Industry News
Miami Beach has created a district offering affordable housing for artists. The Cultural Arts Neighborhood Overlay, or CANDO, is located generally in the Collins Park area, which includes Miami City Ballet and New World Symphony offices. Developers will be able to contstruct smaller units than city zoning allows in this area as long as they set a portion of the property aside for affordable housing. To qualify for the affordable housing, residents must be artists or employees of cultural arts organizations and must meet income qualifications.
University of Miami's new Frost School of Music Dean Shelton Berg has big changes planned for the school. In an interview with Miami Herald reported Lawrence Johnson, Berg discussed plans to emphasize chamber music and institute a new degree in arts presentation.
The Carnival Center has released statistics on its rookie season. The best-selling series was the Cleveland Orchestra, at 94 percent of capacity, and the worst-selling were the Broadway Series, at 66 percent of capacity, and the Carnival Center's own presentations, at 43 percent. Resident companies Concert Association, Florida Grand Opera, Miami City Ballet, and the New World Symphony sold an average of 75 percent of the seats for their presentations. CEO Michael Hardy, whose salary was recently increased from $230,000 to $326,255, has revised the business plan for the second season to include fewer shows produced by the center itself and to focus on the best-selling genres of flamenco, cabaret, world music, and new local works. Also planned for the second season are the opening of a restaurant in the Sears Tower, an additional 450 parking spaces, and repaved, lighted, and branded parking lots.
Editor's Note: It has just been announced that Michael Hardy has been fired and that Lawrence J. Wilker, former president of the Kennedy Center, will serve as interim CEO of the Carnival Center.
Recording
U.S. trade officials have refused to launch a probe into Canadian film and TV subsidies. The Screen Actors Guild and other industry workers have claimed that runaway production in foreign jurisdictions is robbing American talent of work and that subsidies violate World Trade Organization rules.
A single mother has been fined $220,000 for sharing songs online in the first U.S. trial to challenge illegal downloading. Most of the 26,000 individuals that the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has gone after have been resolved out of court with settlements averaging $3,000 to $5,000. It is estimated that at any time nine million people are illegally exchanging music online.
AT&T is offering the 5 million songs in Napster's catalog via wireless download. Napster customers will be able to transfer their songs to their phones, and others will be able to buy songs for $1.99, which they can also copy to their computers.
The ad-supported website SpiralFrog.com has launched, making music and video downloads free of charge to visitors. Users must register and log in once a month to prevent content from locking up, and cannot burn downloads to a CD, but they can transfer songs to digital music players (but not to the iPod). SpiralFrog.com will pay record companies from advertising revenue.
Amazon.com has launched a digital music store, the first real competition to Apple's iTunes. Amazon stocks 2.3 million songs from Universal, EMI, and independent labels. Songs cost 89 to 99 cents and albums are priced at $5.99 to $9.99, and none will have copy protection.
Symphony
Classical music has returned to the south Florida airwaves. American Public Media (APM), the parent company of Minnesota Public Radio, has purchased WMCU-89.7 FM from Trinity International Foundation for $20 million. The station has already begun to broadcast classical music, although APM is still awaiting FCC approval. Initial programming will be syndicated, but the new owners intend to include interviews with local musicians and local content once they receive FCC approval.
The Florida Orchestra's (Tampa) contract has expired and musicians continue to play and talk. The 80 musicians earn $875 a week and have a 34-week season, making them among the lowest paid of U.S. orchestras in their tier. The orchestra, which has a $10.1 million budget, has recently named Elgin Symphony executive director Michael Pastreich as its new CEO.
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