I told Andrew I’d seen George Lucas at the Hollywood Bowl. Andrew explained that Lucas had married Mellody Hobson, who was responsible for the George Lucas Museum of Narrative Art coming to Chicago. The plan was to build the museum on the lake, which was sacred and allegedly protected ground in the city. But Hobson knew the mayor and the Obamas so maybe it would happen. 

I told Andrew that someone had just texted me, “Real talk: is Gustavo Dudamel handsome?” “Depends on the hair and the angle,” Andrew said. This was correct and did not require a customary Andrew elaboration; we moved on.

Know-it-alls are annoying, and Andrew did know it all. But Andrew’s was a knowledge rabbit hole you wanted to jump down. He didn’t talk over you, he didn’t talk at you; he told stories. So many of our stories are about ourselves, but his weren’t: his were about a city, a time, a family, a cultural moment. Even the one about watching Behind the Candelabra, the HBO Liberace movie, was about more than that: “Tom and I watched it with Jean-Yves Thibaudet at the Four Seasons – it was Jean-Yves’ idea. My parents saw Cats on tour in Japan in Japanese and they said, ‘well that’s the only way we’d ever want to see Cats’. That was me, Tom, Jean-Yves, the Four Seasons, Liberace and HBO: how else are you going to watch that?” Andrew didn’t drop names: he held them up. 

It was cold in Chicago when I saw him on January 9 of this year, so he drove me from Symphony Center to the Lyric Opera. The 7 minutes in the car was the city tour from the hilarious quirky guide you always hope to get. “That was a commie hotel…[The W]” “I picked up a sailor when I was an intern and brought him back there because hello you have to do that once, right?… [the Sears Tower]”. Coincidently or tragically, I had lunch with a new mutual friends of ours just yesterday. “Does Andrew actually know everything?” I asked. “Yeah: people ask Andrew for tours of their own cities.”

I looked through some old emails—pitches, plans for Chicago or New York visits, nothing of any great importance. I noticed that a few years ago I had tried to get Andrew to do an interview for WFMT via phone. That didn’t work. “An interview is a conversation between two people in a room together listening to and looking at each other,” he wrote me back. I remember thinking at the time that was pretty grand and totally unnecessary, but this was before I’d been in a room with him. That was a person to meet in person. 

My condolences to Andrew’s partner, to his mother, his brothers, and to his friends. I’ll really miss him. 

(Photo by Todd Rosenberg via Twitter.)

My sister and I went to The Fortress of Solitude at The Public Theater last night, and we were completely bummed that there was a private party so we couldn’t eat dinner at The Library. Why, in one of the most restaurant-saturated areas of one of the most restaurant-saturated cities, would we want to eat at a theater? Because The Public has done what every few presenting organizations have: created a physical space and a culture around the space that makes you want to be there, even when you’re not seeing a show. I’ve had drinks at The Library before a performance, and then dinner there after – why leave such an energized, culturally engaged place to fight for bar space elsewhere? I’ve gone in to buy tickets in the middle of the day, and there will be people working and having meetings in the upstairs landing that overlooks the lobby, where they have playful chairs and tables (and, importantly, outlets). Last night, I think there were two plays on and a show at Joe’s Pub, their recently renovated cabaret space. An airport-esque announcement reminded people in the lobby and bathrooms that one of the shows was about to start so you didn’t get confused by the number of patrons still hanging about. Also included in the renovations? Totally enormous bathrooms. Which…matters.

The Metropolitan Museum (whose Twitter feed recently won the Internet), too, is place where I want to hang out because there’s more than one thing to do there: admission is pay what you will, there’s a rooftop bar and a rooftop exhibition spring through fall, there’s a tree at Christmas, there are concerts, there are free tours, there are restaurants, there’s a cafe and there are three gift shops. The Met Museum garners a devotion inherent to the organization that goes beyond a specific exhibition I want to see there.

When my friend James and I were in Iceland last March, we spent an hour plus at the main concert hall in Reykjavik, Harpa. There wasn’t a concert we wanted to see, but we walked around the building and went to the five or so shops, including a record shop, which actually seemed to be the most appropriate place for one. We took pictures from inside and outside the building and had coffees. We meant to go back for drinks–again, not because we were seeing a concert there, but just because we wanted to hang out there again–but didn’t get to it. Too much Northern Lights to see! But we meant to, and we would have.

The KKL, home of the Lucerne Festival, has done a better job than any cultural center I’ve ever visited of opening up the concert hall, essentially through catering, to locals and tourists who might not otherwise be aware of it. The KKL also has two rooftop bars–one on top of the other, which is amazing–and a cafeteria that serves full dinner before and after performances. There are several convertible lounge spaces for private events. When I was there two summers ago, there was a set-up outside for food (Swiss version of a BBQ) and wine, and patrons in black tie coming out during Walkure intermission sat a long picnic tables next to passersby’s who wanted a sausage. The paying patrons became free marketing deputies: “What’s going on inside?” anyone else couldn’t help but ask. These three halls present different performances, but the point is, they’ve created a social culture in and around them beyond the Culture they’re presenting on stage that makes you want to go there no matter what’s happening.

