Coronavirus (2019-nCoV)

Subterms

    More stories

    • 100 Shares149 Views

      in Music

      Geffen Hall’s $550 Million Makeover Is Fully Funded

      by

      The New York Philharmonic’s home will reopen in October, a year and a half ahead of schedule, after construction was accelerated during the pandemic.Gone are the mustard-colored seats and shoe box interior of David Geffen Hall, the New York Philharmonic’s home at Lincoln Center. When the hall reopens this fall, wavy beech wood will wrap around the stage — and so will the audience, in seats upholstered in richly colored patterns evoking flower petals in motion.When the coronavirus pandemic hit, paralyzing the performing arts, the orchestra and center seized on the long shutdown to accelerate a planned makeover of Geffen Hall, gutting its main theater and reimagining its public spaces.Now the long-delayed overhaul is almost complete. The project’s leaders announced on Wednesday that they had raised their goal of $550 million to cover the cost of the renovation, and that the hall will reopen to the public in October, a year and a half ahead of schedule.In a rendering of the new hall, wavy beech wood wraps around the stage of the new hall — as does the audience.Diamond Schmitt“It’s not just a simple renovation where we repainted the walls and put down new carpet and chairs,” Deborah Borda, the Philharmonic’s president and chief executive, said in an interview. “The whole space is transformed. It’s an entirely new hall and an entirely new feeling.”With 2,200 seats (down from 2,738 in the old hall), Geffen will have a more intimate feel — and, if all goes as planned, improved acoustics. The project’s leaders hope the renovated hall will help galvanize New York’s performing arts scene during a difficult time, as cultural institutions work to recover from the coronavirus and win back audiences.The pandemic cost the Philharmonic more than $27 million in anticipated ticket revenue; in the early days of the crisis, it was forced to reduce its staff of 135 by 40 percent, though many have since been rehired. The orchestra is currently in the midst of a roving season during the construction, shuttling mostly between Alice Tully Hall and the Rose Theater at Jazz at Lincoln Center; it is also on the hunt for a replacement for its music director, Jaap van Zweden, who announced in September that he would step down in 2024.The coronavirus pushed the Philharmonic and the center to think more urgently about attracting new audiences, a challenge that orchestras have been grappling with for decades. The hall will include a variety of spaces meant to draw people in. In the lobby, there will be a 50-foot digital screen broadcasting concerts live. A new studio facing Broadway, with floor-to-ceiling windows, will offer passers-by a glimpse of performances, rehearsals and other events.The seats in the new hall will be upholstered in richly colored patterns evoking flower petals in motion.Vincent Tullo for The New York Times“We’re opening ourselves up to New York so it doesn’t feel like a fortress,” Borda said. “It feels welcoming, inviting and vibrant.”The renovation of the hall — which opened in 1962 as Philharmonic Hall and was called Avery Fisher Hall starting in 1976 — has been in the works for decades, repeatedly stalled by management woes and concerns about losing subscribers if the orchestra was exiled from its home for a prolonged period.A $100 million gift from the entertainment mogul David Geffen revived the project in 2015. Since then, the orchestra and center have raised an additional $450 million, though other naming gifts have not yet been announced.The pandemic, which forced the hall to close in March 2020, offered a silver lining, giving the orchestra and the center a chance to accelerate the construction. They worked at breakneck speed, gutting the interior of the main theater, removing the box office and relocating the escalators.Turmoil in the global supply chain made it harder to obtain some building materials. Surges in coronavirus cases also presented safety challenges at the construction site. But the project pushed forward, even as live performances in the city came to a standstill.“It has become a real celebration of the resilience and creativity and diversity of our great city,” Henry Timms, the president of Lincoln Center, said in an interview.The renovation project pushed forward, even as live performances in the city came to a standstill.Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesTimms added that there was still work ahead, including bringing the seats into the hall and painting the interior. The orchestra will begin playing in the space in August as part of an acoustic tuning process that is expected to last several weeks.“No one is declaring this a triumph yet,” Timms said. “We’re not done yet.”The acoustics of the hall, long derided by musicians and critics, have been a priority. The renovated space features beech wood walls molded into grooves to help improve resonance. Seats will wrap around the stage, which has been moved forward 25 feet, providing a greater sense of intimacy.The hall’s notoriously congested lobbies and other public spaces have been reimagined by Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects, which in 2019 joined a team that already included Diamond Schmitt Architects, which is working on the auditorium’s interior; Akustiks, an acoustical design firm; and Fisher Dachs Associates, a theater design firm.The lobby has nearly doubled in size and will include a lounge, a bar and a restaurant.The project’s leaders said the renovation has provided substantial benefits to the city’s economy, which has lagged behind the rest of the United States in its recovery. More than 6,000 jobs have been created, according to the Philharmonic and Lincoln Center; many have gone to businesses run by women or members of racial or ethnic minorities.“We built through the pandemic because we knew New Yorkers needed jobs as much as they needed culture,” Katherine Farley, the chairwoman of Lincoln Center’s board, said in a statement.The leaders of the Philharmonic and Lincoln Center announced the funding of the hall at a news conference on Wednesday, joined by Gov. Kathy Hochul and Mayor Eric Adams. Adams said the project was a symbol of New York’s comeback amid the pandemic, drawing comparisons to the construction of the Empire State Building during the Great Depression.“We’re going to come back bigger and better than ever,” he said.Borda — who was hired as the Philharmonic’s president and chief executive in 2017, after leading it in the 1990s, in large part because of her success completing the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Walt Disney Concert Hall in 2003 — said the renovation was long overdue. She added that the project had given the Philharmonic’s staff and players a sense of hope during the difficult moments of the pandemic, when dozens of concerts were canceled and pay cuts were imposed.“It’s emblematic of New York: real resilience and hanging in there,” she said. “It’s the reason I came back. I’ve always believed in this project.” More

