I’m finally getting around to this early October article in the New York Times about the Converse sneaker company and their new Converse Rubber Tracks community-based recording studio project. The company is building a recording space in Brooklyn that will be available at no cost to musicians wanting to record their work (subject to an […]

Sure, it’s not a great shock that Sony is discontinuing its Sony Walkman portable audio cassette player (already has, actually…get ’em while they last). But it’s a melancholy moment nonetheless. Back in the late ’70s and early ’80s, the Walkman was a glimpse of the mobile and personal relationship with music yet to come. Instead […]

The opening plenary of the Grantmakers in the Arts conference featured a fabulous performance by spoken word artist Marc Kelly Smith and the Speak’Easy Ensemble (Robbie Q. Telfer, Joel Chmara, Tim Stafford, Molly Meacham, and Dan Sullivan). Their task was to share and reflect on the long, long, long list of comments gathered after the […]

[Yet another Grantmakers in the Arts entry, also posted on their conference blog.] Joi Ito’s luncheon keynote yesterday keeps spinning in my head. The CEO of Creative Commons has been involved in many technology startups as an entrepreneur and venture capitalist, and part of his talk explored how innovation and invention is changing in the […]

[More thoughts from the Grantmakers in the Arts Conference in Chicago. If you’re really interested in what’s going on, be sure to track the Twitter stream.] There was some useful and difficult discussion today at the Grantmakers in the Arts conference, much of it surrounding the charge to reframe how arts funders think and talk […]

[GENTLE READERS: I’m blogging early this week from the Grantmakers in the Arts Conference in Chicago. You’ll find most of my posts co-posted here, and on the official conference blog.] The Grantmakers in the Arts conference in Chicago is swirling around the question of capital and capitalization in the arts. They’ve released the summary report […]

KCRW’s “The Business” radio show/podcast offers a great interview with film director Stephen Frears (roundabout 6-1/2 minutes in) on his experiences in independent and major studio filmmaking. Frears has learned that he’s not suited to major studio films because the time and money are out of scale with the audience his films will draw. Major […]

Copyright law has always walked the tightrope between monopoly and community. It was designed to allow creators, authors, and inventors to exclusively benefit from their work for a period of time (a monopoly providing incentive for them to create, author, or invent), while also ensuring the public/community benefit of those creations by eventually terminating that […]

The Arts Management newsletter offers a fabulous overview of city and civic art initiatives currently underway around the world. Among the coolest: Random Acts of Culture: An initiatives of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation to coax arts events out into the open, funding arts groups in eight cities $30,000 to perform or exhibit […]

I’ve been watching the development of Square with great interest. It’s a service that turns your iPhone, Android phone, or iPad into a credit card payment processor, complete with a little plastic swipe. David Pogue in the New York Times offers an enthusiastic overview. Pogue notes that we’re all quite used to using credit cards […]