In fairness to Lincoln Center, Alice Tully Hall does have the Apple Store floor to ceiling glass windows (seamless transition from outside to inside) and a cafeteria/coffee shop/bar just outside the lobby. And there are always people there. I long, of course, for the three Lincoln Center balconies overlooking the plaza to be open all day. I live 9 blocks away, and I would still go there to work!

The performing arts are social. You’re putting on real clothes, going out into the world, seeing a thing, and hopefully wanting to talk about it. I’m spending money before and after for sure, so let me spend it at your venue. Do art worth talking about, but then also give patrons a place at which to talk about it. And if there’s a convenient place to have lunch at your venue when there’s not a concert on, I might just start to wonder what goes on there besides the soup of the day.

“The Mechanics of Mafia” chapter in Zero to One recommends running your start-up like a cult:

In the most intense kind of organization, members abandon the outside world and hang out only with other members. We have a word for such organizations: cults. Cultures of total dedication look crazy from the outside. But entrepreneurs should take cultures of extreme dedication seriously.

…It’s a cliché that tech workers don’t care about what they wear, but if you look closely at the T‑shirts people in Mountain View and Palo Alto wear to work, you’ll see the logos of their companies—and tech workers care about those very much. The startup uniform encapsulates a simple but essential principle: Everyone at your company should be different in the same way—a tribe of like‑minded people fiercely devoted to the company’s mission.

(The chapter is excerpted on Wired.)

Reading this made me realize that I only have two pieces of classical music merchandise. Not exactly the point of Thiel’s chapter, but what in culture is run like a cult? Arguably, “the whole industry” because people from the outside don’t feel they don’t have access, feel they can’t get “in.” But what arts brands are strong enough that they would make people inside and out of the business what to be affiliated with them?

One of my pieces of merch is a “San Francisco Opera at the Ballpark” “baseball” t-shirt from a simulcast the company had to the stadium for opening night. I think I unsuccessfully tried to justify going to the ballpark broadcast “for research” (hot dogs, nachos, Mike’s Hard Lemonade, air, jeans) instead of to the gala (wine? Spanx?), but I scored a shirt anyway.

The other is a Leif Ove Andsnes t-shirt from the Ojai Music Festival. It’s says L.OVE Andsnes stylized to look like LOVE, in red and white. I saw that on Twitter and asked a friend from the festival to send one to me. I’ve never been to Ojai and I don’t work for Andsnes, but I wanted that shirt. I mean – look at it (cute pianist not included with purchase):

These two items I have are from happenings I didn’t attend. How many people, though, wear Grateful Dead t-shirts who never saw The Grateful Dead live? In the arts, who wants to wear the proverbial “band’s” shirt, and why don’t we see more of our cult symbols out in the world? Are the artists, ensembles, organizations and venues from which we don’t have souvenirs not creating experiences worth remembering? Or are we just not doing a good enough job of making people pay money to be brand ambassadors because they want to transmit our stuff?

The brand merchandise–beyond that of sports teams–that I see most in New York is that of The Strand bookstore. Their website has four pages of different Strand bags; people who haven’t read paper books in years proudly carry those bags. The book bags might be keeping that book store in business. The Strand is a concept beyond a store. No one goes to The Strand (OK, maybe someone) when they’re looking for a specific book; they go to The Strand because it’s an experience and because it’s iconic. NPR–king of the tote–is now a brand bucket for individual shows and podcasts, some of which have also achieved cult status in addition to the parent brand. “Did you hear the NPR show about…” is common cocktail party chatter, but cult members back that up with donating and proudly carrying groceries in the tote bags.

Cult members talk the same, dress the same, believe the same truths, know the same insider information, and are working toward the same goal. A Tweet from the Icelandic record label Bedroom Community:

Should we be trying to create cults around organizations and buildings or for specific artists? Venues such as  Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, and Walt Disney Concert Hall all feature iconic buildings: would it help sell the art being presented there to have the buildings promoted on shirts, bags, mugs and posters? You can’t read or see The Strand live, but that is, in its outward form, a cult. Alternatively or additionally, should soloists be generating items for purchase at their concerts and on their websites beyond CDs?

Taylor Swift fans with her CDs. Nothing cultish about these photos! (found online and retweeted by Swift)

I have so many t-shirts from college that I hired a woman from Minnesota whom I found on Etsy to make a queen-sized quilt out of them, and I still have a drawer full to wear to sleep. So many people were wearing college-branded clothing when my mom and I visited the Dartmouth campus that she–without irony–asked our tour guide if students received a box of merchandise upon acceptance. I still have my t-shirts from my high school musicals that, thankfully, still kind of fit, and I still have shirts from my two college musicals. (I’m especially proud of the shirt I made for my production of Pippin that’s just a black shirt with white letters that say “Think about your life.”) I have four Yankees shirts and two hats.