    • 100 Shares149 Views

      in Theater

      I Love London Theater. But Not London Theatergoing.

      by

      While full of fine shows, a long-awaited binge was also full of stress about how loosely audiences followed rules about staying healthy in a pandemic.LONDON — On the February morning when England’s National Health Service pinged me, saying I’d been identified as a contact of someone who had tested positive for Covid, I freaked out completely.Not out of fear of getting sick; I’m boosted, and I think if I got the virus I would probably be fine. But the last time I came to London, in September, my euphoric playgoing trip was thrown into disarray when I tested positive post-arrival, which banished me to a hotel room for 10 solitary, asymptomatic days. Was I about to get stuck here again?I’d only seen one friend this trip and he was OK, so it had to be a stranger, this person with Covid. My mind scrambled to figure out where our paths had crossed. Based on the time frame that the N.H.S. suggested, I would bet it was at a small, crowded theater two nights earlier — my prime suspect being the guy in front of me who’d sneezed mid-show. That’s when I noticed he wasn’t wearing a mask.Which made him pretty unremarkable here, in a city with genuinely world-beating theater but audience Covid safety protocols ranging from lax to cavalier, and getting looser. Over my 12-day visit, which included some gorgeous productions I am grateful to have seen, that lack of stringency dampened my anticipation of shows, my enjoyment of them — and ultimately my interest in going to them.Because even in this not-yet-over pandemic with its ever-shifting rules, I’m used to feeling safe at the theater; used to feeling like we are all looking out for one another, trying to keep everyone onstage and backstage and in the house healthy, in pursuit of this art that we love. It’s not a minor thing, this feeling; it’s rooted in empathy.And on a purely practical level? We Americans do have to test negative before we’re allowed to fly home — on planes that are still nowhere near as crowded as they used to be.TRAVELING TO SEE THEATER is one of those prepandemic habits that has yet to return for most of us, and it’s been driving me a little bit crazy.I am one of those people — maybe you are, too — who reads the news about which plays are being done in which far-flung places and aches to be in the room with them, burns with envy of those who can be, keeps checking and rechecking the mental calculus of “Can I risk it yet?” against “Can I bear one more second not to?” Evelyn Miller and James McAvoy in “Cyrano de Bergerac.” The production was wonderful, but the audience at a return performance — not so much.Marc BrennerSo when my editor, wanting a profile of the actor James McAvoy, emailed to ask if I would be willing to do the interview in London, where he is starring in Jamie Lloyd’s electrifying production of “Cyrano de Bergerac” in the West End, my answer was an all-caps, unfettered yes. It is one of my favorite cities, and I missed it. The time to risk going, it suddenly seemed, was now.I would need to see that “Cyrano” again — twist my arm — because it had been more than two years since I’d caught it in early previews during its original run. To take full advantage of the slog across the Atlantic, I would stay a while and see a slew of other shows — starting, just hours after passing through customs at Heathrow, with a matinee chosen to go easy on my jet-lagged brain.That was “& Juliet,” a pop-musical riff on “Romeo and Juliet” at the Shaftesbury Theater, where we did have to show proof of vaccination or a negative Covid test to get in, and the people near me were wearing masks. It was a jolt, though, in a more than century-old West End theater that couldn’t be described as airy, to see whole groups of people walk in and take their seats barefaced.Assembling onstage before the performance began, the actors did try, in a spirit befitting their frolic of a show, to encourage safer behavior. One briefly held up a chalkboard with a hand-lettered message: “Hello,” it said, which got cheerful hellos back from the crowd. Another brief chalkboard, another message: “Thank you,” which got some applause.But the wordless chalkboard in between those two — bearing a friendly pastel drawing of a mask — got only silence. Which, in the circumstances, counted as a response.