[contextly_auto_sidebar id="sX5mpeff0G48ZdDK8B8DiylO4zB4YCnG"] BY now, anyone who writes for a living knows the kind of nasty comments and chatter that accompanies almost any public utterance. (This seems like a cross between the hostility that's bred on places like Fox News and the larger "snark" culture, with an extra layer of nastiness unique to the Internet.) How did it happen, what are the … [Read more...]
Journalism’s Phony Golden Age
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="v0eG90rPghAVd66MQLAYaRsKRNlqKbJ4"] IT was only, I guess, a matter of time before the digital utopians started telling us -- including laid off scribes -- how great journalism has gotten. The latest is a Wired piece, "How the Smartphone Ushered in a Golden Age of Journalism. (It's venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, and not the Wired writer, who calls it a "golden … [Read more...]
German Writers Stand Up to Amazon
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="hPvvYov9l3ydhtOyPeAaXmviWmWA6lEM"] WHETHER opposition to the online octopus is growing and spreading is hard to tell, but some of the anger we've seen in the US literary community seems to be driving authors in the German-speaking world as well. A New York Times story reports that more than a thousand German-language authors have written a letter of protest. The … [Read more...]
The “Antifree” Movement Takes on “Free”
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="hMpJwAX7ROFisoxfaiwhWpOQbmzRcRS5"] BY now, we're all pretty familiar with the information-wants-to-be-free argument, and if you write for a living, or have had to endure numerous unpaid internships to break into a creative field, you know it all too well. A wide-ranging, perceptive, and slightly arch essay in the hip Brooklyn journal n+1 sketches out the … [Read more...]
Silicon Valley’s New Robber Barons
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="EgEeltgVhbdrJtpZgu1Pc9OkKclq7k1w"] THERE'S a very fine new piece in the August Harper's in which Rebecca Solnit draws a straight line between the 19th century robber barons and Silicon Valley's cyber-utopians. The common denominator, she writes, is Stanford University. The relationship between the early kings of the railroads -- who were given free reign across much … [Read more...]
Jazz and Classical Musicians vs. Streaming
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="Q0kRrypSZofvO7Cl0jQKoVvntfv83bix"] WE'RE starting to hear a lot from musicians about how music streaming destroys their ability to make a living. So far, it's been harder to find out how it's affecting jazz and classical music. I tried to get into the subject with a new story for Salon. I speak to a number of musicians (including pianist Jason Moran) and … [Read more...]
Will Amazon Crush Publishing?
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="vKKFLjwmwHjYmDjG3md6BwURLIgqKbsB"] RECENTLY I've written a bit about Amazon and other giant tech companies and how they have begun to crush the world of culture, and the people who make it, while the Department of Justice and other regulatory agencies sleep. These are longstanding concerns of mine, as a journalist who writes about music and the arts, as well as the … [Read more...]
Can We Fix Music Streaming?
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="gqUq5BWr0TyCF2J8po7C3NUJDqWArzLu"] MOST of the complaints about music streaming so far have been about the way the new system leaves musicians out in the cold. But a new story looks at the way they frustrate listeners. as well. Ted Gioia -- jazz pianist, music historian, and avid listener of a wide range of music -- recently signed up for the Beats streaming service, … [Read more...]
Publishing’s Shrinking Attention Span
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="CAxR2RewOYpbx08DLip9Jb3pvG0eQ2Sw"] THE Scottish novelist Val McDermid, who has sold 10 million books, says she wouldn't have a career in today's relentless marketplace. One of the things the Internet and the superstar economy have done is to shrink our already shrunken attention spans further, and that's doubly true in the culture industries. Crime writer … [Read more...]
Music in the Age of Streaming
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="Fa2HMMUonP7cJZz5wWMQHx91Wm261nWI"] THE battle between artists and indie labels on one side and gigantic tech corporations on the other has taken on a sharp pitch. A New York Times story serves as a good summation of the terms of the fight, and gets at how it hits indie record labels in particular. Executives and advocates for the indies say they are vulnerable to … [Read more...]