Critical Listening

For this month's installment of our monthly headlines show, we're digging into two stories around the increasingly entwined worlds of generative AI and music streaming. First, a look into a new tool created by the French streaming platform Deezer that shows users how many gen-AI tracks are already on their own playlists. Is this just another hollow marketing campaign by a tech company, or somethin...

We're back for another Headlines episode for the month of May 2026. As with all Headlines episodes this season, this episode is a subscriber exclusive. You can listen to it in full and catch up on older headlines and more by signing up for our Patreon at patreon.com/criticallistening. This month we dive in to some major developments in the world of music tech as we discuss the acquisition of Germa...

Welcome back! This month we are joined by Peter McLaughlin and Scott Mohler of the Maine Music Alliance. They explain how local musicians in Portland, Maine successfully stopped Live Nation from opening a 3300-cap venue in their town. It is a truly inspiring story involving musicians organizing to save local spaces during the COVID-19 lockdown, and eventually turning that network out in massive nu...

We’re back with another Headlines episode, and this month it’s our first time spending the whole episode on one story. You probably already know which one it is. For this month we are begrudgingly wading into the discourse that has ensued following the Wired piece “The Fanfare Around the Band Geese Actually Was a Psyop,” published April 14. We dive into the manipulative tactics of “trend simulatio...

For today's episode of Critical Listening we are joined by guitarist, songwriter and improviser Wendy Eisenberg to launch a new segment, "Listening Habits." Wendy joined us a few weeks before the release of their new self-titled album, which is out now on Joyful Noise Records. In the first half of the show, we speak with Wendy about their own work as a musician and a teacher. We discuss the new al...

What happens when a private equity company takes over a music festival? For this Critical Listening live taping at the ESNS Conference in Groningen, we spoke with Dutch investigative journalist Henk Willem Smits to unpack this very question. Smits works with the community-supported outlet Follow the Money,  specializing in tax avoidance by multinationals and wealthy individuals in music, and the i...

Hey all, we're back with another headlines episode. This month we start by digging into UMG CEO Lucian Grainge's recent appearance on stage at a NVIDIA-hosted conference described as the "Super Bowl of AI," where he was discussing his company's partnership with the AI-enabling tech giant. What does this say about different ways major labels are embracing AI beyond the headline-grabbing licensing d...

Welcome back to another episode of Critical Listening. For this month’s Headlines, we’re joined by Hearing Things co-founder and longtime music critic Jill Mapes to discuss her recent piece “The Wasserman Exodus is A Different Kind of Reckoning” about the artists protesting music exec Casey Wasserman’s appearance in the Epstein files. Before that we’re also talking about Spotify’s recent 2025 Q4 e...

WE’RE BACK. Today we start the year with a dispatch from what some may call the front lines: a bunch of AI-related panels at a European music biz trade conference. It’s also our first episode recorded in person! We are starting our new season with two episodes recorded in the city of Groningen in the Netherlands, where we were invited to participate on some panels and to host a live taping of the...

As 2025 comes to a close, so does the first season of Critical Listening. And with us to send off the year, we have none other than the internet's busiest music nerd himself: Anthony Fantano of The Needle Drop. We discuss how public perception of streaming culture discourse has shifted this past year, his efforts to offer a critical perspective on the music industry in his videos, the state of on-...

We are back for our penultimate episode of Season 1 of Critical Listening! Recorded on November 13th at the coveted Stood at Purchase College, we're discussing the latest developments in the Spotify deal to create "artist first" generative AI tools in partnership with major labels and distributors. We also review the platform's continued growth as it rounds out its second full year of profitabilit...

For Episode 8 we have composer, educator, curator, and activist Amirtha Kidambi stopping by. We discuss Amirtha's various musical outputs, including her Elder Ones ensemble and her recent duo release with Matt Evans as Neti-Neti. We discuss the inseparability of politics from pedagogy as teaching artists, the importance of solidarity amongst working artists and the need for us to Do-It-Together ra...

We’re back with another headlines ep, where Liz and Max each bring one story from across the music-tech biz press to summarize and contextualize. On this ep we are unpacking the imminent major label deals with gen-AI companies. At the time we recorded, those reportedly landmark deals were thought to be signed within weeks, and since recording we’ve already started to see more details emerge. We di...

We're back from a month of touring and we missed you! We are thrilled to have musician and author Damon Krukowski on the show to discuss his upcoming book "Why Sound Matters" , available everywhere on October 21st from Yale University Press. We discuss Galaxie 500, Damon & Naomi, the acoustic ecology writings of Bernie Krause, the Boston independent music scene in the 1980s compared to today,...

Max & Liz return for another installment of their series diving into some intriguing headlines from across the music, tech and business hellscape. What does it mean for organizations representing independent record labels to be inking deals with gen-AI companies? How are AI-driven tech platforms impacting the realm of music education? Never fear, we’ve got a bloomscroll in there too. Check it...

We're back with another esteemed guest! With us today we have writer, musician, and co-founder of the worker owned music publication Hearing Things , Andy Cush. We discuss with Andy his articles on the various artists and labels who have not only decided to leave streaming, but are reimagining their relationship with digital music as a whole off these major platforms. We also dive into the detrime...

We’re back with the first installment of what we’re calling “Headlines,” diving into a few stories from across the music and tech biz press this month. For July, there were some headlines that just seemed impossible to ignore. You guessed it: Ek’s recent investment into AI weapons company Helsing, and that gen-AI classic rock band with millions of streams. We end by searching the internet far and...

How are musicians building collective power in a freelance economy that still worships the grind? In recent years the Union of Musicians and Allied Workers have made headlines for its work around streaming, through both the Justice at Spotify campaign and the Living Wage for Musicians Act, which the group co-authored with Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib. Since these are likely to be recurring topics o...

Welcome to episode one of CRITICAL LISTENING, a new podcast about music and technology hosted by Liz Pelly and Max Alper.  How does a band survive 30 years of industry hostility to art? For our first episode, we’re chatting with Greg Saunier, the drummer of Deerhoof, who just released Noble and Godlike in Ruin, their 20th record across 30 years as a band. We talk about the political themes of the...

Critical Listening is a new podcast from journalist Liz Pelly and musician/educator Max Alper exploring music, technology, and culture. This is episode zero, a short introduction where Liz and Max discuss how the show came to be and what they plan to cover in future episodes. What has Liz been learning on the road promoting her book Mood Machine? What's the deal with Max's online alter ego La Meme...