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How Can I Ease The Pain?

How Can I Ease The Pain?
By Ernest Wilkins • Issue #180 • View online

The perfect song doesn’t exi-
Lisa Fischer - How Can I Ease The Pain - Music Video (1991)
Lisa Fischer - How Can I Ease The Pain - Music Video (1991)
SHEESH!
FWIW, this doesn’t have anything to do with today’s newsletter, but, aren’t you happier now that it’s in your life?
If this is your first newsletter and if you skip through the preamble, I’d like to remind you that this whole operation is about the business of cultural industries.
“Hey, Ernest? What are those cultural industries, again?”
Glad you asked! In the 1990s, the UK Department of Culture Media and Sports came up with an influential definition of creative industries, as the exploitation of individual creativity for generating wealth and jobs. We could be here all day talking about the differences between what some feel are and aren’t “real” cultural industries, but for the sake of you picking up what I’m putting down, you should acquaint yourself with the UNESCO Framework for Cultural Statistics:
(UNESCO)
(UNESCO)
Up top are the “industries”, ok? Those are the individual cultural domains where we get busy. Now, if you’ll notice, the bottom of the diagram is the stuff we have trouble with. That “intangible cultural heritage” thing is tricky! Now, why the business of these industries?
‘cuz there’s GOLD in them thar hills, that’s why.
The cultural and creative industries (or CCI’s if you wanna sound like a marketing person) are one of the world’s most rapidly growing economic sectors. The sector provides 29.5 million jobs globally (2019 numbers), and with a global revenue of 2.25 billion $US, CCI’s revenues exceeded ALL telecom service revenues (aka EVERY PHONE COMPANY ON EARTH) and…was bigger than India’s whole GDP (in 2015).
Not sure if y’all have heard, but there is a need to find new areas of development that encourage innovation and development in this fair country of ours. Research shows that culture and creativity has an increasing influence on both sustainability and resilient growth, both with human and financial capital.
With that…here’s a bunch of links. Curated by cultural industry, all of these links will make you well-informed so that you can make better stuff.
That’s how this whole thing is supposed to work, right?
CULTURAL & NATURAL HERITAGE:
While some of the larger movie and music agencies, such as the Los Angeles-based WME (part of Frieze’ parent company, Endeavor) and Creative Artists Agency (CAA), only occasionally focus on the visual arts, others like UTA (United Talent Agency) has a whole division devoted to it. Regarding the burning question of commission rates, all three structures say they take less than a traditional gallery (which would typically take 50% of sales). Tanguy receives 30% of the sale of a work of art and 40% on collaborations and public art projects.
PERFORMANCE & CELEBRATION:
VISUAL ARTS (and farts) & CRAFTS:
This is a good read, but the way some folks in the fashion industry talk about this stuff is the most National Geographic-ass way of approaching these kinds of projects. Just a hot bowl of yikes all-around.
BOOKS & PRESS:
Publishers have deserted traditional media as a source for information, and instead, 64.2 percent say they read blogs, with second place going to forums, with 11.7 percent of publishers reporting it as their source for industry news.
You don’t say…
A/V & INTERACTIVE MEDIA:
So good. So so so so good.
DESIGN & CREATIVE SERVICES:
I didn’t know what “aesthetic” was until I met my wife and she explained it to me. Now, try getting me to stop talk about it!
TOURISM:
Though video games take a different approach than online casinos, the ultimate goal of driving long-term engagement remains similar. 
SPORTS & RECREATION:
Did YOU know Facebook “recently filed a patent to create game recaps using data from the crowd, announcer speech patterns, social media, and other data.”I didn’t!
ICYMI: LAST WEEK’S PODCAST…
…was a DELIGHTFUL conversation with author Maria Cristina Sherman, who wrote the best damn book on boy bands you’ll read this century. You should buy a copy.
We talked about her must-buy book, boy bands, why the best critics are fans, the power of the marginalized dollar AND the story of the time I met Harry Styles!
Click the button to listen:
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Office Hours with Ernest Wilkins is written and curated by Ernest Wilkins in Chicago, Illinois. Happy Women’s History Month!
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Ernest Wilkins

Office Hours Mag is Ernest Wilkins' take on the culture and the business of the cultural industries.

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