Cult branding serves a myriad of purposes. You see a shirt, you like it, you want one, whether you know what it means or not. When I see other people in Dartmouth clothes on the street, I always stare at them a little too long, knowing that if we were paused somewhere, I’d say, “What year were you?” They’d say “oh-four” or “ninety nine” – never “class of [full year],” because that’s not cult speak. You see a Yankees hat, you think, yeah, go Yankees (well maybe not this season). In high school, every team would dress up on the day of a meet or game (I was on the swim team…in more of a ‘cheerleader’ capacity), so people would see you and know you were part of that cult. We’d wear those high school musical shirts every day for weeks before the shows. The branding serves to both identify other cult members and to outwardly advertise a product.

We should want this. For new albums, new festivals, and new projects, creators should have a mind toward cult-tendencies: what would make people fanatically want to be a part of this, and what would make people who are already a part of this want to prove that they are? The word “culture” means both relating to the arts and a way a certain group of people live their lives. Why, then, isn’t culture more of a culture?

I’ve long admired Taylor Swift’s frank acknowledgment of her fans. She’s neither friends with them nor does she pretend they don’t exist: they’re fans, she’s a performer, they love and need her, she loves and needs them, she makes things, they buy things.  I wrote about her posting vacation photos and thanking her fans for allowing her to go on vacation because of “their niceness” here a few years ago. In 2012, Swift flew select Twitter followers to New York to literally follow her around during her promo tour. I’m sure Taylor Swift wanted to sit in her hotel and watch Law & Order: SVU like the rest of us, but there she was pied-pipering superfans around the city. You can’t have fan engagement without engaging yourself; it’s a relationship, and the artist has to be in it.

Three acts have recently released records in unexpected ways, calling attention to the pervasive idea that no matter who you are and what you’re releasing, you need worldwide traditional distribution. Do you?

Wu-Tang Clan came out with album available exclusively through portable speakers. The Wu-edition Boombot Rex will cost $79.99, and the new music, as it’s attached to a physical product, cannot be pirated. As told to The Guardian,

“I had the idea pop up into my head, for a while, about music being kind of disconnected to us. Of being so digitised and accessible, but yet not tangible,” said RZA. “But this thing here, a tangible item, like your old Walkman or your old cassette, or your old record, that’s what this is bringing back.”

The group will also release another album–Once Upon a Time in Shaolin–as a single physical copy that they hope will sell for millions and become a collector’s item.

Meanwhile, back on the Internet farm, Radiohead’s Thom Yorke released his most recent album on BitTorrent, a file-sharing site with 170 million users often looked to for pirating TV shows, movies, and music. Specifically, the album was released through a BitTorrent service called Bundles, which allows users to sell their work as torrents. The album, Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes, was sold for $6 on September 26, with vinyl version on offer as part of a larger bundle for $30. Where Taylor Swift, the youngest by a landslide of these artists, has done the traditional lead-up to a major label record release–a Yahoo promotion at the Empire State Building; Diet Coke, Target and Subway ad tie-ins; an upcoming performance on Good Morning America; the release of two advance singles–Thom Yorke simply “released,” or rather, uploaded, his album. The “roll-out” was his Tweeting about it and posting about it on Radiohead’s website and channels.

On Twitter:

I am trying something new, don’t know how it will go. but here it is:) https://bundles.bittorrent.com/bundles/tomorrowsmodernboxes …

On Radiohead’s website:

As an experiment we are using a new version of BitTorrent to distribute a new Thom Yorke record.

The new Torrent files have a pay gate to access a bundle of files..

The files can be anything, but in this case is an ‘album’.

It’s an experiment to see if the mechanics of the system are something that the general public can get its head around …

If it works well it could be an effective way of handing some control of internet commerce back to people who are creating the work.

Enabling those people who make either music, video or any other kind of digital content to sell it themselves.

Bypassing the self elected gate-keepers.

If it works anyone can do this exactly as we have done.

The torrent mechanism does not require any server uploading or hosting costs or ‘cloud’ malarkey.

It’s a self-contained embeddable shop front…

The network not only carries the traffic, it also hosts the file. The file is in the network.

Oh yes and it’s called
Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes.

Radiohead’s channels are not insignificant, and keep in mind that when Thom Yorke Tweets “meh”, 3000 people retweet it. We should also remember that Radiohead is a band that came to fame with major record label promotion, at arguably the height of power for the labels, with Pablo Honey releasing in 1992 on EMI. Yorke has earned the right several times over to experiment, having been making music since 1985: four long years before Taylor Swift’s now-famous 1989 birth-year. Four days after its unveiling, Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes had sold 408,000 downloads. Six days after, it had been downloaded 1 million times. Previously, Radiohead broke the Internet by releasing In Rainbows–their first non-EMI album, in 2007–on a pay-what-you-will (including free) model. The physical CD, released later, sold 1.75 million units.

