Tesla set to open a store in Brooklyn

Tesla Motors is expanding to New York City — not with a flashy showroom in Manhattan, but with a brick-and-mortar sales and service center in Brooklyn.

The new Tesla location opening Friday in Red Hook is not the kind of place where you can leave with the keys to your new Model S in hand, but it’s a big move for Tesla and makes its electric cars more accessible to the biggest city in the country.

If you’re interested in learning more about Tesla cars, the Red Hook store is the perfect place to start. The glass double doors on 160 Van Brunt St. open right into a showroom with two Model S cars and an undercarriage on display — not something that’s featured in most car stores.

But it’s a necessary component of a Tesla sales center, where people can come if they’re curious about what exactly makes a Tesla car a Tesla car. You can take a look at the battery that makes up the entire base of the car and see the two motors that power the all-wheel-drive models.

Not only that, but you can test drive a Model S right out of the store. Nothing tells you more about a car than taking it for a spin, and experiencing thatautopilot feature for yourself is more informative than reading about it online.

Build your own Tesla

While you can’t purchase and drive off in a Tesla at the new Brooklyn store, you can fully customize and order your own. Potential customers can select paint jobs, interiors and more on touchscreen displays and see how much it will cost. From there, you can send your order off to California and expect a Tesla to show up at your doorstep in six to eight weeks. Alternatively, you can email the build to yourself to think about it a little longer.

Why Tesla picked Brooklyn

New York City is a strong market for Tesla — especially Brooklyn — and Brooklyn is the easiest place to find 25,000 square feet of space.

Brooklyn is also a more family-oriented borough. With Tesla’s safety ratings being among the highest of any car ever made, the cars are a very attractive option for young families looking for safe transportation. The Red Hook location in particular has seen a lot of construction and revamping recently, which points to that area becoming a more popular destination for young families in the near future.

By being right next to the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel, it also isn’t too inconvenient for people who live in Manhattan to make the trip down.

And let’s not ignore the comparable absence of traffic in Red Hook, which will allow you to test out a Model S without getting caught trying to merge through three lanes of midday congestion.

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Top Local and Community Theaters in Orlando

Photo Credit: “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike” from Orlando Shakes

Orlando has a rich culture and a big investment for the arts and theater. A lot of the theater aficionados and talented people in town has developed the theme park town into a stunning city of culture. If you are a new in the city or just visiting, explore the cultural options the city has to offer.

You probably heard and seen the big  productions in town like Cirque  du Solei “La Nouba” and Blue man group at Universal Studios, without mentioning the shows inside of Disney and Universal; but most impressive is the local productions coming from Community theaters. Local productions in these theaters are done thanks to donations from locals, volunteers, and city grants, but their shows will astonish on how professional and top quality the performances are.

Here is the list of the top local and community theaters in Orlando that we recommend to catch a show:

Photo: Orlando Shakespeare

1. Orlando Shakespeare Theater

www.orlandoshakes.org

The theater has one of the best facilities and venues in town. It houses 3 theaters in one, where they don’t only show their plays but independent theater producers are able present their own shows here. Their productions are top quality and provides with innovative experiences that enrich the community.

Photo: WP Observer

2. Orlando Repertory Theater (The REP)

www.orlandorep.com

The theater specializes in children and family theater with the mission “To create experiences that enlighten, entertain and enrich the lives of family and young audiences.” The theater is located next to the Orlando Shakespeare Theater and is part of the Lowndes Shakespeare center. The same as the Orlando Shakespeare, the theater has a top venues and facilities, and their productions are top quality.

Photo: NancyJCohen

3. Garden Theater

www.gardentheatre.org

Located in Winter Garden, is a refurbished, historic theater that serves as the performing art center in Winter Garden. The most impressive feature of their theater experience is the architecture, where you get to fill one of the 299 seats available in this historic Mediterranean revival architecture building. The Theater recently revolutionize the small venues networks with the play “Peter Pan” where they set a high-tech wonder by using four projectors that create the illusion of flying, made on a giant curved, 15 panel screen that wraps the stage. The special effects were made by Christie Digital systems.

Photo: LegalTeamUSA

4. Mad Cow Theater

www.madcowtheatre.com

Mad Cow Theater is one of the most respected professional’s theaters in town. It presents classic and contemporary plays, as well as musicals. The theater is located in Downtown, the heart of Orlando, in the second floor of 54 West Church Street. The theater is great for weekend entertainment with friends or a date, where you can hang out in downtown at the bars or restaurants and then go for a show. The theater has plays that create the opportunity for meaningful conversation.

Photo: Theater Downtown

5.  Theater Downtown

www.theatredowntown.net

Theater Downtown doesn’t have their own venue anymore, but they still present plays in other venues throughout the year. Their quality is still top of the line, with great professional performances. Theater Downtown mission is to create a broader base of aesthetics possibilities in the Central Florida are by producing and spotlighting unique plays and artists.

Photo: WP Observer

6. Winter Park Playhouse

www.winterparkplayhouse.org

Winter Park Playhouse is a professional musical theater, located in winter park minutes from Downtown Orlando and walking distance to the famous park ave. The theater doesn’t show plays as much, but focuses more on musical performances. The same as Mad Cow, the theater is great for a evening with friends or family where you can hang out in Park ave, eat shop there, and then go to watch a show.

