“The number of users willing to pay for the [music streaming] service soared 32% in the first three months of 2019 compared with a year earlier, Spotify said on Monday.” – The Guardian
Blog
Mark Richter, Who Founded Two Opera Companies In San Antonio, Dead At 51
The former tenor founded San Antonio Pocket Opera in 1995, and over 16 years he developed the company into what is now San Antonio Opera, presenting full main-stage works. He left that company in 2011 as it began what became a financial crisis, and the following year he founded a chamber opera company now known as Alamo City Opera. – San Antonio Express-News
Who’ll Play The Polonium? New Opera Coming About Death Of Alexander Litvinenko
The Life & Death of Alexander Litvinenko, a work about the poisoning of the former FSB agent and dissident Russian émigré in London in 2008, with music by Anthony Bolton and text by Kit Hesketh-Harvey, will premiere in summer 2020 at England’s Grange Park Opera. – The Times (UK)
The Guardian Posts First Operating Profit In 20 Years
In 2015-16, just as new leaders were taking charge, the newspaper/website lost £57 million; three years later, operations are £8000,000 in the black — even as management has resisted instituting an online paywall. – BBC
Venice Is Trying New Ways To Manage The Tourist Tsunami
“A new generation of concerned citizens and entrepreneurs is taking … combining grassroots activism with socially sensitive, sustainable initiatives to save their island home” — from managing the trash and reducing use of plastic to creating a new, more locally oriented alternative to Airbnb. – The Guardian
Protesters Have Banana Eat-In At Poland’s National Museum After Culture Ministry Pulls Video Of Woman Eating Banana
“The 1973 video Consumer Art, by prominent artist Natalia LL, showing a young woman eating a banana with great pleasure, was removed from the National Museum in Warsaw last week after the new museum head, Jerzy Miziolek, was summoned to the Ministry of Culture.” And once word got around, scornful protesters did what we’d expect them to do. – Yahoo! (AP)
How The Next Wave Of Wearable Tech Will Amplify Our Intelligence
“The need for an intelligence-amplifying device that is less obtrusive than a smartphone and more discreet than a voice interface is clear. Many technologists and entrepreneurs are working to create the next revolutionary intelligence-amplifying device that will solve the problems of its predecessors while giving users seamless access to advanced AI systems.” – Harvard Business Review
Neuroscience Tries To Figure Out Why Music Gets Hold Of Us
“We’re starting to comprehend how melodies affect our feelings, why certain music makes us want to get up and dance and why some harmonies trigger fear. Some studies have already had direct applications in the field of music therapy, which uses music to treat neurological, emotional and physical disorders.” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
The New Black Market For Fakes? Instagram
Selling counterfeit goods is illegal on Instagram, but according to a recently released report by data analysis firm Ghost Data, Instagram has become “the top showcase platform for counterfeiters” on the web, and anyone with an Instagram account has a doorway to a “multibillion-dollar underground economy.” – Fast Company
UK Statistics Authority Blasts Arts Council England Over Bad Methodology
A public letter from Ed Humpherson, head of UKSA’s regulatory arm, castigates ACE for an array of statistical misdemeanours that fail to meet the official Code of Practice, and which led to a “lack of clarity” in the presentation of visitor numbers in the funder’s latest annual report. But ACE still denies that its presentation of the figures was misleading, and says it has no plans to update the report. – Arts Professional