“& Juliet” turned out not to be my cup of tea. Still, I’d have stayed if I’d been able to stop thinking about the ventilation, wondering what I was breathing and whether it was worth it.I decided it wasn’t and fled at intermission, back onto the street, back into the open air.Heather Forster and Samuel Creasey in “The Book of Dust: La Belle Sauvage.”Manuel Harlan“THE BOOK OF DUST: La Belle Sauvage,” that night at the Bridge Theater, was leagues more rewarding. Adapted by Bryony Lavery from Philip Pullman’s fantasy prequel to “His Dark Materials,” and staged by Nicholas Hytner with beguiling visuals, it’s the character Lyra Belacqua’s origin story.The stagecraft is more enchanting than the narrative, but what marvelous stagecraft it is: projections conjuring a watery world, life-size boats moving through it with a choreographed fluidity more persuasive than I’d ever witnessed onstage. And of course the spectral puppets, glowing from within.The lovely guy next to me, masked when he wasn’t snacking, told me he felt perfectly safe at the Bridge precisely because it was airy — not like some old West End house, he said. Until that evening, he hadn’t been to any theater since the pandemic began. (You can see “The Book of Dust,” whose Bridge run has ended, in a National Theater Live recording.)It makes me happy when I’m in London at the same time as an Emma Rice production. This trip it was her adaptation of Emily Brontë’s “Wuthering Heights” at the National Theater: a 19th-century classic warmed with music and breathed to life as if it had taken as its cue something Charlotte Brontë once wrote about the novel: that it “was hewn in a wild workshop, with simple tools, out of homely materials.”The moor is a kind of Greek chorus in the play, while the storytelling is nimble and full of fun; Katy Owen is comic perfection as Little Linton, the pampered princeling of Wuthering Heights. But when Catherine (Lucy McCormick) dies and Heathcliff (Ash Hunter) cries, “Catherine Earnshaw, haunt me!,” his jagged grief rips through us, straight to the soul.Lennie James, left, and Paapa Essiedu in the Old Vic production of Caryl Churchill’s two-hander “A Number.”Manuel HarlanIn Caryl Churchill’s brisk two-hander “A Number,” given a stellar production by Lyndsey Turner at the Old Vic, every moment of Paapa Essiedu’s beautifully modulated performance has a similar visceral reach, right into the center of us. Opposite Lennie James as a father who secretly replaced his original son with a clone, Essiedu plays three disparate but genetically identical men with an unshowy humanity that pops against Es Devlin’s stylized tomato-red set.OF EVERYTHING I SAW, though, the production that brought me there is the one that left me absolutely stunned. The first time I saw “Cyrano de Bergerac,” on Thanksgiving Day 2019, the production was still a work in progress.This time, I left the Harold Pinter Theater with a sensation through my limbs like an electrical charge. We are all bodies in space at the theater, and I responded to this “Cyrano” on a cellular level.I saw other shows, too: at the Hampstead Theater, Florian Zeller’s weary new psychological drama, “The Forest,” about a man whose seemingly perfect life is blown up by his infidelity (but at least the cast includes Gina McKee and Finbar Lynch); at the Almeida Theater, Omar Elerian’s overlong take on Ionesco’s “The Chairs,” with the reliably first-rate Kathryn Hunter in slapstick clown mode; and, at the Donmar Warehouse, “Henry V,” starring Kit Harington and featuring — this will sound strange, but it is absolutely true — the most entrancing stage rain I have ever seen. I was able to snag a ticket (a terrible one; I spent a lot of time with actors’ butts blocking my view) the day a lethal storm blew into Britain and people canceled plans.Kit Harington, center, in the Donmar Warehouse production of “Henry V.” The theater was one of the few that explicitly requested that attendees wear masks.Helen MurrayI’d canceled my own theatergoing plans earlier that week, when the N.H.S. texted me about that contact and told me to take rapid tests for five days. In my initial flood of anxiety, I nixed a train trip to Bristol and returned my ticket to see Mark Rylance there in “Dr. Semmelweis” — a play about a pioneer in the prevention of needless infection.Then, at the pharmacy, a clerk handed me a free box of seven rapid tests, from the N.H.S. — a perk of pandemic life in England that Boris Johnson, the prime minister, would announce the end of for most people days later, along with other precautions including contact tracing.Apparently I was fine. Each time I took a test, the result was negative — and each time I reported that online to the N.H.S., the automated response reminded me to “wear a face covering in crowded settings.”It boggles my mind that so many theatergoers in London, sitting side by side for hours, don’t bother with that elementary precaution — if not for themselves, then for the actors, who are not masked, and for other people in the audience who might be medically vulnerable, not able to be vaccinated yet or in close contact with people in either of those groups. It is such a simple kindness. It is also an act of inclusion.The only theater that I saw actively request it was the Donmar, and people complied. Elsewhere any such request was timid, and certainly not face to face. When major West End theater operators said recently that they would no longer require mask wearing or proof of vaccination from audience members, I had to wonder how a mask policy could count as mandatory if it had gone unenforced.One night I went to the Duke of York’s Theater to see “The Ocean at the End of the Lane,” an adaptation of the Neil Gaiman novel. The show hadn’t started yet when I noticed that the guy on one side of me wasn’t wearing a mask. Then a barefaced guy sat down on my other side. I thought: If this were the subway, I would get up immediately. So I left.HOW DOES A CITY — or an industry — that wants to welcome the world and its wallet not worry about things like that? The contrast between playgoing in New York and in London isn’t about quirky cultural differences. These are fundamentally divergent ways of navigating the pandemic.One is cautious, cognizant of the frailty of bodies; of the gaps that remain in our knowledge of Covid and long Covid; of the fact that we learn of new variants only after they start spreading. The other seems heedless — telling the audience, in effect, that they can take their chances or stay home. I wonder how many people, surveying the options, have decided to keep their money and keep safe.I spent a bit more of mine, returning to the Pinter for “Cyrano.” A good single seat had opened up, and I grabbed it. I didn’t want to wait until the show got to Brooklyn to see it again. But I wish I had.The audience was, hands down, the most overwhelmingly barefaced I had seen. I kept looking at the performers, doing their jobs so gloriously on that stage, and wondering how anyone could be so reckless as to gamble with their health. That’s not a right that a ticket ought to buy you.The next night, my last in London before I flew back to New York, I didn’t go to the theater. Unthinkably, it had lost its appeal. More