By Christian Gabriel

@ChrisGabriel20

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Tidal

Tidal (stylized as TIDAL, also known as TIDALHiFi) is a subscription-based music streaming service that combines lossless audio and high definition music videos with curated editorial. The service has over 25 million tracks and 85,000 music videos.Currently offering no free subscription plans, Tidal claims to pay the highest percentage ofroyalties to music artists and songwriters within the music streaming market. Tidal offers two digital music streaming services: Tidal Premium (lossy quality) and Tidal HiFi (lossless CD quality - FLAC-based 16-Bit/44.1 kHz). Tidal was launched in 2014 byNorwegian/Swedish public company Aspiro. It has distribution agreements with all of thethree major labels, in addition to many indies. In the first quarter of 2015, the parent company Aspiro was acquired by Project Panther Ltd., which is owned by Shawn "Jay Z" Carter.

Following the acquisition of Aspiro by Jay Z in March 2015, a mass-marketing campaign was introduced to relaunch Tidal. Multiple music artists changed their social media profiles design blue, and posted the phrase "#TIDALforAll" on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. A press conference took place on March 30, 2015, introducing sixteen music artists to the stage, including Jay Z, who were all co-owners and stakeholders in Tidal. The service was promoted as being the first artist-owned streaming service. Each artist publicly signed a declaration, which opened with: "Throughout history, every movement began with a few individuals banding together with a shared vision – a vision to change the status quo."

The relaunch of Tidal with the new artist-owned model were mostly panned by publications and fellow musicians alike. Some praised the impressive high fidelity, lossless audio quality, and the higher subscription fees which would result in higher royalties to the artists and songwriters, whilst others felt the high subscription fees and exclusive Tidal content from the artists involved could result in an increase of music piracy. As of March 2015, the service itself claims to have over 580,000 paying users after being integrated with its sister service, WiMP, as well as 17,000 using the high fidelity service. Tidal currently operates in 31 countries. In March 2016, Tidal announced it has over 3 million subscribers.

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Digital Age for the Music Industry – Good or bad?

We are part of the digital age where we can sale, create businesses, and even meet people online. The digital age has made a big progress for society in so many ways, and has helped independent artists and musicians to get ahead of the game competing with the big conglomerate networks. Before iTunes and YouTube, an artist need it to be signed to a record label to get distribution and promotion through radio and network channels. Now anyone can be heard, be seen, become “YouTube Famous,” or popular online through social media channels like Vine, Twitter, and Instagram (just to name a few); you only need a camera, show some type of talents, and mainly have an interesting personality.

At the same time, digital age has affected the overall music industry through piracy. The creation of Napster in 1999, lead the way for people to pirate music and a big decline in music sales in the overall industry. In 2000, According to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), the music industry were making 13.36 billion dollars in album sales, but by 2014, the sales dropped to less than 4 billion dollars. The decline in sales represent a 76% of loss for the industry.

Source: RIAA Year-End Industry Shipment and Revenue Statistics (2000-2014)

The music industry has had a share of waves in changes for the way music has been consumed through 2000 to now. Consumer behavior for consumption in the digital market started shifting from 2005 where it dominated the music for phones, like ringtones and ring back, until 2008 with a sudden collapse of this sales. Digital sales of music started booming until 2013 where consumers started shifting to revenues from ad-supported music streaming and subscriptions base services. RIAA estimated that 7.7 million internet users paid for on-demand streaming in 2014. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) shared that the music streaming had 1.87 billion dollars in revenue from subscription, ad-supported streaming, and Soundexchange distribution (Charges royalties for satellite car radio), and this accounted for 41.4% of the digital music sales.

Source: Pixabay

Music sales have dropped dramatically, but is music streaming helping the industry? In 2015, music streaming sites helped to boost digital sales by 6.9%, and finally the industry sees a stop to the catastrophic decline in revenues for music sales. Japan, the second world’s largest music market, for the first time in five years, had a growth in digital revenue.

In America, by 2015, most of the revenue came from streaming with a 34.3%, Digital downloads accounted for 34%, 28.8% for Physical sales, and 2.9% from Synch. Physical sales is still the number one choice for consumers in other markets like in Japan where 78% of the music sales revenue comes from CDs, Germany physical sales of CD’s account for 70% of the revenue, and in Africa they get 62% from physical sales.

Opinion – Consumers now has the option to choose to buy a single, before you would need to buy the entire album to listen to your favorite song from the artist. You didn’t had the option to listen to the songs whenever you wanted, only listen it in the radio. All this pushed consumers to obtain the CDs, but now there is no incentive to buy the entire album, with exception of just being a supportive fan. So if a consumer only bough one song instead of the 10, that’s a 90% loss. The music executives’ needs to find this incentives to give to consumers to buy the entire album, whether eliminating some of the current digital options and loss part of the streaming revenue with hopes consumers would have the incentive to buy, or find new incentives to give the consumers to buy the entire album.

Main Photo source: Pixabay

By Christian Gabriel

@ChrisGabriel20

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