Music and the Economic Crisis

Though I am by no means a "grown up" (I don't even pay my own rent), I am following the financial crisis with a growing sense of trepidation. As if I wasn't worried enough about getting a job when a graduate, now unemployment in Oregon is at an unemployment rate of 7.3%! As the market plummets further, I wonder how it will affect music in our country, how its recorded and distributed, and how it is performed. According to a report I heard on NPR the other morning, the sports industry is most likely to be hurt by a blip in financial stability. The reasoning is, the only way to see a film is to go see it in the theater (or wait months for it to come out on DVD....or pirate it illegally from the internet, this wasn't in the report, but I think NPR underestimates the poverty and technical abilities of the modern college student), a play can only be viewed in real time. NPR neglected, however, to mention the music industry.

The Oregon Symphony is reportedly failing miserably, sinking into a massive amount of debt. All this, despite a recent endorsement from the headman of Pink Martini, Thomas Lauderdale, who recently headlined a rare sold out concert with the Oregon Symphony. The question is, how can we help save institutions like this? Is it their fault for not having enough fresh, inventive programs (this has been a major argument, as OSO rarely programs new music)? Or is it ours for not supporting them? Should the government bail them out with the auto companies? I think it is the fault of our educations system and our society, for not teaching our children, who grow up to be college students who go to many concerts and young adults who have money to spend on them. Why are all the classical music lovers dying off? Probably because of a major lack of education. Many of my friends aren't uneducated or uncultured but many of them think that Mozart wrote the Moonlight Sonata.I think if our society understood music better as a whole then the financial crisis wouldn't be such a burden on my mind.