Tech, Philanthropy, Composing
There’s been a lot of great discussion of arts entrepreneurship on NewMusicBox recently. There’s a lot of good stuff there, and also plenty I disagree with. The emphasis on arts entrepreneurship in education in particular has come under some fire. Teaching young artists this stuff is about helping them to survive in an unfair world. …
Continue reading “Arts Entrepreneurship is a Resistance Movement”
There’s a lot non-profits can learn from the tech industry. Of course, when I say that, sometimes people think I mean that non-profits should emulate startups and their culture, complete with the venture capital, the ping pong, and the gender equity issues. Unsurprisingly, that’s not what I mean. For more on the tech sector’s issues …
Continue reading “How Non-Profits Can Learn From Tech Startups”
I’ve been talking a fair amount recently about the dangers of “data adjacent decision making.” This happens when you have a lot of numbers, and probably a graph, and you put them next to a decision, and then believe that your decision is based on solid scientific reasoning. I’ve seen this danger crop up in …
Last month I gave a hybrid talk at the Rhymes with Opera summer training program for singers and composers. Part of it was based on the same material as my talk for Fresh Inc., and the other part concerned my approach to putting music in theater. For the last few years I’ve been experimenting with …
It was only a matter of time. It used to be that social networking was a specialized feature that was only done by specialized websites. Then social became a must-have feature for everyone. That’s what’s happening now to crowdfunding. YouTube is adding a tip feature to its channel, announced in this blog post: Fan Funding: …
Continue reading “YouTube launches Crowdfunding as a feature”
Last week I returned to the Fresh Inc Festival to speak about arts entrepreneurship (and specifically crowdfunding) to a group of young composers and performers. I was a little worried about doing the same talk over again, but as I began preparing my notes for the talk, I realized that wasn’t going to be a …
At New Music USA, where I work, we publish NewMusicBox. Coincidentally, NewMusicBox is turning 15 years old this month, and there’s a great series of posts examining the site’s history (in related news, you should make a donation to keep the site going for another 15 years). Occasionally I’ll contribute an article to the site, …
Rachel Fershleiser once said “If I die, tell the New York Times I liked soup.” Then she made this soup zine with her friend Ami Greko. I think the Times will be able to figure it out on their own. Most of the zine (which you should buy at Housingworks) is made up of recipes, …
I had a chastising blog post all set to go. I was going to criticize Kickstarter’s decision, their slow response, and poor handling of the whole mess. Given how much I write about, talk about, and think about Kickstarter, I had to say something. Especially given how much I push young artists in their direction, …
Continue reading “That damnable pick up artist Kickstarter.”
In a lot of ways this is the fourth post in my oft-referred-to Kickstarter planning series from back in the day, and from over in the sidebar. This is the as-prepared text of my talk for The Fresh Inc Festival, which is happening right now in and around Chicago and Milwaukee. The talk is specifically …
So this is hypothetical-business-model-for-modern-artists-type-post. On the latest episode of Actually Happening, we were discussing a secret society called The Supreme Tribe of Ben Hur. They got started after a secret society promoter (actual job!) asked the author for secret society rights (really). The members were quite silly, like the Freemasons, before becoming the USA Life …
I love helping artists be better at the career side of things, so I’m ecstatic to be speaking next month at the Fresh Inc Festival. Fifth House have put together an awesome program for emerging musicians, mixing awesome new music and career skills. I’m going to be talking about crowdfunding (shocker) and about New Music …
