“Although I never considered it at the time, it is impossible for me now not to frame the intensity of this devotion to music as a counterpart—a harmony—to my OCD. Every moment I was poring over tablature or trying to master a new chord was a moment not spent, say, touching a byzantine pattern of bricks on the fireplace wall. When I was playing, writing, recording music, I was safe.” – Paris Review
Author: Douglas McLennan
Is There A Market For Classical Music Streaming?
Anyone who’s tried to stream classical on Spotify or iTunes knows that it’s not easy. Now two new streaming services, created specifically for classical hope they’ve solved the problems. – Musical America
JD Salinger Joins The Digital Revolution
In an effort to keep his father’s books in front of a new generation of readers, the younger Mr. Salinger is beginning to ease up, gradually lifting a cloud of secrecy that has obscured the life and work of one of America’s most influential and enigmatic writers. – The New York Times
Will There Be Another Toni Morrison?
Ross Douthat: “Her passing raises the question: Is she the last of the species? The last American novelist who made novels seem essential to an educated person’s understanding of her country?” – The New York Times
The Voices That Read Books To You
In New York City and Los Angeles, the country’s two capitals for audiobook work, narrators annually earn around $40,000 on average, according to Voices.com. A large publisher might pay as much as $350 per hour, but smaller publishers might pay $50 or less per hour, with the rate tied to how long they say it should take to read a certain number of pages. To make a decent return on your labor, you have to be good. – Washington Post
ASCAP And BMI Propose New Music Licensing Rules
“To help facilitate that orderly transition, and to protect both music creators and licensees alike, ASCAP and BMI are recommending four key provisions that would encompass newly formed decrees.” – Variety
How Do Bubbles Happen? When The Stories We Tell Get Detached From The Evidence
“Bubbles inflate as the distance between fiction and reality increases. Contexts – such as investor liquidity, regulatory frameworks and cultural and macro-economic factors – establish boundaries on how far our stories can depart from reality. But entrepreneurs are also creatures of context, and some are better than others at ‘entrepreneuring’, stretching the limits of plausibility and maximising time for their imagined realities to catch up to their promises.” – Aeon
Is Education Innovating?
To my mind, perhaps the most striking and significant innovation is higher education’s heightened emphasis on community engagement, community service, and local and regional economic development. So what, then, do critics mean when they decry higher education’s alleged failure to innovate? – Inside Higher Ed
We Value Originals. So What Are Translations?
Are we ready to argue that translation is not merely an interpretative task, but also an artistic one, and that translators are artists? As tempting as this upgrade in status seems, I would argue for something else. – Public Books
Some Museums Are Collecting Performance Art. What Does That Mean?
“You’re collecting an idea and the documentation, if the artist has stipulated, but sometimes they prefer it to be fleeting and ephemeral and totally experiential,” says Amanda Hunt, director of education and senior curator of programs at MOCA. – Los Angeles Times