At what point is part of the publicity machine how the album is released? New Taylor Swift, Wu-Tang Clan, Thom Yorke, and Radiohead albums would get PR no matter how they were midwifed into this world, but a decision was made in all those cases as to how to get the music to the people who might want to own it. New Beyoncé and Jay-Z albums would also get publicity on their own, but in recent years both artists have received huge amounts of coverage for (suddenly) releasing what was essentially a “bundle” of photos, video, and music on iTunes alone, in Beyoncé’s case (in December 2013), and releasing a new album on a Samsung phone app, in Jay-Z’s case (in July 2013).

With Taylor Swift, there’s an assumption that everyone could be her fan: it’s pop music, “popular” by name and nature. But most artists, certainly classical musicians, need to release albums based on their specific goals. Think about what you’re trying to accomplish before trying to get signed to a traditional label, and before you come up with a scheme to get press attention for how the thing is released. The whole part of the process–what you record, how you record, when you release, how you release–has to be in line with some active goal that you make in advance.

If your album is all new music, maybe your goal is just that: making a ‘record’ of that music. That album should then get into the libraries of as many classical music radio stations as possible, and should probably be given away for free. If you want to tour and don’t have dates, post all the music on SoundCloud so you or the person booking you has a tool. If you already have a tour and you want to have something to sell there, make the CDs yourself and sell them: maybe “signing” them is Sharpie-ing on the CD itself, writing a personal note on an unprinted disc for anyone who’s buying it at a concert. I had this idea (that was shot down by a producer, but anyway) that anyone releasing a “box set” should sell the box first: that way, when a new CD came out, you’d have to buy it, or else this beautiful art-piece box on your shelf would be partially empty. (I was told this wouldn’t work because CDs won’t exist in a matter of years, and it would be difficult to commission a box that would fit all potential forms of media.) If you’re committed to making something physical, give a few moments’ thought to where people are going to put it, and what they’re going to do with it; how many cars still have CD players on their dashboards? If you release something digitally, considering partnering with a site or colleague or label-type-entity that will serve as a megaphone for what you’ve created.

I almost forgot: the third and my personal favorite example of creative packaging and unique distribution…gone completely wrong. On September 9, the new U2 album, Songs of Innocence, was released exclusively on iTunes, automatically showing up in everyone’s iCloud library, “gifted” by the company.

From Apple’s website:

“U2’s newest album, Songs of Innocence, is exclusively on iTunes. Never before have so many people owned one album, let alone on the day of its release.”

Half a billion copies were thrust upon innocent iTunes users, and Internet mockery and outrage ensued. “Apple received so many complaints about the free record,” wrote Forbes, “they actually had to set up an online tutorial to help those trying to get the songs out of their libraries.” Turns out, that while we will go out and get the music of the artists we love, even if we have to buy a portable speaker to do it, we have to decide that we want it. Even if you’re U2, everyone is not your fan. Forbes reported that upon its physical release, Songs of Innocence sold 28,000 copies, 98% physical.

Bono later apologized on Facebook, saying,

“I had this beautiful idea. Might have gotten carried away with ourselves. Artists are prone to that thing. A drop of megalomania, a touch of generosity, a dash of self-promotion, and deep fear that these songs that we poured our life into over the last few years might not be heard. There’s a lot of noise out there. I guess, we got a little noisy ourselves to get through it.” (via The Verge)

The whole ordeal, however, did result in one of my favorite Tweets of all time, from Dan Wineman:

Classical music publicity is a…let’s say “niche” to be generous…industry: I think there are probably about 20 firms in the US. Combine that with it being expensive (all these Flame Diner deliveries aren’t going to pay for themselves), and with the fact that most publicists won’t be able to sign clients who don’t have managers, and then with the added fun bonus round that the competition for media real estate is for real…and we have a bit of a problem on our hands.

If you’re creating, you want audiences. No one ever became famous who didn’t want to be, and if something in you needs to put art into the world to change this place, you need witnesses and participants. So what can be done without a PR person to position your work in the best possible way?

That’s right, folks: it’s time for a list.

You know this, but, Have a Website.
I popped in to my friend’s music industry class to talk about social media earlier this week, and a student asked if not having a social media presence would be a disadvantage to her: would managers not be interested, and then, were she to be signed, would her manager have a more difficult time booking her if she didn’t have Facebook/Twitter/Instagram/Tumblr/a blog/a podcast/that-thing-I-totally-missed (Vine?)/that-thing-I-saw-on-Twitter-yesterday (Ello?)/that-thing-that-hasn’t-yet-been-invented (feel free to share in the comments and then we can share in the profits!). The honest answer is yes, probably not having any of these outlets would make things more challenging. But if you have neither time nor desire to do any of them well, then you’re better off not having them at all. A website, though, is non-negotiable. There has to be an easily accessible hub for your concert and project schedule, a way to get in touch with you, and a place that you control to hear what you/your work looks and sounds like.

