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Fake Music Is Taking Over Streaming Algorithms

Can you really reach a larger audience by getting on a background jazz playlist than taking home the most coveted Grammy? I hate to share the bad news, my friends, but the world has changed. - Ted Gioia

Will Broadway’s Next Big Hit Be Found On TikTok?

TikTok is a new frontier for investors and producers to find new works—and for creators to create and promote them—but it remains to be seen whether it can translate into a viable new model for live theater. - Fast Company

A Panel Discussion Gives Away A Toxic Architecture Culture

What began as a SCI-Arc panel on the professional aspects of working in architecture mushroomed into a full-blown controversy that has led to the suspension of two faculty members at L.A.'s famously avant-garde architecture school. - Los Angeles Times

High School Cancels Musical After It Opens Because Of “Mature” Themes

The musical, a high school adaptation of the Broadway show “Be More Chill,” was scheduled to run Thursday through Sunday, according to signs posted at the school. The signs advise “mature themes - parental guidance suggested.” - Modesto Bee

Russian Artists, Ukrainian Artists, Cancel Culture

While the world debates whether to cancel or to welcome artists and writers who suddenly feel like leaving Russia amidst its economic collapse, it neglects the crucial question: will Russia succeed in executing Ukrainian culture once again? - Eurozine

Plagiarism Lawsuits Are Multiplying In The Age Of Streaming

In an age of YouTube and Spotify, how do we know if one artist heard another artist’s song, especially if they are relatively unknown, or if they both had the same idea? - The Guardian

Inside A London Toe Shoe Factory

Freed of London, based in Hackney, has been making pointe shoes for almost a century. But while being one of the only producers of the shoes in the UK means that business is booming, the technique has been added to a red list of endangered crafts at risk of being lost. - BBC

Converting Odessa’s Catacombs Into Bomb Shelters

The Ukrainian port city of Odesa sits atop a labyrinth of catacombs—technically, limestone quarries—which constitute perhaps the world’s largest network of urban tunnels, extending ten stories deep and tracing some fifteen hundred miles beneath the streets. - The New Yorker

What’s Up With Pop Music’s Addiction To Nostalgia?

What explains our love of throwback sounds right now? Are we comfort-listening through hard times? Or is the industry just finally able to see (and monetize) a type of listening we’ve always done? - The Atlantic

How Book Customers Browse For Books

To create a space that is intentional in its gathering of materials meant to provide intellectual and literary stimulation, a space wholly devoted to books, be it a bookstore, a library, or a personal collection, is to understand the fulfillment provided by the activity of rumination and reflection. - Slate

Finland Says Seized Russian Art Should Be Returned

The paintings and sculptures, valued at 42 million euros ($46 million), had been on loan from Russian museums to institutions in Italy and Japan. They were seized last weekend in Finland on suspicion of contravening European Union sanctions imposed following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. - The New York Times

International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) Picks A New Leader

George E. Lewis, a professor of music at Columbia University known for his groundbreaking work in electronics, will take the helm as artistic director later this month. Lewis, 69, a trombonist and frequent collaborator with the ensemble, will be the first Black leader in its 21-year history. - The New York Times

An AI Breakthrough In Creating Images

"One way you can think about this neural network is transcendent beauty as a service,” says Ilya Sutskever, cofounder and chief scientist at OpenAI. “Every now and then it generates something that just makes me gasp." - MIT Review

The Heart Of Video Game Culture

“Film has Cannes. Video games have G.D.C.,” Marie Foulston, a London-based curator and producer of video-game and digital-art exhibitions, told me. “It has become a nexus, or focal point, for video-game culture.” - The New Yorker

What, Exactly, Is The Point Of The Venice Biennale?

Looking at the superyachts in the Grand Canal, that the Biennale is a prism of wealth inequality that we’re effectively sanctioning. We go anyway, get numb, tell ourselves it’s important to meet people and grasp the current narrative. But you can’t really grasp it on any kind of granular level. - ArtReview

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