Claim: Boston Theatre Critics Reward Unadventurous Most Popular While Art (And Artists) Suffer

“Technological change, along with its radical re-structuring of the American economy, is decimating the business of culture and throttling artists, particularly those just starting out. Jonathan Taplin’s excellent new volume Move Fast and Break Things: How Facebook, Google, and Amazon Cornered Culture and Undermined Democracy explores the ways that the mind-boggling concentration of power in the hands of internet monopolies is widening the gulf between the haves and the have-nots, especially those in the arts. The major players (stars, etc) benefit from centralized control of eyeballs. The big names are raking in bigger bucks than before, while those lower down on the food chain — artists and groups who decades ago were able to make a middle class living through their efforts — are getting less and less.”