We’ve received a European Commission report on the critical question of whether Spotify promotes or depresses commercial sales of music. Does it act as an incentive to consumers to buy music? Or does it suppress the desire to make a real purchase? The answer seems pretty unequivocal. Here’s the report summary:
Abstract
Streaming music services have exploded in popularity in the past few years, variously raising optimism and concern about their impacts on recorded music revenue.
On the one hand, streaming services allow sellers to engage in bundling with the promise of increasing revenues, profits, and consumer surplus. Successful bundling would indeed translate some of the interest in music not generating revenue through individual track sales – unpaid consumption and deadweight loss – into willingness to pay for the bundled offering. On the other hand, streaming may displace traditional individual track sales. Even if they displace sales, streams may however still raise overall revenue if the streaming payment is large enough in relation to the extent of sales displacement. We make use of the growth in Spotify use during the years 2013-2015 to measure its impact on unpaid consumption and on the sales of recorded music. We find that Spotify use displaces permanent downloads. In particular, 137 Spotify streams appear to reduce track sales by 1 unit. Consistent with the existing literature, our analysis also shows that Spotify displaces music piracy. Given the current industry’s revenue from track sales ($0.82 per sale) and the average payment received per stream ($0.007 per stream), our sales displacement estimates show that the losses from displaced sales are roughly outweighed by the gains in streaming revenue. In other words, our analysis shows that interactive streaming appears to be revenue-neutral for the recorded music industry.
Source: Institute for Prospective Technological Studies, Digital Economy Working Paper 2015/05
Streaming Reaches Flood Stage: Does Spotify Stimulate or Depress Music Sales?
by Luis Aguiar (IPTS), Joel Waldfogel (University of Minnesota and NBER)
Dmitri Hvorostovsky, who is receiving renewed treatment for brain cancer, has withdrawn from Verdi’s Otello at the Salzburg Easter Festival.
Carlos Álvarez will replace him as Iago.
Revised cast: Giuseppe Verdi: Otello. 19 and 27 March 2016.
Christian Thielemann, Conductor; Vincent Boussard, Director;
Vincent Lemaire, Set designer; Christian Lacroix, Costume designer.
With José Cura, Otello; Dorothea Röschmann, Desdemona; Carlos Álvarez, Iago;
Staatskapelle Dresden
Riccardo Muti is recovering from an operation on his hip after a fall at his home in Ravenna.
For want of anyone better (or a burst of initiative), the Chicago Symphony Orchestra has asked Gennady Rozhdestvensky to stay on for an extra week and cover Muti’s concerts.
Overnight press release: CHICAGO— Distinguished Russian conductor Gennady Rozhdestvensky, who is currently in Chicago to lead the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in performances of Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 1 & 15 this weekend (February 5 & 6), has graciously agreed to remain with the Orchestra for an additional set of concerts on February 11, 12, 13 & 16. Rozhdestvensky steps in for CSO Music Director Riccardo Muti, who had to withdraw from his February concerts in Chicago due to recovery from a hip operation.
The symphony orchestras of Charlotte and Colorado are getting a bit heated over a ball game.
They’re even squabbling over which is the real CSO.
La Fondation de l’Orchestre de la Suisse Romande et M. Henk Swinnen, directeur général, se sont séparés d’un commun accord ; M. Swinnen recevra son salaire jusqu’au 30 avril 2016.
Le contrat entre la Fondation de l’OSR et Maestro Jonathan Nott n’est pas encore signé. Madame Florence Notter, Présidente de la Fondation de l’OSR et Me Sylvie Buhagiar, Vice-présidente, se sont rendues à Londres pour régler la situation.
Genève, le jeudi 4 février 2016
Salient points:
– the chief exec is being paid off with a derisory three months’ salary. He may sue for more.
– the contract with Nott has not been signed, possibly because he was getting bad vibes from the chief exec, or because the board was having second thoughts.
– the two board ladies who effectively run the show have flown to London to try and sort things out with Nott’s agents at AskonasHolt.
What a laughing-stock they have made of a once-respected orchestra.
Matous and Simon Michal, a pair of Czech brothers who are former #1s at the Verbier summer festival, have joined the CSO second violins, starting now.
