Publishers, record labels, digital distributors, streaming music services – these days it seems like everyone involved in creative works can earn some money except the creators themselves. (Rosanne Cash earned $114 from 600,000 streaming audio plays.) Here are the stories of two struggles – by John Steinbeck’s descendants and by one particular singer-songwriter grand-nephew and his partner – to claw some income back.
Tag: 08.07.14
Hachette’s Plan To Buy Perseus Books Group Falls Through
“Although no one would comment on the particulars, Perseus’s unique position in the book world could have made valuing the company difficult, especially the company’s distribution arm; there has not been a major sale of a distributor since the beginning of the digital book age.”
Colorizing “Nebraska” And The Danger Lurking In Digitized Filmmaking
“Digital presentations of content in general make it a lot easier to deliver things in lots and lots of different ways. It’s good to have flexibility, but it also means there might be a point where it becomes almost impossible to make your vision available to people without agreeing in advance to make it customizable to the point where it ceases to be art at all.”
You Know Who Else Is Worried About The Met Opera Negotiations? Cinema Owners
“Movie theater owners throughout the world are fretting over the possibility of a lockout at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. The Met’s live broadcasts into theaters on Saturdays have generated an estimated $300 million since Julie Taymor’s production of Mozart’s The Magic Flute was beamed into cinemas in 2006.”
ABT Donates Archives To Library Of Congress
“Officials at ABT said on Thursday that the New York company is donating its archives of more than 50,000 items of visual and written documentation to the Library of Congress. The donation coincides with ABT’s coming 75th anniversary celebrations.”
Fragmenting Of Audiences Is Changing The Movie And TV Business
“Although there has always been a range of possibilities and venues within the arts — from community theater to Broadway, from art-house films to summer blockbusters, from the Cinema Bar to the Fabulous Forum — modern technology has brought entertainment more than ever into line with this existential state of affairs. We now live in the age of the microaudience.”
Has Netflix Become More Important Than HBO?
“HBO’s success in the 21st century is all about its own shows, not the movies that come on in between. Similarly, Netflix subscriptions have surged as the company gains a name for itself as a producer of its own great shows, and it plans to start making even more. To make HBO money, it seems, Netflix will keep trying to become more like HBO.”
Here’s A Map Of 2000 Years Of Cultural History
“Mapping the geography of cultural migration does gives you some insight about how the kind of culture we value has shifted over the centuries. It’s also a novel lens through which to view our more general history, as those migration trends likely illuminate bigger historical happenings like wars and the building of cross-country infrastructure. At the end of the video you see Florida blowing up in red. More proof that indeed, the sunshine state is a damn nice place to die.”
900 Authors Protest Amazon (It’s Gotten Personal)
“I knew you were going to take a hit, but I had no idea it would be like this. Are you worried? Because you should be. What if Amazon says, ‘Why should we sell Doug Preston’s books? He’s a thorn in our sides.’ Guess what? All this goes away.”
Seeing What “The Sun Also Rises” Might Have Been But Wasn’t
Ian Crouch explores the various drafts, notes and edits included in a new edition of Hemingway’s novel.