If you’ve got it, flaunt it tactfully.
I’m sure I “Tweet too much,” but I’m sorry, there are just a lot of cute baby animal photos out there and if I don’t spread them around, who will? I think we’ve gone from Facebook etc. being this personal thing, to Facebook being this Advertising Thing, and now we’ve swung back to artists being scared to say anything about upcoming shows on personal social media because of the abusers – come to my show, buy my album, fund my Kickstarter – one million times a day. But look: people are signing up for your feeds because they like something about you. If mentioning a performance or an album release and encouraging your fake Internet friends to tell their fake Internet friends results in some unfollows, then those weren’t the people who were going to come to your shows or buy your record anyway. Think about what annoys you, don’t do that, but do use your outlets for promotion. It’s there, it’s free, and it’s the most direct public relations there is.

Use Spotify / “but you don’t have to take my word for it.”
I wrote a couple months ago about how Spotify should be used as a promotional tool: no use pouting about it, it’s not going anywhere. The Fan is the thing you want: ~A Fan is Forever~. So if someone listens to your music (yes, for free) on Spotify, likes it (that’s your job! make good art!), goes to a concert, wants to meet you after, buys a CD and maybe even a tshirt, has you sign the CD, meets you, comes again to the next concert with different friends…rinse and repeat. You just made–let’s safely say 2x but really more like 5x–more money than you would if they had just purchased an album in a vacuum at a store. You should use streaming sites like Spotify to promote your live shows and your merchandise. On Spotify, you can sign up for a Spotify VIP account. From there, you can create a Songkick, so your upcoming dates show up on Spotify. I’m listening for free, but oh, there’s that person in my city – I’d see that.

Talk to the press like a real person.
You’re based in a city, and you know there are…let’s say ten…critics, radio personalities, and general tastemakers who support classical music. If you’re an artist or you run an ensemble and don’t have a freelance publicist or a publicist on staff, just write to the critic like a normal person; email is easily responded to and ignored, so you’re not really interrupting their day too much. Lord Google will show you the way (journalists often have their email addresses in their Twitter bios or on their personal websites, if there’s no way to find the information on the outlet’s site). Introduce yourself, say what you’re doing in this wide world, and ask if you can include him or her on your newsletter or draw their attention to upcoming concerts. Ask how far in advance they would need your information to consider it for a listing. Before you write them, for the love of all the is holy, do your research: don’t ask if they might review your album if they don’t review albums. Again – The Internet Will Help You. Follow the writers on Facebook and Twitter to get a sense of what they like to cover, how they cover it (review or preview) and with what frequency they cover things.

Have a good eye or pay someone for theirs.
I would spend my pennies (and I did, lo those many years ago when I opened up shop) for a great website and top materials long before I would pay for a publicist. We all know what good advertising looks like, because it’s all around us. If you find a web designer, graphic designer, or videographer you like, have him or her (hopefully hourly, to save on costs) look at all of your materials – everything from the website to the group logo to the html mailer template you use for your newsletters, down to your email signature. Dress for the career you’re going to have, as it were. Similarly, about a year into doing this I sorted out that, despite having a fairly good grasp on ye olde English language, I needed a copy editor (I haven’t had her look at blog posts yet, so, no judgement). A copy editor can make sure your in-house style guide is in tact, and deal with the opus numbers, because I mean…?

Focus on the parts of The Business that you’re good at and get help with the ones you’re not.
I never turned in my time sheets at my high school job. It’s not like I didn’t need the money (those Dunkin’ Donuts french vanilla iced coffees weren’t going to buy themselves), but I just had some kind of block against it. When I started this business, my dad told me to hire an accountant. “But I can’t afford an accountant.” His point was that if I didn’t, I would never bill clients, never keep track of what money was coming in, and consequently the business would be finished before it began. And he was right, so I did. I have colleagues, though, who I know personally do the invoicing because that helps them keep things clear in their minds: it’s just a personality difference. So maybe you can design your own website, but you have no idea how to do contracts. Or maybe you’re great at getting gigs and terrible at promoting them. Or you’re an ace at raising money, but not accounting for it. We’re a DIY culture, so no one is going to be thrown by you doing you’re own ____. In fact, a lot of presenters like developing ideas with artists directly, and artists and journalists are Tweeting at each other all the time. Donors, too, want a personal connection. But really take an honest look at what you can and can’t do, and find a person or people–maybe they’re hourly, maybe they’re an intern, maybe they’re an ensemble member–to supplement what you can’t do. This ingrained idea that every artist needs to have a team doing the usual things, even if they’re playing two dates a year, needs to go.

We need to get away from the idea that any one method of consumption has more value than another, and rather, focus our efforts on converting encounters with music into true fandom.

