Industry News

Local/Club Date

An increased hotel bed tax will pay for a new performing arts center in Orlando. The center will cost $389 million and will be home to the Orlando Philharmonic, Orlando Ballet, and Orlando Opera. The tax increase will also fund a new arena for the Orlando Magic and renovations to the Citrus Bowl.

Microsoft's MSN portal is making a push to stream live concerts. MSN is scheduled to stream 36 events over the next few years, as well as offer them on-demand afterwards. The free streams will be supported by advertising, and Microsoft hopes to use this to challenge MySpace and YouTube.

Cirque du Soleil has dropped its bid to establish a permanent show at the Jackie Gleason Theater. The city of Miami Beach had been soliciting tenants now that Miami City Ballet and the Broadway Series have moved to the new Carnival Center. Two other presenters had submitted bids: AEG Live, and Live Nation, which will take over the theater. Live Nation, which owns the Sound Advice Amphitheater in West Palm Beach, will renovate the theater and transform it into a concert venue focusing on rock and Latin pop.

CBS will pay $2 million to settle a payola lawsuit filed by the state of New York. The money will be used to fund music education and appreciation programs.

Symphonic

The National Symphony has announced a week-long residency in Kansas. During the residency, which will take place in March of 2007, the orchestra will perform six concerts in cities including Topeka and Wichita, and will offer coachings, lectures, and workshops.

The San Francisco Symphony has received a $10 million challenge grant from the Richard and Rhoda Goldman Foundation. The funds will be used to increase the endowment, which currently stands at $180 million. The San Francisco Opera as well recently received a $35 million gift from patron Jeannik Mequet Littlefield.

The Florida West Coast Symphony has signed a new 3-year agreement with AFM Local 427-721. The new agreement increases pay, begins contributions to the AFM-EPF pension fund, and establishes sick, personal leave, and disability policies.

Recording

Several Local 655 members have received Latin Grammy nominations. Lee Levin, Tommy Torres, and Dan Warner produced Ricardo Arjona's Acompaname A Estar Solo, which was nominated for Record of the Year. And a nominee for Album of the Year, Chayenne's Cautivo, was produced by Gustavo Arenas, John Falcone, Rene Toledo, and Joel Someillan. Someillan, along with Carlos Bedoya, were also engineers/mixers for the album.

YouTube has signed a deal with Warner Music. In exchange for legal rights to use videos of Warner Artists, YouTube will share advertising revenue.

Are you a royalty artist? $500,000 of royalties for 9,000 artists will be forfeited if not claimed by December 15, 2006. Artists can visit http://www.soundexchange.com to see if there are royalties due to them. SoundExchange, created by the recording industry, collects and distributes royalties from digital broadcasts.

Digital sales have filled the gap created by declining physical sales. For the first nine months of 2006, physical sales are down 8.3% from last year. However, digital album sales have risen 115%, with the 64.4 million digital album-equivalent sales nearly making up for the decline in physical sales.