By revenue, the nonprofit arts sector is small — about $73 billion in organizational spending compared to $1.17 trillion in total US arts and cultural production. Disney’s annual revenue alone is larger than every US nonprofit cultural institution in the country combined. But the map of audience shows something entirely different.
AJ Chronicles: What Habermas Feared for our Public Sphere
This week we collected 118 stories. It’s worth noting, I think, that attempts to address the current collapse of the non-profit culture sector are focused on changing market forces. But this is a larger, more systemic set of issues that has corroded all of civic life — from culture to education to journalism to our politics — and the institutions and structures that nurture it. Indeed, these forces are so much bigger than any one sector, it’s difficult to know where to start in addressing them.
Paramount and Live Nation/Ticketmaster Won Big Last Week: Here’s why Orchestras and Theatres (and Consumers) Lost
Two huge culture industry deals in the past week, both in entertainment, and maybe they don’t seem connected. Certainly not connected to non-profit arts. But these are exactly the kind of culture infrastructure deals that should worry anyone in the commercial or non-profit culture business because they impact us all. Here’s why.
Did the Supreme Court just unleash the Era of Radioactive Artist IP?
Authorship used to be a status granted by an act of creation. Now it will be a status you will have to defend through paperwork. We have moved from the era of the romantic “lone genius” to the era of the administrative author who will need to “prove” the machine didn’t make it.
How Digital AI Twins could Transform how We Make Art
The Digital Twin idea is the notion of looking at something — an organization, an eco-system, a city — and measuring and defining it in as many meaningful ways as possible and creating a digital representation in which elements can be changed or manipulated to see how the rest of the model reacts.
How Subsidy for Big Tech Wrecked the Arts (and Journalism)
Companies like Netflix, Amazon, Facebook, Spotify, Apple and Google have subsidized what they offer (super-cheap or free content, faster service and better accessibility) to capture audience and attention in ways that have played havoc with culture producers and artists everywhere, whether or not they create on any of these platforms.
Inflection Point? A Crisis in Paying for Culture in the Age of Abundance
Our consumption of culture has never been higher. So why are culture producers melting down?
The UnderTow: Subscriptions are the New Business Model of Choice. So Why are Subscriptions Failing in the Arts?
Is it the subscription model that’s not working or is it the way the arts do subscriptions?
#2. Five Observations about COVID and the Arts: The Great Resignation and Beyond
The arts workforce, and those being recruited into it, is changing. “We’ve never had as many openings at one time. And we recognize that in hiring so many positions at once, we have a huge responsibility — and opportunity.”
Observations on the Arts 18 Months into COVID: Finances
Many arts organizations are coming out of the COVID shutdown in better financial shape than they were going in.
Business Models and a $9 Billion Idea
We need a significant, stable ongoing source of new funding that is politically insulated and inflation-proof.
Five Things to Fix in the Arts
The shutdown has suspended usual rules, positions and behaviors, suggesting there may be opportunities to not just rethink but take action.
Arts: Rebuild What? And Why?
You can see this as nothing but loss. Or perhaps some of our most intractable debates are now suddenly shaken free of their old moorings.
Killing NEA, NEH And PBS Is Just Collateral Damage In The Commodification Of American Values
So it begins. A report in The Hill, then picked up in the Washington Post, says that the Trump administration intends to eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities and sell off PBS. It’s part of a plan to cut some $10.5 trillion over the next decade. Zeroing […]
Some Of Our Orchestras Seem To Be Thriving – Is This A New Trend?
There’s been a change in the news coming out of symphony orchestras over the past summer. Usually there’s a background drumbeat of struggle as orchestras fight to stay alive. But for months now, the beat has shifted, and we’re hearing about orchestras that are not only surviving but thriving. Yes, Fort Worth Symphony musicians are […]