“More musicians are getting more music out to more people. But I don’t see that ‘more recordings’ equals ‘revitalization of an industry.’ Because I always thought that an industry is a field that makes money. And very few of these recordings do. The companies that put them out are, increasingly, non-profit organizations.”
Author: Laura Collins Hughes
Shepard Fairey: Why I Protect My Building Against Graffiti
“I’m a champion of free speech. I think it is important for people to be able to speak freely, but if I’m watching a channel whose content is not my cup of tea I may choose to change the channel. It does not make me an opponent of free speech. Preferring my brick unadorned does not make me anti-graffiti. Every time I put a piece of art on the street I know it may be cleaned. That is the nature of the art form.”
Fretting About The Future Of Modern Dance
Michael Kaiser: “Modern dance is one of the glories of American cultural history. … But virtually every great modern dance company was founded more than 40 years ago. Where is the current, not to mention next, generation of great modern dance companies to carry the torch?” And will they have the administrative and board support they need to survive and thrive?
It’s Thrilling When Things Onstage Go Badly Awry
“[B]esides introducing a certain kind of spontaneity and titillating uncertainty that can only take place in live performance, what makes bloopers so interesting is the opportunity they provide for the performers to display their quickness, wit or personality, uninterrupted by the dictates of the author. Disasters, oddly, are the only time when the actors are completely in control.”
Reader’s Digest To Declare Bankruptcy
“Reader’s Digest — an American media icon of the 20th century, thanks to its inspiring, safe-for-family-reading articles and folksy, cornpone humor — is planning to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization. Parent company Reader’s Digest Association has had trouble since going private in 2007, cutting costs and trying to stay relevant in the post-ironic, niche-driven 21st-century media landscape, a place [that] can be tough sledding for an earnest, general-interest magazine.”
Loosen Up, Hollywood Control Freaks. It’s Good For You.
It’s not that the big movie studios dislike the sort of centralized control that China embraces and that the World Trade Organization ruled against last week. “They just want to be the ones holding the power.” But the way they’re exercising that power is getting in their own way. “When Hollywood tries to preserve last century’s business models and ‘release windows’ that restrict availability, it risks missing the opportunity that new technologies present to increase consumption.”
China To Appeal Ruling That Would Open Cultural Markets
“China said on Monday it will challenge a World Trade Organisation ruling against its restrictions on imported films, books and audio-visual products, continuing its sparring with Washington over trade access.”
Reimagining Penn Station (And Shooting For Greatness)
“The first shovel has been turned on the … $8.7 billion Mass Transit Tunnel from New Jersey that will double the number of passengers arriving from across the Hudson River” into Manhattan, though not at Penn Station. “With a little architectural vision, the tunnel could link with a spruced-up Penn and spur as much as 40 million square feet of commercial and residential development,” transforming “the far West Side the way Grand Central replaced a smoke-belching ditch with tree- lined Park Avenue.”
Spoilers Aren’t Intrinsically Evil
“[H]ow much information is too much? What balance should a writer strike between safeguarding the joy of discovery for those who haven’t yet seen a play, and talking in such generalities that the writing becomes meaningless? … The answer is not clear-cut – it varies from show to show and writer to writer – but it raises [another] question: how much damage can a spoiler actually do?”
In Network TV, It’s The End Of The World As We Know It
For network television, “things could get a lot worse before they get better. Some observers are even beginning to question whether there will ever be a turnaround, predicting that [the] business model which has sustained broadcasters for close to 60 years has begun an irreversible decline. … ‘It’s the beginning of a structural tailspin… the total collapse of the network television model,’ [author-critic-NPR co-host Bob] Garfield predicts.”