I realize that a consumer buying the album directly from the artist literally does have more monetary value to that artist. No one, though, would argue that having a clip of track on a TV show, for example, doesn’t have value, even though no one consumer is paying the artist directly for that. If I’m watching The Vampire Diaries (which believe me, I am), I’ve paid Apple for hardware, Verizon for internet, and Hulu Plus for content. I’m watching the commercials from the advertisers that are also paying Hulu. Hulu is paying The CW, who is paying…the vampires!…the actors, creatives, and production team. The CW is also paying the music supervisor who selected the song and the legal department that negotiated the terms for the music that I’m now hearing on the show that I may or may not buy, but that I am now aware of, with context. Having a song on a TV show or on a movie soundtrack would never be considered giving a song away for “free,” because it raises the artist’s profile, and logic dictates that the opportunity will make the artist more money, eventually.

I’ve long admired Martha Stewart for her, or her team’s, ability to cross-promote all aspects of her being. In her print magazine, she directs readers to her Twitter feed. On her Twitter feed, she directs people to her Sirius XM show. On her Sirius XM show, she directs people to her blog. In the magazine, she advertises her line for Target. Through her Target line, her products live in your home, which makes you want to follow her on Twitter, read her magazine, listen to her on Sirius XM, or watch her AOL, Hulu or YouTube videos. Round and round on the Martha wheel we go, and we don’t even remember where or when we go on: did I even buy a ticket for this ride? I have a particularly fond memory of her American Express commercial, where she re-tiles her pool with the other credit cards she had cut. An “exclusive [Martha Stewart] partnership with Triscuit” for the “launch of the Triscuit Summer Snackoff” was just announced.

Is the aim to get an official summer snackoff partnership? (Maybe? Snacks!) No, but the aim is to connect the pockets of an artist’s influence in a way that makes consumers, bodies, aware of all an artist’s activities. You’ve listened on Spotify for free or as part of your subscription: did you like the music? You did? Great. Did you tell your friends to listen to? You did? And your social media followers? Terrific. Is there a tour? Oh, the artist is coming to your town in a month. Did the friends you told about the artist like it, too? Maybe you should all go to the concert together. Oh look: there’s merchandise at this concert. Maybe you now want a physical CD because you’re chatting with the artist, he/she signed it, and it’s suddenly something for the bookshelf. Someone comes over for dinner: what’s this signed CD on the shelf? It’s this great artist so-and-so we went to the concert last week, you’d like him/her.

There: the artist got the direct sale after all, it just took a lot more than a Facebook ad.

My favorite review of all time, for selfish reasons, is a 2011 New York Times review of Hilary Hahn’s concert at The Stone. In it, Steve Smith writes, “Thus, instead of a conventional affair at Carnegie Hall, or even a chic night at Le Poisson Rouge, Ms. Hahn gathered her flock into a cramped brick space on an unseasonably warm evening.” It’s “flock” I like, not only because of a light obsession with collective nouns for animals, but because that’s what every artist should want, as far as I’m concerned: a flock that goes with them, and a flock that grows.

I first heard of John and Hank Green (“VlogBrothers“) and their valiant Nerdfighters through Jonathan Biss and his brother. Suddenly, John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars is another “YA” novel I haven’t read and now a movie and my sister being all “how do you not know what this is stop watching Star Trek and live in the world.” Seven years of free content via VlogBrothers, and now The Fault in Our Stars makes more money than the new Tom Cruise movie.

It seems Green has gotten a lot of press and industry questions about building “authentic” fan communities. One wonders, “If you have to ask…”

I especially liked this Tweet:

So tend to your flock, don’t fuss about whether or not they paid at the door.

When the recording of my client Gabriel Kahane’s musical February House came out last year, I was obsessed with getting someone to write about the songs in musicals that have become part of the mainstream. (No one did, for those of you playing at home!) We haven’t seen it recently, I think because so many musicals are using existing pop or rock material from which to string together a musical (Jersey Boys, Mamma Mia!, Fela!, Beautiful: the Carole King Musical, Baby It’s You, Million Dollar Quartet, Love – Janis, The Times They Are A-Changin’, Rock of Ages, The Boy From Oz, Movin’ Out, Come Fly Away, All Shook Up, Forever Plaid, Once, American Idiot). Even songs from contemporary musicals written in pop, rock, “indie rock,” or emo styles (Rent, Spring Awakening, Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, Murder Ballad, Hedwig and the Angry Itch, Next to Normal) haven’t gotten radio play or–more appropriately for our post-radio-as-we-knew-it time–been covered by mainstream artists disconnected from the musical theater world. The closest we’ve come recently is Gwen Steffani essentially sampling “If I Were a Rich Man” from Fiddler on the Roof in her song, “Rich Girl.” Stevie Wonder recorded “Seasons of Love” on the original Broadway cast recording of Rent, but I don’t think it made it to radio.

