[contextly_auto_sidebar id="32NG0O50Xp95O5D44s23SJZqusoP0VKy"] WE see it again and again: A marginal -- rough, industrial or just boring -- neighborhood attracts artists and musicians and generates an "edgy" reputation. For a few years, good things happen. But after a while -- and, often, a benign explosion of coffee shops and bike paths and cheese stores -- the artists and musicians and fellow … [Read more...]
Rock Bands and the Road
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="UGGL08WFaVocMMEMVIGcVFFUfCALT1t1"] IF you've followed the debate about the post-label, post-album music world, you've heard the cries of the optimists: Just get in the tourbus! Even digital utopians will concede that revenues from recordings are way down, but they assure us that bands can make up the different by playing shows. It is part of a larger neoliberal … [Read more...]
“U.S. Orchestras Are Shrinking”
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="QRGZQv2nVOSC4XC8B8Ht1HMnBnYyaFZJ"] IF you've been following the creative economy lately, it's hardly a surprise, but this makes for dispiriting reading: A New York Times story chronicles how American groups are responding to tough times. Through the 19th century, orchestras got bigger. But as some American orchestras struggle in the post-downturn economy, they are … [Read more...]
Overeducated and Underemployed
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="CM4KylwaAW4pMnqXeb36jIwUKqjajdfJ"] ONE of the oddest things about the brutal post-crash economy is that the average-is-over cries by neoliberals to educate the workforce for a global world have accompanied hard times for many educated people. It's especially true for academics caught in the adjunct trap, though it is not unique to struggling scholars. It's certainly … [Read more...]
Obama Wants a “Free and Open Internet”
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="jqHfdeb7F6lDN38IeV0lSf8Avyx9cp2I"] THE president, I'm pleased to say, has now taken a fair and reasonable stance on an issue that exerts a strong effect on the creative class. Do we want the web to be skyboxed-- the rich over here, in the good seats, the rest over there, fighting for crumbs -- the way American society is? I don't, and that's what net neutrality, in … [Read more...]
Techo-Utopianism and the TED talk
MOSTLY, I try to dig into the arts and culture in this blog. But there are times when digital technology demands attention; technology has become the water in which we all -- musician and scribe and architect alike -- swim. That's why I'm especially pleased to nudge readers toward a piece that's been floating around for a while which even some informed people may have missed: "We need to talk … [Read more...]
Stop Working For Free
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="qdf9aqJ1GtDAb9pJMkPYYNu43BIF5aWQ"] BY now, the movement urging artists, writers, musicians and other creatives to stop donating their labor has made some noise in the culture: It's one of the key issue for today's exploited creative class. But I've not seen the subject framed as well as this new Daily Beast story, with its subhead: "Remember when people volunteered … [Read more...]
Rosanne Cash on Our Culture’s Big Lie
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="sMcHj6Lojb9dMZsYLz0bq8L0kVkN6RaH"] LATELY the country-steeped singer-songwriter has become vocal and eloquent on issues of artists's rights, including an appearance before lawmakers in Washington, DC; she's also on the executive board of the Content Creators Coalition. The freshest thing about the arguments made by this daughter of St. Johnny is that she looks not … [Read more...]
Author Sven Birkerts on Culture Crash The Book
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="l18iXkqE0pAKSvY5UNL4M81fXOJAntvm"] ONE of the first and most eloquent books on the transition away from the world of print to a new one dominated by digital communications came 20 years ago from the veteran literary critic Sven Birkerts. The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age was funny, sad and prescient, and served as important foundation … [Read more...]
Is Amazon a Monopoly?
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="QUacYyetZUphAZnyUIQyaD8AKTam7LBQ"] THE battle over Amazon -- including the siege of Hachette -- has heated up lately, with The New Republic's Franklin Foer and several prominent authors, including Ursula Le Guin, calling the online bookseller "a monopoly." Foer has argued that it's time for the Department of Justice to break Amazon up. This is from his TNR piece, … [Read more...]