Money 4 Nothing

At this point, you’ve probably seen headlines about the insane (like $5K+ insane) prices for some tickets to see The Boss on his latest tour. It’s the type of music-biz story that breaks out into the wider world—legendary poet of blue-collar post-industrial collapse, selling out to the I-95 yuppies with the help of the hated Ticketmaster. To try to better understand why Bruce (and his fans) did wh...

Over the last few years, K-Pop has taken the world by storm. Groups like BTS and BLACKPINK have reached pinnacles of music-biz success both traditional (selling out stadiums worldwide) and distinctly modern (see: serving as the center for a vast and dedicated online community of fans across the globe). But while such groups have received mountains of breathless hype from the western media, this co...

If you’ve been anywhere near…really, any music playing device lately, you’ve probably noticed that Kate Bush (Misty-Moored British Chanteuse and Big Boi’s favorite artist) has a full-blown new-old hit in a way that we really haven’t seen before? Her song “Running up that Hill (A Deal With God)” was featured heavily in the latest season of the hit Netflix show Stranger Things and it’s sort of taken...

The music industry isn’t a monolith and few scenes have a more distinctive structure than electronic music. As it developed from house and techno to today’s endless array of genres, the music traded the artist-heavy focus of rap or rock for constellations of high-profile DJs, faceless producers, and—most importantly for today’s episode—a host of iconic independent labels. In a hyper-consolidated,...

If you haven’t noticed, things have gotten...hairy in the economy. Inflation is up, the stock market is down, and the fed’s money machine? It stopped going “brrr.” All of this suggests that we might be leaving the VERY long, frothy period where companies (looking at you Uber!) didn’t need to muddy their hands with things like “earning profits” in order to reshape our lives, cities, communities, an...

We all know that the musical landscape has changed in recent years. Tik Tok, Youtube, playlist culture, social media, and on and on and on—they’ve all remade how we listen, and what we listen to. But when folks (including us?) discuss those changes, they all too frequently focus on the big picture at the expense of the details. Streaming is over a decade old now. How…has it changed? That’s why we...

Mike Park has been running Asian Man Records out of his mom’s garage for over two decades with a refreshing approach that might seem unusual by today’s standards: there’s no advances and every release is a handshake agreement. “I do this for the love of music,” writes Park on the label’s About page. “Not for capitalist gain or status recognition. I try my best to do the right things ethically and...

It’s a debate that’s all the rage. New data suggests that catalog recordings (anything released over 18 months ago) had begun to outstrip new music in the streaming economy. Is this the end of pop as we know it? Is it because the kids just don’t like culture? Is it because….the INTERNET? Well, maybe. But first we need to look at how we get those stats and dig into some quick boomer-listening habit...

Part 2 of our conversation with Mat Dryhurst on Crypto’s evolving place in the music industry, both major and independent. Dryhurst has long been one of the most active and articulate proponents of these technologies (and the social formations developing around them) and has a deep well of experience and knowledge in this fast-moving space. While we don’t agree on everything, it was very much the...

Over the past year, we’ve devoted more than a few episodes to discussions about Crypto, NFTs, and Web3—projects that we’ve been, it feels safe to say…fairly skeptical about. Given that skepticism, we were delighted to have the chance speak to Mat Dryhurst , who hosts the Interdependence podcast with Holly Herndon, for a discussion about Crypto’s evolving place in the music industry, both major and...

When Bandcamp announced a few weeks ago that it had been sold, it came as a deep shock to the wide audience of music fans who had come to appreciate its artist-supporting activities and (relatively) equitable financial policies. When they read that it had been sold to Epic Games, the multi-billion dollar creator of the Battle Royale mega-game Fortnite, the widespread reaction was...huh? To try to...

As soon as you hear it, the term "neoliberal jazz" makes sense—hip urbanites, attending concerts in revamped art-spaces sponsored by banks and financial services companies. But how did Jazz—a counter-cultural music if there ever was one—get there? And how have its evolving aesthetics enabled these developments?  To learn more, we spoke to Dale Chapman, author of "The Jazz Bubble," a mind-bending b...

