Every week, we find the most interesting and important stories at the intersection of the Arts, technology, and business and share them with you. (If you’d like to get these in your e-mail inbox you can subscribe to here).
Check back every week for insightful and eye-opening stories that peaked our interest, and hopefully yours too.
OPINION: Higher education in the arts is in crisis, and now is the time to reform it.
“These events surface structural, cultural, and economic questions about the sustainability and relevance of art in higher education — questions that must be faced and addressed by faculty and administrators everywhere.”
Report exposes widespread abuses in ticketing industry in New York.
“The report also notes common practices in the music industry that are not illegal but make it difficult for ordinary fans to get tickets. Among those are so-called holds, in which large blocks of tickets are withheld for performers or sponsors; and special presales, in which tickets are offered to credit card holders or members of fan clubs.”
Former Powerball Winner spends newfound wealth funding new plays.
“Even with the rights, which allowed us to pursue the writing and adaptation, we were never sure how to actually produce it[…] So we’d been going back and forth about how to produce this, and along came Roy Cockrum, who was a theater person who devoted himself to a monastic life, left that, and won the lottery.”
Spotify is ready to introduce video to their streaming music platform.
“Spotify, which is valued at more than $8.5 billion, is entering a crowded realm, where platforms like YouTube, Facebook and Snapchat increasingly dominate Web video. David Anderson, an executive at United Talent Agency, said that Spotify will have a solid chance to compete, given its elegant user interface and its technology prowess.”
Crunching the numbers behind the boom in private art museums.
“The report’s most startling statistic may be that 53% of the world’s private contemporary art museums were founded between 2001 and 2010.”
How music festivals shape cities.
“Festivalization is the idea that urban placemakers develop event-based cultural policies in response to increasing post-industrial consumption, urban tourism, intense inter-city competition, and place branding. I argue that the success of festivalization is in the impermanence of events: Ephemerality is a feature, not a flaw.”
Epic monkey selfie case finally thrown out by SF Judge
“The dismissal last Friday comes a few weeks after the same San Francisco-based federal court ruled that a monkey couldn’t hold a copyright to a photo because, well, it’s a monkey. Orrick wrote that federal copyright statutes don’t mention animals, and that such questions were better addressed to Congress.”