Computers Replace Musicians In West End Musical

Albanach writes "The Scotsman newspaper is reporting that despite opposition from the Musician's Union, Sir Cameron Mackintosh will proceed with his plan to replace one half of the musicians in his musical Les Miserables with a computer synthesiser. The Times claims that using Sinfonia will allow the show, the third longest running musical in history, to replace 11 musicians saving 5,000 GBP ($9,450 US) per week. Sinfonia consisits of 2 PCs, one master and one backup, controlled by an trained operator using a musical keyboard."

Comments

Re:Defeats the purpose

[flewp]

Well, a lot of the media on my computer makes my instrument turn into wood. *ZING!*

Re:fp

[/dev/trash]

Nope, sorry you are post number 8279449, A far cry from first.

Re:Good for more than this is bad for

[sjlutz]

Your post is reminisent of the Invisible Hand theory that I learned about in Economics. The theory is that in a free market society businesses that strive to do their best (make the most profit) end up with creating residual beneficial effects through-out society. It is a cornerstone of the free-market system (in theory). Because as companies attempt to maximize their productivity (economize), they create social benefits (more jobs, more money, etc) that everyone benefits from. The only drawback (that we learned) from a free-market economy is that wealth is not distributed equally. Also, please note, capitalism is not equal to free market. Capitalism is a modified free-market system, the details of the differences escape me right now though.