Spring cleaning is always interesting – almost as interesting as moving your office! We have done both in the last two months. We still are in New York City, but when the tallest crane in New York history appeared out our windows one day and the new 82-story building – one of the new gargantuan buildings that are changing the city skyline – began to block our view of Central Park, the time had come to move uptown a bit. We threw out a lot, but….
My father always said, “It is surprising what you find when you are looking for something else,” and indeed we came across the archive of much-heralded articles on music, children, and their parents that I had written for Washington Parent when I lived in Washington, DC. JP, who runs our office, also discovered a trove of program books from the family concerts that we created at the Kennedy Center, each filled with composer biographies (I counted 63!), articles on instruments, and activities. Keep an eye out on our blog as we begin to make these available. We hope that you will read them and comment, adding your own experiences. “Hug Me, Squeeze Me, I’m An Accordion,” “76 Trombones – Does Your School Have a Band,” and “Does My Child Have Musical Talent,” are just a few that are scattered here on my desk.
Why You May Want to Buy a CD and Not Just the MP3 Download I must admit that I have gotten very used to Amazon’s Free Two-Day shipping with my annual Prime membership. Despite my railing against the “I need it now” generation, there are times when I want a piece of music NOW and I buy it online and download it. However, having subscribed to Apple Music and then canceling my subscription, I have discovered that lots of my music was grabbed by the cloud, disposed of when I unsubscribed and no longer is available to me. Anything that Apple did not recognize as a commercial recording, it ate – which for me was all the files that led up to the Maestro Classics recordings. I have since learned that I am not the only one to whom this has happened, but it has certainly convinced me that any music I buy that I really want to be certain I will always have access to, I will wait for the CD to arrive. Frankly, two years ago I thought the CD would be dead by now. However, this does not seem to be the case. We are selling more CDs than ever! Thank you, CD buyers!
What Do We Have In Common with Prince? Like Prince, we are not on Spotify or any of the streaming services. If musicians are not paid for the music they produce, who will be able to produce new music in the future? Every time you listen to a track on Spotify or iTunes Music, the artist gets a fraction of a penny. If you purchase an MP3 download, the artist will get 66-cents per track; for a CD $6-7. Prince could have afforded to be on Spotify; he refused on moral grounds. But smaller producers will no longer be able to create new content if the world only streams. So thank you for supporting Maestro Classics by buying our CDs and MP3s. You are helping to keep our music industry alive.