“Audition songs,” I like to call them, work plot-wise in a musical and can be completely extracted from it. George Gershwin and Cole Porter, who wrote songs that could be on the radio–in fact, that were on the radio before they were on a stage–in a way wrote the ultimate “juke box” musicals, because their songs could be mixed and matched in different musicals. Pippin, that opened on Broadway in 1972, had three songs that were recorded performed by popular, to say the least, artists. Here we have Jackson 5 singing “Corner of the Sky”; their recording of “Morning Glow” and The Supremes’ version of “I Guess I’ll Miss the Man” are on the original Broadway cast recording. The Supremes also did an entire Funny Girl album in 1968, go figure. “Send in the Clowns” from Stephen Sondheim’s A Little Night Music was a huge hit for Judy Collins in 1975, after Frank Sinatra had already recorded it in 1973, the year Night Music opened on Broadway. History has also provided us versions by Cher and Susan Boyle. “Send in the Clowns” is arguably the most famous Sondheim song, from one of the least famous Sondheim musicals; the popularity of the song did not make A Little Night Music a household name or a commercial slam-dunk.  Similarly, “Till There Was You” is probably the most well-known song from any musical, ever, because The Music Man, from 1957, is so popular? No, because The Beatles recorded it in 1963. How many people actually know it’s from a musical? Hair, which opened on Broadway in 1968, is in a slightly different category because it was a “rock” musical, has two famous songs, and generally, people know they’re from Hair. “Good Morning Starshine,” and “Let the Sunshine In” were recorded by The Fifth Dimension in 1969.

What, then, are the boundaries of the crossover? Lang Lang and Renée Fleming’s mainstream performances this week aren’t going to do much for the so-called Classical Music Industry long-term, and that’s probably not the point. Sure, a few more people may buy tickets to Lang Lang’s Carnegie Hall recital on Tuesday, or go to a Rusalka performance at the Met this month (it’s just “The Little Mermaid”! Tell everyone you know!), but overall, any one TV performance, no matter how great the scope, isn’t going to fix the general public’s view of classical music in a “we did it!” way, just as Judy Collins having sung “Send in the Clowns,” I’m sure, didn’t sell many tickets ticket to the recent A Little Night Music revival. And if it did sell tickets, how many people left the theater humming other songs from Night Music? Katy Perry isn’t going to cover “The Miller’s Son” this week, I don’t think.

We acknowledge that these moments in mainstream spotlight are a big deal, but it’s hard to see how they’re something we should be aiming to engineer in artists’ careers. For those of us who love our art forms and want more people to know about them, should a major presence outside the niche be a goal? If so, what do we hope to accomplish by it?

But by all means, Renée, do us all proud tonight! Knock it out of the park! …erm…the stadium?

I wouldn’t pride myself on my taste in TV, hi, Vampire Diaries, but The Bachelor is just terrible. Really. But we sit around and shout at the screen like it’s a game day…drinking like it’s…well, like it’s not a Monday night, and email about the show all week. (This season features an opera singer and a “music composer,” and the Bachelor himself is from Gustavo Dudamel’s hometown, so I guess I can write-off the wine and pizza slices.) I have never had any desire to watch an episode by myself, and yet I look forward to watching every week.

It’s silly, of course, to write a blog post with the thesis statement “people like being around other people!,” but I do wonder where the digital concert halls and web streams are taking us. Are they The Future, or will there always be physical performances with physical audiences? TV and movies that do not involve living beings in front of an audience–as evidenced by my Bachelor Mondays and everyone who has ever seen a movie with somebody else–draw group gatherings rather that solo viewers. Even reading–if the reader is over the age of 7, a nearly exclusively solo pursuit–warrants company in the form of book clubs. Why, when we could set up cameras and mics in a concert hall and webcast/broadcast a performance to more people who could fit in that theater, do we still have people in the hall? The Met’s Live in HD series is broadcast at matinees with people in the Met, to people, together, in movie theaters; would it not make for a better product if the hall was empty and the director could set up as many cameras and additional lights as they wanted to? Sure, but togetherness, to some extent, is the point – being part of something happening live together, bearing witness to a thing and to other people experiencing that same thing. People line up for tapings of The Late Show with David Letterman, The Colbert Report, The Daily Show, and Saturday Night Live; how do the studio audiences, once canned laughter and applause, affect the art-making at hand?

I went to the movies on 84th and Broadway about a month ago, and to my extreme delight, found an entire theater of La-Z-Boy recliners! My sister and I saw Gravity, and when the movie ended and we slowly descended from our beautiful sprawl, she noted, “Wow – I feel like I just experienced GRAVITY for the first time myself.” Just like Sandra Bullock, waiting for Clooney to tap on our window. Suffice it to say, we are ruined for life; why would I ever sit through a movie again when I can l-o-u-n-g-e. Over Christmas, my dad got an even bigger TV and tried to give me his older, huge, one – a TV with a screen that would take up the better part of a New York City apartment wall. It occurred to me that here we have movie theaters trying to recreate living rooms and living rooms trying to recreate movie theaters.

