So, if your teenager turns out to be a tech savant who builds an app that ranks in the top ten on iTunes, are you going to let him drop out of school to become an entrepreneur? About fifteen years ago, when my eldest was just starting Kindergarten, I sat with my friend the political operative and made some predictions ...

Last week, Pandora CEO Tim Westergren, appearing on a forum called PandoMonthly, said a strange thing while defending against criticisms streaming services received in 2013 from name-brand artists.  He said the following:  “The industry has for a long time been propped up by a product where you’re paying $20 for something you really wanted to pay $1 for.  Maybe you ...

A new report released today by the International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA) offers the following big headlines for FY2012:  the copyright industries, for the first time, contributed over $1 trillion to the U.S. economy, accounting for nearly 6.5% of GDP; these industries represent nearly 5% of all private-sector jobs (5.4 million) in the U.S.; these industries grew at an aggregate ...

First of all, name if you can the serious competitors of any of the following: Facebook, YouTube, Amazon, eBay, Twitter, Google. Go back ten years, name the biggest sites on the web, and you might notice that some of those names are either gone or really quite small compared to the dominant sites today. It isn’t even necessarily sinister, but it is a fact that the ...

 “People tend to want artists to do the same thing, and it is incumbent upon artists to do something that the audience doesn’t want — yet.” This quote comes from composer, artist, and producer T Bone Burnett in a recent Q&A with The Hollywood Reporter that has been circulating over the past week. The whole article is worth a read ...

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