Can an indie label with great taste save the music industry?
Editor's note: The arts face monumental challenges on every front. The double-shot of a recession and the growth of the Internet have helped push Borders into bankruptcy, regional arts groups to the...
View ArticleThe creative class is a lie
Someday, there will be a snappy acronym for the period we're living though, but right now -- three years after the crash of 2008 -- American life is a blurry, scratched-out page that's hard to read....
View ArticleYour favorite author, brought to you by a wealthy patron
A passage from Stephen Greenblatt's new book, "Swerve," on Renaissance book culture, has this to say about how writers paid their bills several centuries ago:Authors made nothing from the sale of their...
View ArticleCan Harper Perennial reinvent publishing?
Just over two years ago, an Atlanta writer named Blake Butler submitted a story to Cal Morgan’s short fiction website, Fifty-Two Stories. Morgan, the editorial director of Harper Perennial, was so...
View ArticleDoes culture really want to be free?
Over the last few weeks, Salon has been looking at the destruction of the creative class by the Internet, the recession and a transforming economy. A new book, "Free Ride," by the journalist Robert...
View ArticleArt in Crisis: The plight of independent bookstores
For independent booksellers -- and their supporters nationwide -- this week has had its ups and downs.On the bright side, St. Mark's Bookshop -- the beleaguered New York City icon -- seems to have...
View ArticleIn an iTunes age, do we need the record store?
On Wednesday night, hundreds of people passed through the doors of Other Music, one of New York City's last remaining record stores. Yes, there was free booze. But the young, plugged-in crowd came to...
View ArticleThe clerk, RIP
He may not look much like Justin Timberlake, but Jeff Miller is something of a Hollywood player. Or, rather, he was --- until he got a call on Labor Day from his employers, the owners of the best and...
View ArticleIndies battle Amazon — by becoming publishers
Of all the booksellers I’ve met over the years, no doubt the busiest is Mitchell Kaplan. In addition to overseeing Miami’s venerated Books & Books stores, Kaplan is a co-founder of the Miami Book...
View ArticleThe arts funding war the left will always lose
Mitt Romney said last week he’ll kick funding for the arts and public broadcasting to the curb if he gets to be president.“We’re not going to kill Big Bird, but Big Bird is going to have...
View ArticleCan music learn from the slow-food movement?
This past summer, Zenph Sound Innovations had a problem. Zenph is a North Carolina-based company specializing in computer-generated "re-performances" of classic recordings with astounding results. But...
View ArticleThe architecture meltdown
When the Great Recession dawned, architecture was the glamour profession of the creative class. Extravagant, signature buildings – Frank Gehry’s titanium-clad Guggenheim Museum in Spain’s Basque...
View ArticleThe Internet makes magic disappear
In 1998, my father riffled a red deck of playing cards while we attended a family reunion on the outskirts of Bogota, Colombia. He asked me to pick one, and I told him to stop when his fingers reached...
View ArticleNo sympathy for the creative class
They’re pampered, privileged, indulged – part of the “cultural elite.” They spend all their time smoking pot and sipping absinthe. To use a term that’s acquired currency lately, they’re entitled. And...
View ArticleSteal this album: What happens if no one pays for music?
One of the disorienting things about technological change is the way it can take people who would otherwise be on the same side and pit them against each other. Consider the fight that’s broken out...
View ArticleBook publishing crisis: Capitalism kills culture
Around the same time a devastating hurricane smashed and flooded its way up the East Coast, leaving millions homeless or without power, another storm collided into a professional subculture based in...
View ArticleDid the American songbook kill jazz?
At first, it sounds like a mistake: The opening notes are blurred, like something has gone a bit wrong in either the playing or the recording. But after a few bars, we realize that these bent tones...
View ArticleCan unions save the creative class?
Being a musician is a good job, but that doesn’t mean it’s okay to go broke doing it. --David ByrneThey’re just for hard hats. They peaked around the time Elvis was getting big. They killed Detroit....
View ArticleForget copyright! We’ve always stolen music
Copying and property have always functioned in dynamic tension. The music and movie industries may like people to believe that the morality of copyright is absolute and self-evident — “You wouldn’t...
View ArticleJaron Lanier: The Internet destroyed the middle class
Jaron Lanier is a computer science pioneer who has grown gradually disenchanted with the online world since his early days popularizing the idea of virtual reality. “Lanier is often described as...
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