While the boom and busts have come and gone, NFTs haven’t disappeared. A set of crypto based technologies, and speculatively disruptive companies are still out there, working to create a new, on-chain future. We have thoughts. Especially when it comes to how music intersects (or doesn't). And to try to make sense of them, we have on David Turner of Penny Fractions. Moving from specific projects, a...

On this short bonus episode, Sam and Saxon discuss Neil Young's decision to take down his music from Spotify in protest of the Joe Rogan Podcast...except did Neil even have the rights to make this decision? And how does this impact his $200 million publishing rights sale to Hipgnosis last year? Also, why did Spotify buy Joe Rogan's podcast in the first place? And how does Eve 6 fit into all of thi...

Sync is pretty much what it sounds like—the act of connecting music to visual images. But it’s also a whole lot more. Thanks to the VERY specific contours of American music, it’s a complex set of negotiations and pay-outs that structures pretty much everything you hear on TV, at the movies, or in video games (and maybe, someday Tik Tok?). It's also one of the more viable revenue streams for artist...

We thought that the best way to start the new year would be by…clearing up the various misconceptions, random questions, playful hassles, and outright stumpers generated by the old. Our listeners have hit us with a series of questions in recent months, and we’re going to do our best to answer them.  Radio stations and advertising? Got you. State-owned Russian streaming service rivaling Spotify? Go...

Money 4 Nothing goes to the movies! With the holidays upon us, Sam and Saxon decided it would be a nice to time to kick back, pull out the popcorn, and watch one of the more intriguing music docs in a year full of them. That’s right folks—in a fit of accurate choices, we’ve decided to spend an episode talking Sparks, the legendary cult band whose lengthy, make-no-compromises career is the subject...

In the last few years, "Spotify Wrapped" has ascended the seasonal pantheon for music lovers. Come December, our social media feeds are inundated with detailed numerical statistics from friends and relatives, breaking down their yearly listening habits. It’s inescapable. But why do we love it? And what does it tell us about where we are as listeners? Saxon and Sam dig into the jolliest form of sur...

One of the the biggest music stories of this past year is Universal Music Group going public for...billions. If the question wasn't already answered over the past decade, the Majors are back baby. But what does Universal’s ever-inflating valuation tell us about the music business and it's future? What future does Lucian Grainge, CEO of UMG, envision and are all our listening habits and the culture...

It’s been 20 years since Apple launched the iPod and a lot has changed in the music industry…as in everything. The mp3, iTunes, Spotify, penny fractions for streams, UMG's recent IPO, music catalogs as attractive asset class, 360 deals and the list goes on. The launch of the iPod doesn’t explain everything in how we got here, but it's undeniably a major watershed moment for a deeper understanding...

How is music made? Not how do record companies work, but how is music made? And where does it go after we're done with it? According to Kyle Devine, a professor of Musicology at the University of Oslo, we’ve all been paying far too little to this story, closing our eyes to the environmental implications of our favorite sounds. Kyle talks to Saxon and Sam about his book “Decomposed: The Political E...

What happens if you or your band is good, like—really good? You get SIGNED. A record contract! You've made it!....or did you? The fact that major label contracts aren’t particularly fair is well known, but what if they’re doing more than just ripping off artists and an empty promise? In his recent book, “Getting Signed: Record Contracts, Musicians, and Power in Society,” Scholar David Arditi argue...

The streaming economy—and much of the discourse around it—is based on a simple promise: all of the music. Not some of the music, not most of the music, but ALL of the music being available to stream on-demand. But as we all know, the cloud is far from complete. Artists from De La Soul to Aaliyah have long been absent, while entire eras of music blogs, mid-aughts mixtape culture and MySpace emo ban...

When Lee "Scratch" Perry left this world on August 29th, we lost a towering figure of 20th century culture as a producer, singer, and trailblazer who spent decades at the forefront of Jamaican music. And while there has been a wave of articles celebrating the legacy of "The Upsetter," Saxon and Sam thought there had been far too little examination of the economic, political, social, religious and...

MTV had a remarkably unheralded 40th anniversary this month. While Music Television (still the channel’s official name) has been out of music videos for decades, it was a truly transformative force for a long struggling record industry back in the early 80s. Diving into those early years, Sam and Saxon go long on this episode and try to figure out how a scrappy little corporation (fully backed by...