June 2019

Hi folks, I have a few updates to share, including the reader survey results and advising of a change to the publishing schedule. Firstly, I’ve decided to postpone the introduction of paid subscriptions. I had planned to launch that on 1 July, but I think the content and its format still needs more work. My…

Hi all, Last month I started my newsletter, Cybercultural. As I prepare to launch paid subscriptions on 1 July, I would really appreciate your feedback on the content so far. Please click here to participate in a reader survey. Almost all of the 8 questions are multi-choice or similar, so this will be quick and…

Can Artificial Intelligence create music you want to listen to, TV you want to watch, books you want to read, or news you want to consume? If the industry news feeds I’ve been tracking daily are any indication, the answer is increasingly ‘yes’. Although after doing my own research today, I discovered that AI is…

In news that will have significant implications for the online economy in the West, Facebook announced today “a global cryptocurrency” called Libra that will be managed by an alliance of 100 companies. It also announced a digital wallet called Calibra, which will be run by a subsidiary of Facebook also called Calibra. In this edition…

Note: a new feature debuting today is ‘Takeaways’, a bullet point list at the end of this article summarizing key points for cultural sectors. Last week Mary Meeker delivered her annual Internet Trends report and as usual it was chock full of useful data. This slide was one of a number that caught my eye:…

For today’s newsletter I interviewed Jonathan Gardner, Chief Communications Officer at music distribution and marketing company Believe and its subsidiary TuneCore. We discussed the music industry’s transition from ‘label services’ to ‘artist services,’ Believe’s hybrid record label business model, what insights artists can glean from streaming data, and finally the digital tools that Gardner himself…

I’ve just finished watching the HBO-Sky miniseries, Chernobyl. It was by far the best new tv series I’ve seen all year – a horrifying true story told in a masterful way by its writer, director, and actors. About midway through binging the five episodes, I discovered there was a companion podcast. It’s hosted by NPR’s…

BroadwayHD, a Netflix-like streaming service that offers over 300 Broadway shows on-demand, went on a PR offensive over the weekend. It was timed to coincide with the 73rd annual Tony Awards, which took place last night at Radio City Music Hall in NYC. Articles in The Washington Post, USA Today and CNET all talked up…

Getting 1,000 true, paying fans is harder than it’s made out to be in Silicon Valley, not to mention the Amanda Palmer-loving pop music media. Yet for all its difficulties, crowdfunding – along with its now trendier cousin, subscriptions – is still a viable business model for people in the cultural industries. Although, the recent…

All cultural sectors need to focus on reaching audiences online nowadays, whether it’s the arts, music, tv, books, the GLAM sector, or others. If you have a cultural product to sell or pitch, then you need to go where most of your potential audience hangs out out each day: social media, and most often using…