How do you make a living as an artist? In the old mass-culture model you needed a distribution and marketing engine that could fire up on your behalf to reach as many people as possible. Sell a million albums and if your take after the record company, agents and managers get their share is a buck or two, you're doing pretty well. In the new economy, how many fans do you need to make a living? If you can produce and distribute your own work, Kevin Kelly suggests, all you need is 1000 true fans. Instead of trying to reach the narrow and unlikely … [Read more...]
Beware the mushy middle
April 16, 2010 By 4 Comments
The NYT's Charles Isherwood writes about what he calls the "odd-man-out" syndrome: This can roughly be described as the experience of attending an event at which much of the audience appears to be having a rollicking good time, while you sit in stony silence, either bored to stupefaction or itchy with irritation, miserably replaying the confluence of life circumstances that have brought you here. ("Curse that Isherwood!")I'd like to offer a related disorder, one that particularly affects critics. Go to a lot of dance or music or theatre and you … [Read more...]
We’re All For Technology Except When…
April 15, 2010 By Leave a Comment
Nick Carr has a great post about the course of technology development. Progress doesn't always go the way we think it ought to (even if we're right).Progress may, for a time, intersect with one's own personal ideology, and during that period one will become a gung-ho technological progressivist. But that's just coincidence. In the end, progress doesn't care about ideology. Those who think of themselves as great fans of progress, of technology's inexorable march forward, will change their tune as soon as progress destroys something they care … [Read more...]
Our culture is undergoing profound changes. Our expectations for what culture can (or should) do for us are changing. Relationships between those who make and distribute culture and those who consume it are changing. And our definitions of what artists are, how they work, and how we access them and their work are changing. So... 
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Lisa Hirsch on How Do You Promote Arts Blogs? (A Competition And A Rationale)
Thanks for the thoughtful comments! I have a response of my own posted. Both Elaine Fine (Musical Assumptions) and Zerbinetta...Patrick Vaz on How Do You Promote Arts Blogs? (A Competition And A Rationale)
Thanks for the interesting explanation of the reasoning behind the contest, and thanks for linking to me. One correction, however:...Mark Gerth on The Party of Can’t And Won’t (So Let’s Change The Conversation)
And before we get to far off into the weeds targeting "the party of can't and won't". It was in...Katrina S. Axelrod on The Party of Can’t And Won’t (So Let’s Change The Conversation)
Got 'em all done-even the candidates for office. KSAKatrina S. Axelrod on The Party of Can’t And Won’t (So Let’s Change The Conversation)
And here is my first letter: January 12, 2012 Dear Congressman Murphy, I hope all is well with you, congratulations to...Katrina S. Axelrod on The Party of Can’t And Won’t (So Let’s Change The Conversation)
Great idea- I'm going to contact my legislators and ask them what cultural institutions they have visited in the past...Margy Waller on The Party of Can’t And Won’t (So Let’s Change The Conversation)
Starting a New Conversation to Build Broad, Shared Support for the Arts - The Ripple Effects Report Doug is right! We...John Perreault on The Party of Can’t And Won’t (So Let’s Change The Conversation)
The arts make our lives better, a little less mean and nasty. The arts are pursued for human development ---...Suzanne Ishee on The Party of Can’t And Won’t (So Let’s Change The Conversation)
Great article, Doug, and further valid argument for changing the conversation. This is, I believe, exactly what Chairman Landesman...Steven Miller on The Party of Can’t And Won’t (So Let’s Change The Conversation)
Doug has written and easy piece - what's his suggestion to change the stupid argument from the right against the...