In a recent survey, 71% of 2,000 participants reported that music was the strongest influence on their mood and almost 75% regularly listened to music to cheer themselves up. - The Conversation
That is, after the earth is salted. "When all platforms index the same content, they’ll be desperate to differentiate. ... The apps will be programmers, not just builders, using human taste, judgment, and dealmaking skills." - Slate
Is it like New York's Drama Book Shop? A little, but "The Understudy has rotating displays atop wheeled shop tables, curated by Chicago artists. They are also providing a new hub for itinerant theatre companies seeking space for readings and workshops." - American Theatre
"The TikTok controversy can’t simply be chalked up to generational differences. ... It’s traceable to a watershed legal decision in 1849, when Prince Albert of England sued a printer for trying to publish a catalog about drawings he and Queen Victoria had made." - Wired
Sakamoto's Yellow Magic Orchestra "perfected a witty robotic pop that ... influenced the sound of everything from Nintendo video game scores to the techno genre and hip-hop." He also composed music for film scores, including for The Last Emperor. - Washington Post
Blame Gen-X, sure, but there's more. "These movies have to do something smart: tap our innocent joy around old computer games and junk food, while also letting us feel we are more knowing now." - The Guardian (UK)
Both sides have a point, but both sides are also, let's say, a bit touchy. Why? "Coming out against libraries making books more accessible looks miserly, but so does protesting against authors getting paid what they deserve." Meanwhile, the publishers are the problem. - Wired
"The choice to vandalize Van Gogh’s Sunflowers suggests that beauty does have a role to play in the fight to save the planet. In the act of protest, the painted sunflowers become a stand-in for life on earth, not a distraction from it." - Los Angeles Review Of Books
"I wrote Judy a letter telling her how impactful her work was for me and how passionate I was about Margaret in particular. ... The next day, there was an email from Judy Blume in my inbox. I was so stunned, I almost passed out." - LitHub
The Scottish Ballet's artistic director says that ballet "can inhabit the space between the words, the unspoken, and it can often delve into the predicaments the characters are in." Thus Anna Karenina, The Crucible, and more new story ballets. - Washington Post
"The world after the pandemic just got worse. And I thought, I just want to write something lovely, where the stakes are kind of low, except on a personal level. So I started writing another love story." - The Guardian (UK)
"The venue had the clandestine air of a speakeasy. Notice of its existence was passed along by word of mouth. Guests stuffed cash into a cardboard box marked 'donations' to receive canned Modelo from a fridge. There were readings, screenings and music shows." - The New York Times
"When the curtain comes down on the Music Venue Trust’s (MVT) #OwnOurVenues fundraising drive, it is expected to have raised close to £2.2m, a hemi-demi-semiquaver away from the £2.5m that it set out to achieve." - The Guardian (UK)
The Apollo Theater was hosting four heavy metal bands - meaning the audience and bands may not have heard the sirens - before the roof collapsed in on the venue on Friday night. - Variety
