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Musicians Don’t Make Good Money From Streaming, But Is That Spotify’s Fault?

The amount of money people are spending on music hasn't changed from when we bought albums at the record store or CDs by Sony subscription service - but the way musicians get the money, and how much money they get, is radically different. "When we talk about per stream rates, what we’re doing is sort of smushing all of...

Charles Larson, Who Established Study Of African Literature In U.S. Academia, Dead At 83

"As a professor at American University in Washington, where he joined the faculty in 1970, Dr. Larson taught some of the first classes offered to U.S. students on African writers. At a time when the literary canon consisted almost entirely of works by British and American authors, he helped secure a place in American academia for writers including ...

Inside TikTok’s New Incubator For Black Creators

The app - long derided both for squelching LGBTQIA voices and exploiting Black creators - reacted to the George Floyd protests by starting an incubator for Black voices. How's it working now? "Program members bonded. ... They shared legal advice, sample media kits, tips on talking to potential agents or collaboration partners and the stresses of turning a hobby...

Shakespeare’s Globe’s Bumpy Return To Work

Not only are audience members (at a quarter of pre-COVID capacity) required to stay six feet from each other, so are all the actors and crew. That's presenting quite a traffic management puzzle for director Sean Homes as he restages his 2019 production of A Midsummer Night's Dream for the Elizabethan theatre's reopening. - The New York Times

Fear Of Deepfakes May Be Causing More Problems Than Deepfakes Themselves Are

Simon V.Z. Wood: "Searching for evidence that bad actors were weaponizing artificial intelligence for political gain, what I found instead was an emerging field of detection firms, government grantees, startups, academics, artists, and nonprofits that seemed to depend on one another to sustain interest in deepfakes. Call it the deepfake-industrial complex — or, perhaps, a solution in search of...

Okay, Public Radio: ‘Our Culture Of Host Hero Worship Creates Monsters, And It Is Long Past Time To Break This Cycle’

In the wake of Bob Garfield's firing from On the Media for what he's described as "anger mismanagement," Celeste Headlee — who endured mistreatment on and off the air as co-host of The Takeaway with the now-disgraced John Hockenberry — writes, "There is no such thing as a host who is 'too big to fail.' Executives in the past...

After Investigation, Embattled Head Of Americans For The Arts Departs Permanently

"Robert L. Lynch, the longtime president and chief executive of the Washington-based advocacy organization Americans for the Arts who had been on paid leave since December amid workplace complaints, has agreed to retire effective immediately, the organization's board announced Thursday." - The New York Times

Sexual Abuse In El Sistema, Long Rumored, Is Now Being Brought To Light

A Facebook post in late April from an alumna of Venezuela's famous system of free musical education "has since sparked a collective portrait of teenage girls in El Sistema being systematically groomed by older male teachers, with coercive innuendos and propositions as everyday occurrences." Said one former student of her oboe teacher, "His methods rested on an uplifting discourse...

Hermitage Museum Satellite In Barcelona Gets Go-Ahead

"The long-awaited Barcelona branch has finally been given the green light for development. The port of Barcelona's board of directors announced on Thursday that a proposal for the Hermitage Barcelona was approved, despite considerable resistance from the city authorities. The building, designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Toyo Ito, is slated to open in 2024." - ARTnews

Millions Lost: Australian Ballet Hit Harder By Pandemic Than Most Of Country’s Large Arts Orgs

"The Australian Ballet forfeited $32 million in ticket revenue for 2020, a pandemic blow that it has only survived thanks to an outpouring of community and government support, plus a decision to raid its reserves and sell off investments. … It bucks the trend of many other major arts organisations including Victorian Opera, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and...

How Economics Lost Its Imagination

Here’s the dirty little secret that few of my fellow economics professors will admit: As those “perfect” research papers have grown longer, they have also become less relevant. Fewer people — including academics — read them carefully or are influenced by them when it comes to policy. - Bloomberg

Maybe We Shouldn’t Dismiss Magic So Quickly?

"Despite the often blood-soaked history of the use of the term ‘magic’, we must remember that Western history is filled with thinkers who have defended its honour as good natural science – a tried-and-true technology for harnessing interactions between minds and bodies, human and otherwise. And their empirical claims were never tested more than during the centuries of plague."...

What Amazon’s Purchase Of MGM Means For The Streaming Wars

It's an inevitable progression, and not surprising Amazon would do it first. Unlike Netflix, it has failed to reliably produce original hits. And unlike, say, NBCUniversal, its corporate model isn’t solely entertainment. It’s also a cloud computing company, massive retailer, and grocery store chain, to name a few. It had a net income of more than $21 billion last...

Dozens Of Artists Commemorate Tulsa Race Riot In A City That Used Not to Let It Be Mentioned

“For generations, the worst event in Tulsa history wasn’t spoken about in public,” said Tulsa Mayor G.T. Bynum in a statement. “Today, artists are helping to educate and inform people all around the world about this tragedy—and by doing so honor the memory of our neighbors who were lost.” - Artnet

After 25 Years Leading Cincinnati Ballet, Victoria Morgan To Step Down

As one of the very few women to lead a major ballet company, Morgan championed women choreographers long before the rest of the dance world turned its attention to the lack of equity for women in the field. It has not been unusual for more than half of a season’s offerings to be choreographed by women. - Cincinnati...

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