[contextly_auto_sidebar id="Y8fDWKTQR4PySZdf0pqVQLolQa6bMrQS"] THE phrase "we love you people" may have a new resonance: Apple's purchase of Beats may mean Silicon Valley may be turning toward actual people as "curators" over the faceless algorithms it's been using. Years into a process by which your bookstore or record store clerk found himself made obsolete by an Amazon recommendation, this … [Read more...]
Archives for May 2014
Amazon vs. Hachette Fatal to Non-Superstar Authors
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="8GbWVEDH47AifqGz31d8Z6pNMkmzPLRY"] SO far most of the coverage of the battle between Amazon and the Hachette publishers has looked at the impact on bestselling authors like James Patterson and J.K. Rowling, whose work becomes harder to get or impossible to pre-order during the current feud. But a new story argues that the writers really hurt by this are lesser known … [Read more...]
The Savage Brilliance of Jo Nesbo
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="862z7etB0M2rQ0o5trkD8bwrkhOQ67rT"] THE Norwegian crime writer Jo Nesbo is being read and discussed on our shores these days, with a new novel, The Son, out earlier this month. (The book, set in Oslo, is not one of those built around troubled detective Harry Hole. I spoke to Nesbo when he and his publisher were making a big push into the U.S. market in the wake of … [Read more...]
Memories of the Elusive Eric Dolphy
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="gWxP2UlWmS5c3mIiMDSg5QhfQpx7pxO7"] OFTEN I wonder how the pressure on today's musicians and artists to constantly promote themselves would allow a musician like Eric Dolphy -- an introvert dedicated to his craft and someone who remains a kind of enigma -- to have a career and achieve even the low level of fame he had in the '60s. I'm still wondering, but I'm glad to … [Read more...]
Amazon’s Fight With Publisher Heats Up
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="KtshLQL3I8V52FO3GDD8ottfgo4Dzh5b"] THE battle between the online bookselling giant and the Hachette publishers has taken a nasty turn: Amazon has removed the pre-order button for some books, has removed the discount it usually offers for others, and is fighting with publishers over profits on ebooks. Bestselling writers like James Patterson, J.K. Rowling (pictured) … [Read more...]
Jaron Lanier on Moore’s Law
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="aip73amsvg3xUNYYXf6tSsLWbr1Rp29w"] I'M going back to the work of the dreadlocked writer/musician/digital skeptic this week because of a conversation that will appear soon. He's got a great few lines near the beginning of Who Owns the Future? -- recently out in paperback -- that sums up Moore's Law, as well as what's called Baumol's Curse, about as succinctly as I can … [Read more...]
Offshoring Hollywood Musicians
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="nyU3WlOOWJ6AtWo9GPWNXOReGdrv3jlA"] WHAT could be the first skirmish in a larger war is shaping up in Hollywood, where L.A. musicians are protesting a studio's hiring of foreign musicians. The protestors are telling the Lionsgate studio, which distributes the Hunger Games movies, to "stop sending musicians' jobs overseas." It comes after a protest by the American … [Read more...]
Art Critic Kenneth Clark: Savior or Snob?
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="2JRpGl1G6WEGCmBeZpJ8hGQwTyo0KCNg"] IT'S always easy to look back at cultural figures from earlier eras and denounce them as "elitists," and that's clearly what's happened to the great British art critic and interpreter Kenneth Clark. Through books on landscape and the nude, and his BBC television documentary series from 1969, Civilisation, Clark exposed an enormous … [Read more...]
Just How Bad is Amazon? A New Backlash
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="9ZV3e0kcKq8CTDdht2tTpvL5mUJdBAL3"] LAURA Miller is one of our day's most lively and credible writers on books and authors. In her latest Salon piece, she says goodbye to Amazon, and documents her frustration over the Hachette mess, in which the online service deliberately slows delivery of some publishers' books. The company's predatory, near monopolistic style … [Read more...]
Will Kickstarter Save Culture? And, Curvy Divas
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="OipGQdl5st5HpgJ16uvOZV10yHar99su"] WE'RE now five years past the launch of Kickstarter, and some culture hounds, a new Telegraph article says, refer to the eras "BK" and "AK" -- Before and After Kickstarter. What has it done for arts and culture projects? The story takes stock of the good and bad, and comes down mostly on the good the crowdfunding has done. It's been … [Read more...]