Tag: 12.29.16

Inside The Sistine Chapel Choir: A Singer Tells All (Well, Most)

The Vatican’s flagship chorus got a bad reputation during the late 20th century (you may have heard its wobbly yelling on TV when a pope died), but Pope Benedict hired a new director to raise standards, and there’s been real progress. The choir’s only English member tells what it’s like to have a job today in what’s probably the world’s oldest vocal ensemble.

Joyce’s ‘Portrait Of The Artist’ At 100: Colm Tóibín On The Book’s Ongoing Relevance

“When I read the hellfire sermon in A Portrait, I had heard some of those very words, even though I was born 40 years after the book came out. The Christmas dinner scene, with the bitter argument about Parnell between Stephen’s father and his aunt, could easily have come from many Irish tables in the 1970s and ’80s … Since corporal punishment in schools continued until as recently as the early ’80s, anyone who had the misfortune to be educated by priests or Christian Brothers (or indeed nuns) would have fully recognised the scene where Stephen is unfairly punished. It happened to us all.”

How An Artist In 1915 Pointed The Way To Today’s Robots

“By mixing moving bodies with mechanically repeating geometries, Oskar Schlemmer pointed us at today’s world of work, where automation is everywhere in the transcendent projects of globalizing neo-liberalism. Yet the smooth, cute, and joyous mood of Schlemmer’s robotic sensibility conveys something that at least temporarily alleviates the feeling that we are living in an epoch of click-bait robotics fueled by predatory virtual capital, where memes and farcical fragments of vanity culture keep repeating before our eyes, ad infinitum.”

How Art Auctioneers Get Buyers Riled Up Enough To Pay Tens Of Millions For One Painting

“With such astonishing sums of money being tossed around, one might assume that art buyers are making cool, levelheaded decisions, especially when they’re in a room full of people they know and are trying to impress. This is often not the case. To the contrary, scientists see mounting evidence of ‘auction psychology’.” Here’s how it works.

How Music Streaming Is Changing The Ways Artists Think About Their Music

It’s a cliche of course that tools define the art. The recording industry is declaring 2016 the year that streaming became the primary way people are getting their music. But it’s not just that streaming is a vehicle. It’s changing the ways artists are thinking about their projects.

Streaming music services such as Apple Music, Spotify and Tidal are shifting not just how music is consumed, but increasingly how it is funded, created and marketed. The talk of the industry is increasingly about playlists and how labels and artists can seed their music into high-rotation mixes on streaming services to blend their new offerings with old favourites.

When vinyl ruled, musicians thought about creating albums of songs, some using the form to create series of songs that fit together or played off one another. Downloading killed the album as listeners went directly for the songs they were after.

But as streaming has become the preferred format and playlists are a thing again, artists are playing with the format.

Where downloads and playlists favored the lone song, streaming gives the artist and the album a fighting chance again. Anyone interested in a particular artist, from die-hard fans to novelty seekers, can listen to a whole album repeatedly — not just song samples, not just YouTube choices — and let subtler material sink in. Musicians don’t need to think so exclusively about what sounds, beats and structures the radio gatekeepers will allow; they can get poetic, political, sonically weird or all of the above. While big and glossy still works, it’s just possible that odd and heartfelt will, too.

And because streaming reveals precisely how people are listening, artists can see exactly what works and what doesn’t:

Because streaming services automatically count clicks, they make it possible to tabulate more precisely what people are listening to. In years past, a sale of a disc or a download revealed only that the transaction had been made. But a streaming service knows exactly how many plays every song is getting; it measures usage beyond the one-time purchase. And those streaming statistics, along with sales and radio plays, are now included in compiling the pop charts (though it takes 1,500 streams to equal one album sale purchase). The combination of sales, radio and streaming is arguably a far more accurate assessment of which music is finding an audience at any given moment. And because the music business, like all creative industries, runs on ego as well as revenue, a higher chart position is positive feedback for a star who’s thinking about taking chances.

Even better, streaming changes the incentives for listeners. Paying for individual songs as downloads tore apart the album; getting a song legally for 99 cents was a commitment, one that limited the audience for the album cuts beyond radio-approved, video-promoted hits.

Inevitably this will change our expectations about music and what artists give us. And the business model that supports music. Not a minute too soon.