"Total spending on streaming services and software is projected to reach a record $112 billion in 2021, an 11 percent growth over 2020, according to Consumer Technology Association projections announced on Monday. … This follows 31 percent growth in 2020 over 2019." - The Hollywood Reporter
"When the Smithsonian introduced a futuristic plan for the 17 acres around its iconic administration building, the National Historic Landmark known as the Castle, officials predicted it would be a game-changer that would remake the structure into a visitor gateway to the storied institution. Six years later, a new Smithsonian administration has jettisoned the eye-popping elements of the $2...
"Ms. Loud was a California mother of five. She drank, she plotted her divorce, she adored, and accepted, her openly gay son. She did it all in Santa Barbara and all on camera — in 1973. Loving, boisterous, witty, resilient and sometimes angry and hurt, she did not act like most women on television at the time. But she...
"Musicians will retain 85% of their base pay and 80% of other compensation, including career track and overscale … in addition to health benefits and pension contributions. Musicians agreed in the fall to a 40% pay cut in addition to a further 20% reduction in overscale." - St. Louis Business Journal
"With all major categories posting increases, unit sales of print books rose 8.2% in 2020 over 2019 at outlets that report to NPD BookScan. For the year ended Jan. 2, 2021, units hit 750.9 million, up from 693.7 million the year before. BookScan said the 8.2% gain was the largest annual increase since 2010." - Publishers Weekly
"Opera Australia has paid out tens of thousands of dollars in confidential settlements to musicians it sacked at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. The country's most heavily subsidised performing arts company is now preparing for a federal court battle with one of the musicians refusing to settle, alleging Opera Australia management has created a culture of 'intimidation, bullying...
"We all forget things, of course – who your 6th-grade social studies teacher was or what you had for lunch a month ago are washed away by the river of time. Looking at memory alone (as some of Locke’s early critics did) is much too narrow a way to think about what it is to be psychologically connected to...
While Covid-19 quarantines have made television one of the more dominant mediums around, they’ve also altered the diet of what we watch within that medium. Pre-pandemic, people could watch movies in theaters, TV shows on Netflix, and live events at concert halls, clubs, and stadiums. Now, all of those things are channeled through televisions (or, in some cases, through smartphones, laptops,...
"In the extraordinary drama of America, fiction is paramount to preserving systemic structures of imbalance. That’s how it has been for centuries, and that's how Trump supporters would like it to remain. But that kind of fiction has no place in a healthy, stable democracy. It’s a contaminant and a cancer, a barrier to the remaking our country requires...
While traditional museums are discussing closures and mergers, the for-profit industry around experiential or immersive art is investing hundreds of millions of dollars into a business that currently has no audience in the U.S. because of the pandemic. - The New York Times
By the time the exhibition closed in March, because of the pandemic, the college had scaled back a plan to host programming that directly focused on the investigation. Forensic Architecture complained strongly but without success. Ultimately, the college told the curator who had coordinated the exhibition, Sophie Landres, that her contract would not be renewed. - The New York...
Released as part of the BA's annual membership survey, the number of independent bookshops holding membership at the end of 2020 rose to 967 shops, up from 890 shops in 2019, 883 in 2018 and 868 in 2017. This figure marks the highest number of independent bookshops in BA membership since 2013, as the period of growth was preceded...
Eleven more cases came from The Kominsky Method, a Michael Douglas-starring Netflix series where aging actors confront mortality. Around the same time, according to the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health’s COVID-19 database, which tracks workplace outbreaks from the past 14 days, Netflix had nine more positive cases; NBC Universal, including some crew of the show Mr. Mayor,...
The museum has reported one of its worst attendance figures ever, with around 2.7 million visitors—a 72% drop compared to 9.6 million in 2019. - The Art Newspaper