Matous at work
press release:
CHICAGO—CSO Zell Music Director Riccardo Muti and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra have named Matous Michal and Simon Michal as the newest members of the second violin section, effective February 1, 2016.
Matous Michal played in the first violin section of Chicago’s Grant Park Symphony Orchestra during summer 2015, after serving as the concertmaster for the Verbier Festival Orchestra in 2014. Prior to this he was concertmaster of The Juilliard Orchestra for four years while completing a Bachelor of Music degree there, and also served as concertmaster at The Manhattan School of Music where he received his Master’s degree in Orchestral Performance in 2014. He has also been concertmaster of the Music Academy of the West Festival Orchestra where he was a finalist in the Music Academy’s Concerto competition in 2013. He completed his undergraduate studies at the Prague Conservatory in 2010, during which time he served as the concertmaster there.
Born in Prague, in the Czech Republic, Matous Michal began violin studies at age four. Matous was a top prizewinner at both the Kocian International Violin Competition and the International Radio Competition for Young Musicians “Concertino Praga. Matous has attended masterclasses with Pinchas Zukerman, Itzhak Perlman, and CSO Concertmaster Robert Chen. His principal teachers were Glenn Dicterow, Lisa Kim, Charles Avsharian, Pavel Prantl, and Kathleen Winkler.
Simon Michal was appointed concertmaster of the Verbier Festival Orchestra this past year after holding the same position with The Juilliard Symphony and the Juilliard Opera from 2011 to 2015. Simon was concertmaster of the Music Academy of the West Festival Orchestra for three years, where he was selected to be a Global Academy Fellow of the New York Philharmonic in 2015. He also served as concertmaster for the Prague Conservatory Symphony where he received his undergraduate degree in violin performance in 2011. Simon is currently working on his Master of Music degree in Orchestral Violin at the Manhattan School of Music, and graduated from The Juilliard School with his Bachelor’s degree last year.
Simon Michal was born in Nachod, in the Czech Republic, and began violin studies at the age of four. He won grand prizes at both the Kocian International Violin Competition and the International Radio Competition for Young Musicians “Concertino Praga.” He has attended masterclasses with CSO Concertmaster Robert Chen, Martin Chalifour, David Chan, and Jorja Fleezanis. His primary teachers have been Glenn Dicterow, Sylvia Rosenberg, and Charles Avsharian.
The national library of France has taken possession of the documentary estate of Olivier Messiaen and his wife Yvonne Loriod.
The archive – almost 250 metres of manuscript scores, letters, books, photographs, recordings and concert programmes – will be house in Paris at the BibNat.
The couple’s house at Petichet, beside the lac de Laffrey in Isère, will open later this year as an artists’ rest home.
Former students are posing news of the death today of Leslie Bassett, a Pulitzer-winning composer and professor emeritus at the University of Michigan.
He was 93.
Californa born, Leslie won the Pulitzer in 1966 for Variations for Orchestra, premiere by the Rai orchestra in Rome. His Concerto for Orchestra, a Koussevitsky Foundation commission, was premiered by Neeme Järvi and recorded by Gerard Schwartz.
His students included Gabriela Lena Frank, Russell Peck and Kevin Malone.
Ulf Söderblom has died, in the week of his 86th birthday.
Ulf was principal conductor of Finnish National Opera from 1973 to 1993 and one of the makers of the Savonlinna Opera Festival, conducting its 1967 reopening after half a century’s inaction.
Among the new operas Ulf commissioned were Joonas Kokkonen’s The Last Temptations and Aulis Sallinen’s Kullervo and The Horseman.
He belonged to an age of opera expansion.
He’s going to break the baton. You know he’s going to…
The glam choreographer Benjamin Millepied resigned his morning as director of Paris Opéra Ballet after just over a year, citing ‘personal reasons’. Off the record, he’s letting is be known he found the job a bore.
Millepied is married to the film star Nathalie Portman.
His successor will be Aurélie Dupont. Millepied will hold the fort until she takes over in September. He tolf a press conference: ‘I salute the choice of Aurelie Dupont. I was much honoured (being ballet director) but what’s important to me is to create, to be inspired by the dancers, and today this job, as it exists, is not made for me.’
