I don’t intend for my weblog to become a techno/trend rag, but I’ll admit to a strange fascination for how new technologies change our behavior, or expose behaviors that have always been there. One particularly interesting question for me is how we cluster our cultural preferences (and how arts organizations do it for us). The […]

I realize it’s odd for an arts and culture business weblog to talk about pizza delivery, but Super Fast Pizza in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, deserves the nod. The company has radically rethought the pizza delivery process to connect with what customers want (fast, hot, tasty). One if the biggest problems with that connection, they […]

Businessweek has an interesting update/overview on Clear Channel Communications, and the current effort of the media and entertainment mega-company to disassemble itself. The company has proposed spinning off its live entertainment division (which owns theaters, productions, agents, and such) into a separate corporation. Says the article: From the beginning, Wall Street never much liked the […]

Just a quick note today to welcome the newest ArtsJournal blogger, jazz journalist and author Doug Ramsey. I used to work in the communications office of Berklee College of Music in Boston, academic home to many jazz greats. So I’m eager to read. Welcome aboard Doug!

I talked about ”podcasting” way back in December, and suggested it was an interesting technology/trend to watch. The technology showed up again in an entry earlier this month, as a rogue group of art lovers were creating and distributing their own audio guides to MoMA exhibits. Now, there are lots of reasons to pay even […]

Several sources are talking about a new musician’s contract at the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony (the New York Times had a piece this Sunday, drawing from an earlier article in Andante, and discussed today at length by my weblog neighbor, Drew McManus). Says the Times: The Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony, one of Japan’s top-tier orchestras, has its […]

KCRW’s radio show, The Business, has a great segment on the world’s most popular mobile phone ring tone, and its strange and backward route to the top (you can listen to the show on-line, the story is about 14 minutes in). Here’s their short description of the story: …a song made from a cell phone […]

A colleague of mine espouses what he calls the ”mushroom method” of managing a board of directors: keep them in the dark, and every now and then shovel crap on them (he uses an alternate word for ”crap”). That method may have been a factor at the Milwaukee Public Museum, based on the news flowing […]

The quest for quality exhibit space has finally stretched to the final frontier with this study of possible cultural uses of the international space station (or read the Guardian story on the effort). The European Space Agency has funded The Arts Catalyst in London to carry out the project, which ends this month (so get […]

It’s kinda cool when the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) turns its gaze in our general direction. And it’s especially cool when their work takes such a radical turn from economic policy, currency dynamics, stock markets, and international trade to talk about Rock and Roll. Rockonomics: The Economics of Popular Music, co-written by Princeton […]