Embed from Getty Images In the Fall of 1977, just weeks before gay rights activist Harvey Milk won a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, the English rock band Queen released the album News of the World. The LP included a short, heavily-rhythmic single called “We Will Rock You”, which typically segues into the anthemic “We Are the ...

And I’ve never owned a David Bowie tee-shirt.  Or any Bowie merchandise other than his albums. But like tens of millions around the world, who are today mourning the loss of one of music’s best loved, most diverse, and most influential artists, I sure as hell have long been a fan. Oddly enough, I had in mind to buy Bowie’s ...

Embed from Getty Images In a wonderful book called The Battle for Christmas, author Stephen Nissenbaum relates the evolution of this holiday from its pagan roots to the modern Christmas as it came to be celebrated in the United States. He tells us that in agrarian England most labor would be done by December and that it was often a ...

According to Peter Kafka writing for re/code, the fact that Adele has broken all-time records with sales of her new album “25” while simultaneously rejecting streaming services is too much of an oddity to provide any guidance for music professionals vis-a-vis their business models.  Kafka writes the following: “If you are looking for big lessons in Adele’s success selling more ...

In a Thanksgiving announcement, veteran photojournalist Yunghi Kim created ten $1,000 grants to be awarded one time to ten photographers.  The $10,000 kitty fueling this generous gift came from awards to Kim paid by copyright infringers of her work, and she states her reasons for creating the grants thus: “I am doing this to emphasize the importance of copyright registration of ...

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