Now that Apple is moving beyond iTunes, it’s worth remembering how revolutionary iTunes was. Before the iTunes Music Store, your best bet to find music online was through a file-sharing site like Napster. Your only legal options were either niche storefronts, or label-specific ones, none of them user-friendly. iTunes brought purchasing music online into the mainstream. – Wired
Category: AUDIENCE
For First Time Since 1993, Japan’s Movie Theaters Have Raised Ticket Prices
Two of the country’s four major chains have raised the price of a standard ticket from ¥1,800 ($16.50) to ¥1,900 ($17.50), citing the costs of new IMAX and 4D equipment as well as “anti-earthquake measures” (aren’t those standard in Japan already?). – The Guardian
Music, Like All Art, Can Change History
Or at least what we know about our history, and how we look at it. Check out two recent concerts that work as art, of course, and “as historical corrective, guided by a commitment to scrambling, reordering, and recontextualizing the history of bodies ‘in motion.'” – The Atlantic
Hurray, A Popular Art Festival, And Boo, The Popular Art Festival’s Thousands Of Visitors
In the planning for New York’s Figment Arts Festival, moving from Governors Island to Roosevelt Island this year, “‘Everything was fine,’ Judith Berdy, a longtime resident said. ‘And then came the catastrophe of the cherry blossoms.'” – The New York Times
Study: How Twitter Might Be Undermining Your Intelligence
The finding by a team of Italian researchers is not necessarily that the crush of hashtags, likes and retweets destroys brain cells; that’s a question for neuroscientists, they said. Rather, the economists, in a working paper published this month by the economics and finance department at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan, found that Twitter not only fails to enhance intellectual attainment but substantially undermines it. – Washington Post
Baltimore Museum Of Art Asks The City’s Communities What They Want To See
“On Wednesday, the BMA revealed plans to send an updated version of [a] 1937 questionnaire to about 300 local schools, nonprofits, and other organizations. The results will inform future exhibitions, acquisitions, and programs at the BMA, according to the museum’s director, Christopher Bedford.” – ARTnews
More And More Museums Consider Offering Free Admission
Just last week, L.A. MoCA announced that it will eliminate admission charges; earlier this year, MoCA Cleveland did the same thing, while Toronto’s AGO made itself free for visitors under 25. Other cities have made their museums free for limited groups such as public benefits recipients or library card holders. Many museum administrators now find themselves torn between the public library model (“where you can walk in for free and learn something”) and “a gut feeling that people value things more when they have to pay for it.” – The New York Observer
BookEXpo’s State Of The Biz: Number Of Indie Bookstores In US Up 20 Percent In Last Ten Years
“The booksellers association again gained membership, rising from 1,835 individual companies (all but a handful independently owned stores) a year ago to 1,887, an increase of more than 20 percent since 2009. The number of store locations is now 2,524, compared to 2,470 in 2018, as independent sellers such as Shakespeare & Co. in New York continue to expand.” – Seattle Times (AP)
Broadway Racks A Record Season At The Box Office
Attendance hit 14.77 million while ticket sales topped off at $1.83 billion in grosses, according the Broadway League, the national trade association tied to the Great White Way. That’s a 7.8% season-over-season increase in terms of grosses, easily topping the $1.7 billion from the 2017 to 2018 season. It’s also a 7.1% increase in attendance, up from 13.79 million in the previous season. – Variety
Where Everybody Knows Your Name: The Art Of The Regular Patron
“No matter the establishment — cafe, trattoria, dive bar, coffeehouse, doughnut shop, pharmacy, even — those who make themselves permanent fixtures almost all say the same thing about what makes a regular. When they walk in, the people behind the counter know who they are.” – The New York Times