    • 163 Shares99 Views

      in Music

      Can New Yorkers Be Lured Back to the Arts by a Good Deal?

      by

      With two-for-one cocktails at the Met museum and two-for-one Broadway tickets, New York arts institutions are trying to lure back locals after a long, tough winter.The sounds of a small jazz combo filled the Great Hall of the Metropolitan Museum of Art last Saturday evening. Warm candles lit the space. Over at the museum’s American Wing Café, Christa Chiao and Anna Lee Hirschi were sipping prosecco.It was the first weekend of “Date Night” at the Met, an initiative to lure local visitors back to the museum on Friday and Saturday evenings with two-for-one cocktails, gallery chats and free live music featuring New Orleans jazz bands, Renaissance ensembles and string quartets.The museum’s efforts to woo back visitors from the region comes as many New York cultural organizations worry not only about the pandemic-era decline in tourism, but also the continuing struggle to bring back local crowds. The Met is currently attracting 62 percent of the local visitors it did before the coronavirus pandemic, a change it attributes in part to the continuing prevalence of remote work.“In this new reality, where many outer borough residents are working virtually and do not have to come to Manhattan, it’s on us, on the cultural institutions, to be creative and proactive in finding ways to encourage local visitorship,” said Ken Weine, a spokesman for the museum.“The challenge that the Met faces,” he said, “is really no different than a midtown small business.”Anna Lee Hirschi, left, and Christa Chiao toasted each other with their two-for-one proseccos.Nina Westervelt for The New York TimesThe Met is far from the only arts institution trying to entice local visitors back with deals as the Omicron surge fades and the coronavirus outlook seems to be improving.Lincoln Center recently announced a new “Choose What You Pay” ticketing program for its American Songbook series at the Stanley H. Kaplan Penthouse, with a minimum ticket price of $5.00, and a suggested price of $35, in an effort to make its programing more accessible.The Museum of Modern Art announced this week that it would restart a program offering free admission to New York City residents on the first Friday of every month between 4 p.m. and 8 p.m.And this year NYC & Company, the city’s tourism agency, extended NYC Broadway Week — during which theatergoers can get two-for-one tickets to most Broadway shows — for an additional two weeks, through February 27.Chris Heywood, a spokesman for NYC & Company, said that the move to extend Broadway Week deals was proving popular: As of mid-February, he said, the program’s website had already received more traffic than it did in 2020, before the pandemic closed Broadway.Learn More About the Metropolitan Museum of Art$125 Million Donation: The largest capital gift in the Met’s history will help reinvigorate a long-delayed rebuild of the Modern wing.Recent Exhibits: Our critics reviewed exhibits featuring the drawings of the French Revolution’s chief propagandist and new work by the sculptor Charles Ray.Behind the Scenes: A documentary goes inside the Met to chronicle one of the most challenging years of its history.A Guide to the Met: From the must-see galleries to the lesser-known treasures, here’s how to make the most of your visit.Winter is traditionally a down period for museums and the performing arts, arts officials note, and this season was made even tougher by lagging tourism and the disruption caused by the Omicron variant, which forced some arts institutions to retrench at the very moment the city was seeking to triumphantly bounce back.Now, with spring on the horizon, some arts groups say they hope to essentially restart the reopening that began in the fall. Deals, they hope, will help.The Met hopes that deals will lure back locals. It is currently attracting 62 percent of the local visitors it did before the pandemic.Nina Westervelt for The New York TimesThe Met, which already allows New York State residents to pay what they wish for admission, is trying to sweeten the deal. As it began its second “Date Night” last Saturday, the museum was busy and bustling, with a line out the door late into evening.As they sipped their proseccos and shared a box of dips and veggies that had been classified as a date-night special, Chiao, 28, of Harlem, and Hirschi, 29, of Washington, said it was their first time back inside a museum since before the pandemic began. They had not known about the “Date Night” promotion, but they were on a date and were happy to partake.“It feels like it’s time,” Chiao said. “It’s your own risk assessment. I think more about what I’m going to do — is this thing going to be worth it? I do think I’m going to try to go out and do more stuff.”Patrick Driscoll, 34, and Kathryn Savasuk, 33, of the Upper West Side, were also on a date at the Met, and said they were feeling increasingly at ease about going out. They had already taken advantage of the two-for-one Broadway tickets, having snagged tickets to “Company,” the revival of the Stephen Sondheim musical.“We’d be comfortable either way, but it’s definitely an enticement to go out, be active and get into the flow of going to these types of events again,” Driscoll said of the deals. And they plan to keep going to the theater even for those shows that do not offer the two-for-one deals: They already have tickets to see Daniel Craig and Ruth Negga in the upcoming Broadway production of “Macbeth.”Back inside the Great Hall, Allan Shikh, 21, had his arms wrapped warmly around Ami Kulishov, 21, as the jazz band finished its first set. They, too, were unaware that their romantic evening had fallen on an official “Date Night.” They would have been there anyway.“We consider ourselves pretty artsy people,” Shikh said. “I don’t really need much enticing.” More

