“When you say I can watch something online for free or for a modest amount, or pay $100 to go to a live performance, that’s become a very difficult choice for a lot of people,” Kaiser says. For most in the post-great recession era of income stagnation and a shrinking middle class, it’s no choice at all.”
Tag: 04.04.15
We’re Entering The Next Phase Of Music Streaming
“When artists lament Spotify’s meager payouts, the real culprit isn’t the streaming service, which pays out 70 percent of its revenue to labels and musicians—it’s the fact that streaming doesn’t make a whole lot of revenue to begin with. The most likely way for that to change is for there to be more paying users in the system. So if the golden age of simplicity for streaming’s early adopters is coming to an end, the health of the music industry might be worth it.”
Alex Ross’s Tribute To Andrew Porter
“I would guess that no critic in the magazine’s history—not Edmund Wilson, not Lewis Mumford, not Pauline Kael—possessed greater authority in his or her field.”
Behind The Astonishing Markups Of Prices In Private Art Sales
“It’s a $60 billion market where you can’t find out real prices, real ownership or the actual buyers and sellers. But as values have gone up, we have more lawsuits, and collectors are finding out what really goes on behind the scenes.”
How Precisely Did The Planned Island In The Hudson River Come About?
“The $113 million for Pier 55, for which Hudson River Park still has only an oral pledge from Mr. Diller, has put the spotlight on the park’s longstanding financial problems, embodied by the deterioration of Pier 40, at the foot of Houston Street.”
Can This Man #SaveNewYork?
“His personal ire is frequently directed at what he calls Yunnies, or young urban narcissists. Yunnies are, by his account, the silent accomplices of hyper-gentrification: de-cultured millennials who actively like to shop at Target and could not care less if a quirky shrine like Bill’s Gay Nineties, which is the tavern where Tallulah Bankhead used to drink and which closed three years ago, is turned into a garish, high-end restaurant.”
A Right-Wing Backlash Floods The Hugo Awards
“This new slate can only really be understood against the backdrop of ongoing, vicious fights over racism in science fiction.”
Why Did Maria Altmann Fight For ‘The Woman In Gold’?
“If they would have once come and said, ‘We know these paintings are not ours, but, look, they are national treasures for us. Can you sit down and negotiate?’ Not once did they even attempt it or answer a letter of mine. … They feel they got away with and they (feel they) will get away with it, and they will pat themselves on their back, and this is what makes me so angry.”
The Renovation Of The National Theatre Gets It Right
“They have kept control of the design of the new zones of quaffing and scoffing rather than let the in-house fit-outs of catering chains run riot, as has happened elsewhere on the South Bank. With the help of extensive scholarship on the subject of 1970s board-marked concrete, they have cleaned and repaired it. It looks beautiful.”
European Museums, In The Midst Of Austerity Crises, May Start Selling Off Their Treasures
“Some French lawmakers, for example, are raising the prospect of selling some of the 500,000 objects in storage at the Louvre, using an American model that would limit museums to shedding duplicate works that are not part of a core collection and using the proceeds to pay for future acquisitions.”