Jonathan Biss, for whom I work, and the Curtis Institute of Music, to whom I send a lot of annoying emails, recently collaborated with the MOOC (massive open online course) provider Coursera. The 5-week course, which will be re-offered this March, featured one-hour videos once a week that students could watch at any time they liked, as many times, and at any pace. Many people commented in the discussion threads that they enjoyed being able to watch the lectures in their own time: after the kids had gone to bed, during their lunch break…in my case, all of them the Sunday before the course closed – those college habits die hard. But that is the benefit of the stream or the archived concerts, or concert DVDs for that matter: they’re not at 8pm, they don’t require you to get dressed, you can pause them, you can rewind them, you can turn them off. That said, the Coursera course featured nearly 1000 discussion threads: so you watch the videos alone and that’s great, but performative (“look what I know”) or inquisitive (“what else can I learn”), it’s human nature to want to discuss the material with others.

I’ve always thought a great story would be to have every a set of classical music critics review the same concert webcast or Berlin Philharmonic Digital Concert Hall–the accepted leader in the field–performance from their homes and apartments. What were they wearing? Was their dog barking in the background? What are their speakers like? How did their internet work? Did they invite people over to watch the concert with them, or did they enjoy, for once, watching a concert alone? No one went for the pitch, but I remain interested. Similarly, how many Grammy viewing parties will there be this weekend, and how many Super Bowl parties the following weekend? Or, in my case, how many Bachelor wedding viewing parties? I think I’m going to wear my bridesmaid dress.

I had an interesting come to…I guess “come to Balanchine”?…moment the other day. I asked for a subscription to the New York City Ballet for Christmas, and despite knowing (of or actually) the living composers and choreographers in the company’s Spring season, I chose Coppélia, Balanchine “Black and White,” All Balanchine, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I never go to the ballet; I wanted to see things that I knew would be good – that were, you know, ballet-y.

This is me, the person who over-the-top eye-rolls when someone says they really want to see Carmen or hear Beethoven’s 5th. Enjoy the magical dancing doll, you hypocrite! I love ballet – I took a whole lot of ballet – I know ballet. I don’t, however, know the current ballet scene or offerings, and the works listed above were the ones I thought would be fun to see. This isn’t for work, or self-improvement, or to expand my horizons: this is a Christmas present. I’m spending that Starbucks gift card on something super sugary, too.

A friend was recently saying he’s “suddenly into shoes,” and that this new passion stems from the realization that he can order from Zappos without risk. He doesn’t have to try the shoes on in the store, and he can “just return them!” if they don’t work out. If you don’t know an art form, and you’re spending money on something you can’t “just return,” you need an “in”: I’ve heard of the opera Carmen – I think I know a song from it, I saw Coppélia when I was little, I know Beethoven will be good. Maybe you just want to do something you know you’re going to like because you’ve heard it or seen it before. Maybe, if you’re spending money on a classical music concert or opera, you want a traditional classical music concert or opera experience.

My shameful ballet buying got me thinking that the challenge for arts organizations is not actually getting people in the door the first time–OK, also a challenge–but it’s what they do when we’re there and after we’re gone. We can’t judge people for wanting to spend their money on a performance with which they’re comfortable and in which they’re interested, but something needs to happen during and surrounding the performance that makes me want to dip maybe the whole foot in – say I love one of the dancers, and would now go see her in anything. She’s the “in,” whereas the name of the ballet was the “in” before. The thing has to be good: we people recognize virtuosity, even if we don’t precisely understand the context.

There also has to be follow-up. I had a delightful experience at the NY Phil when Esa-Pekka was conducting his violin concerto in the fall. An older volunteer came up to my sister and me at intermission and asked if we were enjoying the concert. We said yes and she asked if we liked the new piece. She made sure we knew that the conductor wrote it and that it had been recently recorded as a CD (!). I said well yes I actually work for him, but I’m very glad that she and others were volunteering their time to chat up audience members about new music! She said that sometimes people just don’t understand the new pieces, and that that’s frustrating for them: it helps to just give folks a little background information. Indeed! Of course I then asked her if she liked the violin concerto, because as a publicist it helps me to have a little background, too. She laughed and swore she really did.

And there she is: right in front of Gerard Butler and Bradley Cooper (…in…matching suits?). It’s just really too amazing.

Photobombing is, of course, a time-honored tradition (animal photobombing being my favorite, naturally). Where else, this led me to wonder, have the world’s great pianists popped up?

Alfred Brendel was there when Lindsay Lohan got arrested? That’s weird.

Franz Lizst and that cat snuck into this nice photo?

Why the long faces, POTUS, FLOTUS, and Martha Argerich-US?

Horowitz, get down from that tree!

So keep your eyes open, folks: those wacky ivory-ticklers can pop up anywhere!