30 Ways to Revitalize Arts & Culture

I can dream, can't I?

People say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.

So I’m sharing my dream list today—30 ways to revitalize arts and culture.

I sent this to premium subscribers last year, but I’m now updating it and removing the paywall. So it’s available for everybody.

Feel free to pass this on to others (and maybe invite them to join our community).

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30 Steps to Revitalize Arts & Culture

Some of these recommendations may seem frivolous or outrageous. Those are the ones I like best.

1.

Super Bowl halftime should be a musical showcase for the host city. If the game is in New Orleans, let’s see the greatest New Orleans musicians. If the game is in Detroit, let Motown rule.

New Jersey has dibs on Springsteen. Houston gets Beyoncé. Minneapolis has Dylan. If Las Vegas gets the nod, bring out the hippest casino lounge acts in Sin City.

[When I first published this, several readers suggested that Prince would be more appropriate than Dylan for a Super Bowl in Minneapolis. I’ll let you try to guess why I didn’t mention him.]

The next Super Bowl will be played in Silicon Valley (45 miles south of San Francisco). What local talent should they showcase?

My requirements are as follows: A city can feature any artist who resides or was born within 250 miles of the stadium. Maybe I’ll allow an exception for musicians who lived in the city for at least ten years before moving elsewhere.

This would be so much more exciting than the current fare. Genuine musical rivalries would spring up between cities, and residents would learn about their own local and regional culture.

P.S. If a host city is embarrassed by its paltry music culture, maybe it should do something about it.

2.

If I’m king, I’ll require top executives of dominant music platforms to submit to a simple ear and music aptitude test:

• Can they hum back melodies after hearing them once?

• Can they play an instrument?

• Can they identify intervals and basic chords progressions by ear? (Hah!)

• Can they shake a tambourine without losing the beat?

• Can they even sing “Happy Birthday” in tune?

• Etc. etc.

There are no penalties—I am a lenient monarch—but the results will be made public. If Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, wants to dominate our music culture, let’s see if he knows bugger all about it.

Even better: Let’s televise this as a competition. It could be the dark twin of American Idol—maybe every week, we allow one or two CEOs to exit shamefully from the competition, but only after demonstrating their incompetence in front of a live audience.

After a couple of seasons of this, companies will start hiring execs who love and know music. That can’t be a bad thing.

3.

Let’s launch a National Culture Bee on the model of the National Spelling Bee and National History Bee. If students can be rewarded for learning how to spell autochthonous, they also deserve to be rewarded for learning about novelists, philosophers, painters, saxophonists, choreographers, composers, dramatists, etc.

4.

Community bookstores that offer at least 10 readings or community cultural events per month will qualify for non-profit status. But these must be real community bookstores—majority owned by people living in the community, and selling actual books (not jigsaw puzzles, calendars, greeting cards, etc.).

5.

All Grammy Awards will be decided by a small group of elite judges—no more than 100 or 200 of the greatest living musicians. I’m talking about people on the level of Paul McCartney, Joni Mitchell, Stevie Wonder, etc. No industry shills allowed!

The awards would immediately gain enormous credibility. Fans would pay attention to the winners.

Also, getting named a judge would become a huge honor—even bigger than winning a Grammy itself. New judges are chosen by the existing judges, who can only fill vacancies based on retirement or death.

6.

Do the same for movies, books, etc. The only way to fix the dying awards is to entrust judges who have total respect and personal authority.

7.

Payola is illegal in radio, and should be elsewhere too. If a web platform (or algorithm creator or playlist curator) has a financial interest in promoting a song, that must be fully disclosed. Violators will face fines and other penalties.

8.

Give users of all platforms the right to customize or opt out of algorithms—choosing chronological or geographical or genre-based filtering or even human curation.

9.

I’d get rid of formal music recitals for youngsters, which nobody enjoys—not the kids, not the teachers, not the parents. Let’s replace them with something much more fun.

For a start, I’d give these events names like reality shows or pay-per-view wrestling—calling them slams or manias or rumbles. (I plan to write more about this in the future.)

10.

Let’s set up a clearinghouse to allow licensing of orphan works (the millions of books, images, recordings, etc. for which the copyright holder is unknown or can’t be reached) for a reasonable payment.

The money is held in trust for ten years. If the copyright holder does not come forward during that time, the money is used to fund arts education.

11.

Cable and satellite TV providers should be required to allocate at least 5% of their channels to full time arts and culture programming. If they can find bandwidth for 20 shopping channels, they should be able to find space for a few concerts, dance performances, opera, jazz, etc.

12.

We deserve legal disclosure when AI creates a commercial work. Violators should face stiff fines and penalties.

13.

Google should allow users to opt out of AI summaries and AI-created material in search results.

Don’t force me to sift through a million crappy AI books when I do a book search. Let me opt out of AI slop photos. Let me skip those mistake-filled AI summaries. Let me avoid AI slop on your YouTube platform.