    • 88 Shares99 Views

      in Theater

      ‘Mrs. Doubtfire’ Postpones Broadway Reopening Until April

      by

      The musical, which closed temporarily last month as the Omicron variant spread, had hoped to reopen in March.The Broadway musical “Mrs. Doubtfire,” which closed temporarily last month as Omicron battered New York, announced Friday that it would postpone its reopening until April 14, a month later than anticipated, to give the theater economy a bit more time to rebound.“The good news is that it looks like the virus is calming down, but there are still a lot of unknowns,” said the show’s lead producer, Kevin McCollum. “It was just clear that April was a better time to open, given the trends with tourism, and thinking about when families and groups will start to feel comfortable.”The hiatus left the show’s cast, crew and musicians without work (at least at “Doubtfire”), but McCollum said he thought it was the best way to attempt to preserve their jobs longer term. And on Friday, he said he had invited the entire cast to return, and was hopeful that they would do so.The musical, adapted from the popular 1993 film, has traveled a bumpy road: After an out-of-town run at 5th Avenue Theater in Seattle, it began previews on Broadway on March 9, 2020, just three days before the coronavirus pandemic forced all theaters to close. After a 19-month hiatus, the show resumed previews last October and opened Dec. 5, to mixed reviews, just as Omicron was causing cases to spike again.“If there was an award for worst timing for a producer, I will take that award,” McCollum said. “My timing was terrible.”But McCollum said he believes that the show will work if given a chance, and that he is committed to trying to preserve the jobs of his company, many of whom have been working on the show for several years.“The easiest path would have been to say, ‘OK, we’re done,’ but the show was telling us we’re not done,” he said. “We just never got our sea legs because of Omicron.”One additional advantage to reopening in April: Tony nominators and voters who did not catch the show before it began its hiatus on Jan. 10 will now have another chance to do so before casting their ballots. (This year’s Tony calendar has not yet been announced, but the season is expected to end in late April, followed by nominations, voting and an awards ceremony.)“Mrs. Doubtfire” was written by Karey Kirkpatrick, Wayne Kirkpatrick and John O’Farrell, and directed by Jerry Zaks. A second production of the show is scheduled to begin performances in Manchester, England, in September.“Mrs. Doubtfire” was the first of three Broadway shows to announce a temporary closing as the Omicron surge caused audiences to dwindle — “To Kill a Mockingbird” closed on Jan. 16 and said it would reopen at a different theater on June 1, while “Girl From the North Country” closed Jan. 23 and said it hoped to reopen in the spring. (Six other shows closed for good.)Unions representing actors and musicians did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the “Mrs. Doubtfire” plans. D. Joseph Hartnett, the stagecraft department director at the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE), said that his union, which represents stagehands, had not had yet heard from the show and “presumes the production has and still is officially closed.” More

