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| In the history of the modern culture industry, few years loom as large as 1999. That was the year that the file-sharing network Napster appeared and more or less singlehandedly upended the music industry: not just the actual business of creating and distributing recordings, but also expectations about what those recordings were worth. In the years that followed, the digital economy profoundly changed how we watch, read and listen to artists’ work, and a grim conventional wisdom took hold: The Internet might have been great for consumers, but for the arts – a financially precarious business in the best of times – it was a death sentence. |
| Is this actually true? We put the question to Steven Johnson, who dove deep into the data, attempting to quantify the creative economy of both the pre- and post-Napster era, and came away with some surprising answers. The picture Johnson paints for us in this week’s cover story is of a landscape of artistic employment that has been irrevocably transformed, but not necessarily for the worse. |
| Radical transformation is also the theme of two other articles in this week’s magazine. Gary Rivlin visits a black-owned bank that helped build New Orleans’s black middle class, only to see its efforts washed away by Hurricane Katrina. And Sam Anderson and the photographer Stephen Wilkes contemplate what thawing relations between the United States and Cuba will mean for the Cuban baseball players that have defected to play in the American professional leagues. |
| Elsewhere in print and online, Teju Cole visits Brazil in search of the origins of an enigmatic photograph, Vinson Cunningham considers whether African-American art can ever truly be free from racial politics and Bernie Sanders gets prickly over questions about his hair. |
Happy reading,
Jake Silverstein
Editor in Chief |
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Essay
Dominique Berretty/Gamma-Rapho, via Getty Images
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Can Black Art Ever Escape the Politics of Race?
By VINSON CUNNINGHAM
Richard Wright, Chris Rock and the enduring dilemma of African-American artists.
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On Photography
René Burri/Magnum Photos
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Shadows in São Paulo
By TEJU COLE
Obsessed with an image of four men on a rooftop in Brazil, the author went on a quest to find its origins.
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First Words
Illustration by Matt Dorfman. The Sydney Morning Herald, via Getty Images.
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The Unwelcome Return of ‘Illegals’
By EMILY BAZELON
Using the term to describe undocumented immigrants implies that they are less than human and undeserving of fair treatment.
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Tip
Illustration by Radio
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How to Be Naked in Public
By MALIA WOLLAN
Practice at home. Steel your nerves before disrobing.
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