement from orchestra management. - Chicago Sun-Times
The Stradivarius on which Joseph Joachim played the world premiere of Brahms's Violin Concerto will be auctioned on February 7, and Sotheby's is estimating its value as between $12 million and $18 million. (The current record was set in 2011: $15.9 million for the Lady Blunt Stradivarius.) - Artnet
Loftis goes to the New Jersey Symphony from his position as Chief Advancement and Revenue Officer of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra (DSO), where he oversaw the fundraising, marketing, special events, and analytical research departments. - Symphony
“We, the undersigned musicians, wholeheartedly oppose major record labels’ unjust lawsuit targeting the Internet Archive,” the Musicians for Fairness and Preservation Open Letter reads. “We don’t believe that the Internet Archive should be destroyed in our name.” - Engadget
The short-term extension comes amid long and contentious bargaining between SFS management, which insists that huge deficits must stop for the organization to survive, and the American Federation of Musicians, which argues that cuts demanded by management will severely diminish the orchestra. - San Francisco Chronicle (MSN)
Through its 149th and final show, which took place in Vancouver, British Columbia, on Sunday, Swift’s tour sold a total of $2,077,618,725 in tickets. That’s two billion and change — double the gross ticket sales of any other concert tour in history and an extraordinary new benchmark for a white-hot international concert business. - The New York Times
“Between 750 BC and 400 BC, the Ancient Greeks composed songs meant to be accompanied by the lyre, reed-pipes, and various percussion instruments.” Now there are some reconstructions of the sounds of millennia ago that may be fairly accurate. - Open Culture
Zambian human rights activist and rapper “Samuel Miyoba, known by his stage name Smack Jay, believes that a country's music reveals a lot about its character and culture.” - BBC
There was a time when bands could make a living. Now we’re in “an indie business landscape that’s particularly inhospitable to emerging artists looking to establish careers off their work.” - Hearing Things
Alvarez, 97 when she died, won a Latin Grammy for Best New Artist in 2022. As she accepted her award, she said, “Although life is difficult, there is always a way out, and with faith and love you can achieve it. … It’s never too late.” - The New York Times
“Even if you think you are making an active choice – I am playing this song, I’m listening to this genre – the algorithm is still quietly influencing you.” Is it possible to break free, aside from abandoning the data mining app that is Spotify? - Slate
"The company's executive director, Tim Griffin, who came on board in summer 2023, will ... become both executive and artistic director. Co-artistic directors, Ash Fure and Malik Gaines, who joined forces in an artistic director cooperative with Sharon in 2021, will form a new artistic advisory council." - Los Angeles Times (Yahoo!)