    • 150 Shares119 Views

      in Music

      Spotify's Joe Rogan Deal Is Said to Be Worth Over $200 Million

      by

      It was the deal that helped make Spotify a podcasting giant, but has now put the company at the center of a fiery debate about misinformation and free speech.Spotify was already the king of music streaming. But to help propel the company into its next phase as an all-purpose audio juggernaut, and further challenge Apple and Google, it wanted a superstar podcaster, much as Howard Stern helped put satellite radio on the map in 2006. Spotify executives came to view Joe Rogan — a comedian and sports commentator whose no-holds-barred podcast, “The Joe Rogan Experience,” was already a monster hit on YouTube — as that transformative star.In May 2020, after an intense courtship, Spotify announced a licensing agreement to host Mr. Rogan’s show exclusively. Although reported then to be worth more than $100 million, the true value of the deal that was negotiated at the time, which covered three and a half years, was at least $200 million, with the possibility of more, according to two people familiar with the details of the transaction who spoke anonymously because they were not authorized to discuss it.But in recent weeks the show that helped Spotify catapult into a market leader for podcasts has also placed it at the center of the sort of cultural storm that has long engulfed Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, over questions about the responsibility tech behemoths have for the content on their platforms.It began when several prominent artists, led by Neil Young, took their music off the service to protest what they described as Covid vaccine misinformation on Mr. Rogan’s show. Then clips from old “Joe Rogan Experience” episodes caught fire on social media, showing him using a racial slur repeatedly and chuckling at jokes about sexual exploitation, prompting Mr. Rogan to apologize for his past use of the slur. A #DeleteSpotify social media campaign began calling for a boycott. And some Spotify podcasters publicly criticized Mr. Rogan and the platform.Spotify declined to make company executives available for interviews. Dustee Jenkins, a spokeswoman for the company, declined to comment on the terms of Mr. Rogan’s deal. Representatives of Mr. Rogan did not respond to multiple requests for comment.Even in the frothy podcast market, the deal for “The Joe Rogan Experience” was extraordinary. Spotify had purchased entire content companies, Gimlet Media and The Ringer, for slightly less than $200 million each, according to company filings.With tens of millions of listeners for its buzziest episodes, “The Joe Rogan Experience” is Spotify’s biggest podcast not only in the United States but in 92 other markets, with a following that hangs on every word of his hourslong shows. In its financial reports, Spotify cites podcasts — and Mr. Rogan’s show in particular — as a factor in the long-sought growth of its advertising business. At a recent company meeting, Daniel Ek, Spotify’s chief executive, told employees that exclusive content like Mr. Rogan’s show is vital ammunition in Spotify’s competition against tech Goliaths like Apple and Google.“We’re not in the business of dictating the discourse that these creators want to have on their shows,” Daniel Ek, Spotify’s chief executive, told employees. But dozens of episodes of “The Joe Rogan Experience” were recently taken down.Lucas Jackson/ReutersAs Mr. Rogan faced growing public criticism, Spotify responded by reaffirming its commitment to free speech, even as dozens of Mr. Rogan’s past episodes have been removed. It also made its content guidelines public for the first time, said that it would add “content advisory” notices to episodes discussing the coronavirus and promised to contribute $100 million for work by creators “from historically marginalized groups.”The moves came as Spotify faced growing dissension among high-profile creators. This month Ava DuVernay, the film director who announced a podcast deal with Spotify a year ago but has yet to produce any content under it, severed her ties with Spotify, according to a statement from her production company, Array. And Jemele Hill, the former ESPN commentator, said that Spotify’s defense of Mr. Rogan had created problems with her audience, and raised questions about the sincerity of the company’s dedication to minority talent.“What I would like to see,” Ms. Hill said in an interview, “is for them to hand $100 million to somebody who is Black.”A Pivot to PodcastingFor Spotify, the move into podcasting is the culmination of years of strategy to find a business that is more profitable than hosting music, for which it must pay about two-thirds of every dollar to rights holders.The company dipped its toe into video around 2015, but little came of it. By 2018, the year Spotify listed its shares on the New York Stock Exchange, it was forming plans to pursue Mr. Rogan, hoping to supercharge its market position in non-music audio and to chip away at the dominance of Apple and Google’s YouTube.To make Spotify a player in podcasting, Mr. Ek and his deputies, including Dawn Ostroff, a former television and magazine publishing executive, and Courtney Holt, formerly of Maker Studios, an online video network, set out on a multipart strategy. Spotify would buy audio studios, like Gimlet, and acquire exclusive rights to existing shows. With Spotify Originals, the company would also create buzzy new programs in partnership with creators like Ms. DuVernay’s Array and Higher Ground, the production company of former President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama.Developing a portfolio of podcasts unique to Spotify, as Netflix had built a walled garden for video, was a key aim, according to several employees involved in the strategy discussions.“All music streaming services are offering the same plain vanilla ice cream at the same price,” said Will Page, Spotify’s former top economist, who was not involved in the Rogan deal but is a frequent commentator on the digital media business. “The overarching issue is how do you make your customer proposition distinct.”Growth StrategySpotify has greatly increased its podcast offerings in the last four years — a period of rapid growth in both users and revenue for the company. More

