No one is ever more perfect than when writing their resume. More than once in my professional life I found myself involved in hiring someone who seemed like the Platonic Ideal of a candidate for the role. The right jobs at the right companies and a clean run of gigs with plausible explanations for each…
For years, I’ve been collecting observations about what works and what doesn’t in navigating modern life. These insights and anecdotes came from watching patterns in my own decisions, in the behavior of people around me, in the gap between what we say we value and how we actually spend our time. The world has never…
Catalog is a mispriced asset class. Cultural products have stopped depreciating while the industry still prices (and pitches) them as if they do. Build the resurgence-timing model and capture the spread. Download Luminate’s RETRO REVIVAL report here. And a note on the source. This is not neutral research, but a Luminate sales asset, built on…
I spent a long time thinking confidence was the goal. Study something, get good at it, develop strong opinions, and voilà! Expertise! Spend time with someone who knows a lot about a given topic. A scientist, historian, surgeon, master musician. They hedge far more than an amateur does. “I’m not sure” comes up constantly. They…
The things that resist counting are often the ones that count the most. A few years ago, I was unhappy in my job. My solution was to push for a higher salary and a bigger mandate. Within six months of successfully getting what I wanted, I was miserable in ways I had not anticipated and…
There is a cluster of features in human experience that recurs across cultures, millennia, and traditions that had no contact with each other. Once you start cataloguing the elements of that cluster, the consistency is oddly specific. Luminosity or overwhelming light. An initial response of terror transitioning to calm. Time behaving abnormally. Information arriving as…
Call it virtue signalling, call it ineffective, but action overcomes fear, anxiety and powerlessness. For the first part of February I was watching Scott Galloway’s Resist and Unsubscribe initiative without thinking too much about it, or how I might partake. Over the last several days I have read more about it and have heard him…
The video podcast format is often identical to television talk shows: host(s) at a desk or table, guest conversation, segmented for clips, distributed on a schedule. The production pipeline — lighting, camera ops, audio, editing, graphics — maps directly onto what a talk show crew does. The difference is the labor model, not the product….
Ticketing companies now operate across categories that once defined them. State legislatures are rushing to regulate anyway, armed with outdated classifications and fee caps rooted in nothing but vibes. by Lawrence Peryer, 23 Media Ventures In the taxonomy of ticketing companies, I had myself convinced there were three types. Primary ticketers, those that have direct,…
Public Launch, November 11, 2024 The Tonearm is an ambitious and thoughtfully curated online magazine dedicated to amplifying the voices of boundary-pushing artists and innovators across multiple mediums, including music, visual art and more. The Tonearm is a comprehensive platform for exploring creativity, the artistic viewpoint, and cultural discourse. The platform launches with several key…
Presentation Given to NIVA (National Independent Venue Association) by Mark Zandi, January 13, 2026 report and analysis prepared by Lawrence Peryer THE HEADLINE The U.S. economy will likely avoid recession in 2026, but the live entertainment sector faces a structural spending problem with no quick fixes. Job creation has collapsed from 180,000/month to near-zero, and…
The results have been tabulated and published for the 20th Annual Francis Davis Jazz Poll, which I am so happy to be part of. I do not rank albums, I only provide an unranked list, which is allowed in the submissions. This year I only submitted in the New Jazz Albums category. That said, all…