I never asked for any of this. So please give me an escape path from the bots.

14.

And while we’re at it, let’s give users of music streaming platforms the right to opt out of AI works—making it harder for these companies to substitute cheap AI songs on playlists as a way of boosting corporate profits.

15.

Rolling Stone, Billboard, and other industry periodicals should do more in-depth investigative reporting into corruption and deception in the music business. It’s curious how little interest they have in those matters.

16.

A public benefactor (or a group of them) should acquire one of the leading music streaming platforms and turn it into an artists-owned cooperative.

Maybe we could raise the money to do this via a crowdfunded decentralized financing initiative.

Immeasurable benefits would accrue if music platforms were owned and run by people who love music, not technocrats who can’t even sing “Happy Birthday” in tune.

17.

Corporations should lose their copyrights (on books, recordings, etc.) if they keep these works unreleased or out-of-print for an unreasonable time period.

Rights should automatically revert to the original artist (or heirs) after a work has been unavailable for ten years.

18.

College music programs should disclose what graduates actually earn with a degree. Independent auditors will conduct annual surveys of graduates, and publish the results.

19.

Classic recordings, books, and films deserve landmark status—much like a historic building. This means that the owner has a responsibility to preserve these works and make them easily accessible by the public.

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20.

Let’s shift more arts philanthropy from supply to demand. The key challenge in the arts is not an insufficient supply of paintings, poems, symphonies, but the small size of the audience for these works. Yet most funding focuses solely on supply and ignores demand.

Cultural non-profits that only do the glamorous work of underwriting famous artists should be prodded into pursuing the more difficult (and impactful) work of audience development.

If you fund a composer to write an opera, you get an opera. But teach people to love opera (the way, for example, Texaco once did), and you energize the entire art form.

21.

Movie studios must pay a brand franchise tax. They can do one sequel without penalty, but future installments (of Spiderman, Mission Impossible, Pirates of the Caribbean, etc.) will get docked 10% of revenues.

That money will go toward financing indie filmmaking and indie movie theaters.

22.

Record labels should invest in R&D—with the goal of creating innovations that upgrade and enhance our music culture. They did this with tremendous results until the 1980s. RCA, for example, was the Apple of its day.

23.

Netflix is now the most powerful force in film, but it has erased the history of cinema from its offerings. At a minimum, the company should still offer to mail you physical media of films they refuse to stream. Even better, they should make an effort to offer digital access to several thousand classic films from the past.

24.

Let’s phase out publisher royalties on the performance of music, and replace these with royalties to musicians, producers, sound engineers and other stakeholders who often receive no payment when songs are played or broadcast.

If publishers complain that they offer valuable services that deserve remuneration (I can hear them screaming this already), they should have no trouble convincing composers and performers to pay voluntarily for their ‘publishing services’ (hah!) out of their royalties. If publishers can’t justify the value they deliver to other stakeholders, let this gravy train come to a halt.

25.

School districts should set up clearinghouses that allow retired artists—musicians, painters, choreographers, writers, etc.—to mentor youngsters in the schools.

At a minimum, there should be an easy way for these elders to volunteer their time. Even better, pay them for it.

These people, with their rich experiences and wisdom, are the most wasted resources in our culture.

26.

Let’s make it much easier for jazz clubs, repertory movie theaters, galleries, and other grassroots level organizations enriching community arts and culture to qualify for non-profit status. They are just as important as the local symphony, and deserve the same perks.

27.

While we’re at it, let’s make pledges to arts and culture projects on crowdfunding platforms tax deductible, except in cases of obvious conflict-of-interest.

This should also include tax deduction status for donations to help ailing artists cover their medical or legal expanses.

28.

Colleges and universities should set up summer cultural enrichment programs in inner cities and other impoverished communities.

These programs are absolutely free to students who are proven contributors in their local schools. The programs have three goals: (1) to enhance the cultural literacy of the students and communities, (2) to reward the students who take their education seriously, and (3) to help these students develop into wise, mindful adults.

29.

Let’s establish the cultural equivalent of merit badges for Boy Scouts, but instead of teaching archery, fishing, etc., we promote artistic idioms.

Youngsters will get to write a sonnet, dance a tango, paint a landscape. Etc. etc.

Enlist the participation and support of local arts organizations. They can support their communities while building their own future talent pool and audience.

Even better, create something like this for adults too. You’re never too old to tango.

30.

Let’s expand career management training in music conservatories, art institutes, writing programs and other educational settings where future contributors to our culture learn their craft.

This should include a complete education on how to use web platforms and digital tools to advance their creative vocations.

Let’s also do this for artists in mid-career. Let them have easy access to programs that teach them useful skills—everything from how to launch a website to how to set the right price for their services.

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Please share your ideas and reactions in the comments.