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Art

NY Times piece focuses on the Center for Curatorial Leadership, a program created last year in New York to address the lack of museum curators with business knowledge and skills. Evidently the art industry sees this as a problem with many curators worldwide. /// The critically-acclaimed dance company Pilobolus is coming to Austin's Paramount Theatre next week.

Books

Yesterday, Amazon announced its purchase of Audible, Inc., the country's largest distributor of digital spoken-word audio. /// "Titlepage," a new Web-based program focused on the publishing industry, will air its first episode on March 3. The format of the show will be a round-table discussion between the show's creator (a former fiction editor) and four authors. /// Survey claims that more books are sold on the Web than any other product, and that sales are climbing worldwide.

Film

The soundtrack to the film "Juno" is selling like hotcakes. /// U.K. report claims that the global movie screen business sector "will continue to consolidate." /// Austin director Richard Linklater is casting for his next film, Me and Orson Welles. Claire Danes has just agreed to one of the film's roles.

Music

Last Monday, the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) - the entity in charge of setting royalty rates paid to publishers and songwriters whenever their songs are profited from by others - began hearings to examine mechanical royalties paid out whenever songs are sold in the market. For the first time ever, the CRB will be setting rates for digital products like digital downloads, music subscriptions and ringtones. Battle lines are now drawn on this issue between publishers/songwriters - who want royalties increased - and the RIAA/DiMA - who want to decrease them. You can keep track of the CRB hearings here. /// According to a market research report, Universal Music's publishing division has now passed EMI as the world's largest major music publisher. This boost is mostly due to Universal's acquisition of BMG's publishing division, a transaction that was completed in May 2007. /// Universal Music Group revenue has dropped 3.1 percent to $2.38 billion. Digital sales have increased 54 percent to $279.5 million. Final income numbers will be released on February 29.