In the 1960s, Baumol was trying to understand the economics of the arts, and he noticed something surprising: Musicians weren’t getting any more productive — playing a piece written for a string quartet took four musicians the same amount of time in 1965 as it did in 1865 — yet musicians in 1965 made a lot more money than musicians in 1865.
Tag: 05.04.17
The NYC Public Library Currently Blocks 225,000 Kids From Checking Out Books. Should It?
“In their 2015 public tax returns, the city’s three independent library systems, the New York Public Library, the Queens Library and the Brooklyn Public Library, reported collecting a total of $5.5 million in fines. Just as adults discover they cannot renew their driving licenses if they have too many unpaid tickets, children discover that they lose library privileges if they rack up more than $15 in late fees. The library is the Department of Motor Vehicles on training wheels.”
The Library Of Congress’s Porn Collection (And How It Came To Define Obscenity)
“Libraries will often have a restricted collection—a locked case, a unit of shelving behind the circulation desk, or a special room—that requires readers to obtain permission from a librarian to view the books within. Very often the restricted materials contain explicit adult content or valuable illustrations. During and after World War II the Library of Congress held one of the largest collections in the world of this kind, composed mostly of erotica and items considered to be pornographic or obscene.”
Ticket-Pricing Strategies? The Scottish National Orchestra Has Figured It Out To Audience Goals
“Working in a multi-city and multi-venue environment requires an approach to pricing that is adaptable in the different marketplaces in which we operate. Pricing is therefore viewed as a flexible tool that helps us achieve the central and multiple imperatives of the organisation: generate revenue, encourage attendance, reach new audiences, offer new experiences and promote the artistic reputation of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. To translate these imperatives into tangible tactics, our pricing strategy focuses on the simple question: How do we want our audiences to behave? We have identified five behaviours.”
From Phone Sex To The Oscars – The Irrepressible Gabourey Sidibe
On her start after filming “Precious”: “Phone work paid well, but she quit to play Precious. Money was tight after the film wrapped; she was paid scale, about $2,500 a week, but it took a month for her to receive her first check. After “Precious” made its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in 2009, Ms. Sidibe experienced fame without fortune, riding subways and buses to red carpet events. Life at home was still precarious. On the morning of one event, her landlord tried to evict the family for what turned out to be a clerical error. Her income that year was about $50,000, just under half of which was from the phone-sex work — and almost double what her mother made, earning Ms. Sidibe head of household status on the family tax returns, a position that made her anxious.”
What’s All The Fuss Over The .Art Domain Name?
The pitch is that .art instantly creates an identity aligned with the art world; you can see plainly why Apple Inc. rushed to register iphone.art and facetime.art, among 36 domain names. During the preferred access period, which launched in December, more than 2,000 domains were purchased on .art by cultural organizations, as well as tech companies, luxury brands and banks. Instagram.art, Rolex.art and Beyonce.art were all snatched up. Ditto: .art domains for the Louvre, Tate and Centre Pompidou. Mega-gallery Hauser and Wirth celebrated its 25th anniversary with a special .art micro-site.
How The Feds Saved Literature In Tennessee
“This is the tale of how Tennessee literature was saved from a fate closely resembling oblivion by an unlikely hero: the United States government. Specifically, it was saved by the tiny portion of the US federal budget allocated to the National Endowment for the Humanities. More specifically, by the even tinier part of the federal budget that the NEH budget disburses to Humanities Tennessee, an independent affiliate of the national agency. The knight in shining armor who swooped in to save literature, it turns out, was Uncle Sam.”
Benjamin Millepied To Direct His First Movie
The director of L.A. Dance Project (and former director of the Paris Opera Ballet) will make a music-and-dance adaptation of Carmen, with the heroine crossing the deserts from Mexico to Los Angeles.
Biggest Podcast Ever? ‘S-Town’ Has More Than 40 Million Downloads In 30 Days
For comparison, the previous titleholder, S-Town‘s older sister Serial, averaged 4 million downloads per episode in the same time frame, and its studio grandparent, This American Life, gets around 2.2 million downloads each week.
How Hollywood Special Effects Production Was Outsourced To Far-Flung Corners
For Hollywood’s VFX workers, it’s easy to be nostalgic for a time when movies were made entirely in their own backyard. When I met with Squires in a Studio City coffee shop, he told me about making “Close Encounters” in two buildings, just one block apart, with Spielberg dropping in each week to check on the progress of different parts. Today’s business model is far more complex: The brain directing most of the action may be in one place (usually Los Angeles), but different arms are distributed around the globe, managing various shots, scenes and characters. Having all the world’s vendors to choose from allows movie studios to mix and match different VFX houses like “flavors of ice cream.”