    • 100 Shares119 Views

      in Music

      Coachella Will Return Without Masks or Vaccines Required

      by

      When the Coachella outdoor music festival returns for the first time in two years this April, performers will be greeted by a sea of unmasked — and potentially unvaccinated — fans, as the struggling concert industry stirs back to life.On Tuesday, organizers said that attendees will not be required to wear masks or be vaccinated or tested for the coronavirus at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, which drew up to 125,000 fans a day to Southern California and was one of the biggest music festivals of the pre-pandemic era.“There is no guarantee, express or implied, that those attending the festival will not be exposed to Covid-19,” Goldenvoice, a division of the global concert giant AEG Live, said on the Coachella website.Goldenvoice noted, however, that the festival’s Covid policies may change “in accordance with applicable public health conditions.”Goldenvoice also said that Stagecoach, a country music festival in Southern California, also said on Tuesday that there would be no requirements for guests to be masked, vaccinated or tested. The festival was set to run for three days at the end of April and the beginning of May.It has been a turbulent two years for the concert and touring industries, as a number of events were canceled because of the virus. In the last year, since the Covid vaccine became widely available, organizers have grappled with decisions over whether to hold the events at all and whether to require masks, vaccines and testing.Over four days last summer, the Lollapalooza music festival in Chicago ran at full capacity, with its 400,000 attendees being required to show either proof of vaccination or a negative Covid test. According to data released by the city after the festival, infection rates among the concertgoers were very low.Coachella did not run in 2020 or 2021, and was canceled three times over the pandemic, including a rescheduled date in the fall of 2020.Before the pandemic, Coachella, which is widely seen as a bellwether for the multibillion-dollar touring business, had put on a show every year since 1999 at the Empire Polo Club in Indio. It typically runs over two weekends in April.The organizers of Coachella announced in January, after weeks of speculation, that the festival would be back this year. It is set to be headlined by Billie Eilish, Harry Styles and Kanye West. More

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in Theater

      On the Scene: ‘Music Man,’ a Big Broadway Bet 🎺

      by

      On the Scene: ‘Music Man,’ a Big Broadway Bet 🎺Matt Stevens🎭 Reporting from BroadwayThe Omicron variant has made this a tough winter for the theater. “The Music Man,” a big-budget, star-studded musical, opened Thursday hoping to provide Broadway with something of a booster shot in the arm. 
      Here’s what the night looked like → More