Money 4 Nothing

What would happen if a government took a serious look at the music industry and decided everything wasn’t alright? To our surprise, the UK Parliament has done just that , issuing a blistering report on label consolidation, monopolistic abuses, and streaming payouts—and issuing some interesting suggestions about how things could change. To help us dig in, we're lucky to have David Turner of the mus...

The Grateful Dead are one of America’s weirdest musical stories, an avalanche of tie-dyed hippies, 30-minute drum solos, acid, and endless, endless touring. But over their 30+ year career, the band also proved themselves to be incredibly prescient, helping to create everything from noise cancelling headphones and concert live-streaming to the “experience economy.” In fact, the idea of distributing...

It can feel hard to believe, but it seems like live music in the US might be coming back (finally). Which also means that bands and fans are getting ready to line up and spend a LOT of time and money with the concert behemoth that is Live Nation / Ticketmaster, a massive public corporation with a lock on the American concert industry. But how did these companies achieve their position? What exactl...

Award-winning poet Morgan Parker talks with Saxon Baird about Fugazi, having a DIY ethos and how to navigate being an artist in the tangled web of an exploitative, capitalist system.   Further Listening: Can Fugazi help us imagine a better future for music? Follow Morgan Parker @morganapple Subscribe to the Money 4 Nothing newsletter    

When talking about West Coast gangster rap, the focus is usually on the era-defining stars who reigned during 1990s—Dr. Dre, Tupac, and Snoop Dog foremost among them. In her new book, “To Live and Defy in LA: How Gangster Rap Changed America,” Professor Felicia Angeja Viator argues that starting with the success of Dr. Dre's The Chronic or even N.W.A's Straight Outta Compton leaves out half the st...

Ever since they appeared in the late 80’s, the legendary D.C. rock band Fugazi has stood as the absolute pinnacle of stick-to-your-guns DIY success. Holding prices to $5 shows and $10 albums, refusing to make merch or sign to a major label, the group still managed to sell hundreds of thousands of records and created diehard fans across the world. Since they went on “indefinite hiatus” in the early...

You know what Top 40 radio is. But…think about it for a second. Top 40 what? Songs? Albums? Bands? And top for who? Once you get started, the supposedly homogenous “mainstream” at the center of American listening is actually pretty complicated. To help us explore the past of pop, we talk with Eric Weisbard, music critic and professor of American Studies, whose book “Top 40 Democracy: The Rival Mai...

Metallica recently got trolled by Twitch when the gaming platform dubbed over a live performance. The Internet LOL'd considering the metal band's history with suing its own fans and taking down Napster. But there's so much more behind this move that is more important and could shape the future of music copyright.    Sign up for our newsletter!

Plenty has been written about the music and legacy an artist leaves behind when they pass prematurely. But there hasn’t been much of a discussion on how the obligatory posthumous album is handled and marketed. Sam and Saxon discuss the different ways the music an artist leaves behind is handled by taking a critical look at Nirvana, Elliott Smith, the red-tape legal battles (and exploitation) of Ji...

When people talk about music piracy, it almost always carries a 21st century slant— Napster, Pirates Bay, iPods and so on. As it turns, battles over who has a right to make and sell music has a FAR longer history, one that stretches from the jazz loving Hot Record Society in the 1940s to acid-fried hippies trying to take Dylan to the people, and the battles around sampling that reshaped hip hop in...

In the last month, the music world has gone positively gaga for NFT’s, the blockchain-based goods that (some say) promise to transform basic dynamics of the industry, bypassing major labels, reversing decades of artistic austerity, and basically doing everything short of reuniting the Beatles. We…aren’t so sure. Saxon and Sam dig into the phenomenon, trying to separate pump-and-dump tech-bro scams...

On this **Bonus** episode, music journalist Stephen Thomas Erlewine talks with Saxon Baird about the death of the greatest hits album, the encyclopedic glory of Allmusic, The White Stripes and more. Subscribe to our newsletter!  

Christian music and especially Christian rock is a world of its own, a self-contained universe that mirrors the trends and styles of the mainstream. But how does it work? And what can it tell us about the interactions between audiences and industries that structure popular music? We talk to Andrew Mall, the author of “God Rock Inc.: The Business of Niche Music” to explore everything from the Jesus...

When we first covered the vast amounts of cash that companies like Hipgnosis were throwing into the music publishing market, we thought things had hit some sort of insane peak. Well were we VERY wrong. In the months since, the press has been filled with one enormous deal after another, peaking (at least for now) in the reported sale of Dylan’s entire catalog for 300+ million dollars. But does…any...

We talk to writer and critic Liz Pelly who has long been one of the most astute critics of the modern musical economy. But while we all know that streaming is broken—what comes next? Liz has recently been exploring a set of new platforms that are seeking to create alternatives to existing industry structures. We dig into everything from public library-based programs that support local music to swi...

What’s a consent decree and why did one over 80 years old recently make headlines? Sam and Saxon explore the Department of Justice's latest decision to NOT remake the music industry, before diving into the history of ASCAP, BMI, and Tin Pan Alley to figure out some of the shady battles at the heart of payouts and this whole performing rights thing. BUT FIRST—we talk King Gizzard commodities, re-co...

For decades, greatest hits albums were inescapable. They summed up artists’ careers, provided intros to unknown sounds, and served as a dependable cash-grab for labels that were able to resell music they had already paid for. But now? Seems like they’re more or less done for, killed by the infinite "playlistification" of all things (unless you're trying to make a retro statement...hello White Stri...

Well, THAT was awful. As 2020 death crawls to a close, we sort through the rise of live music streaming and how it exploded in popularity as artists looked for ways to replace touring during the pandemic lockdown. Also, we talk live venues getting a last minute lifeline from the U.S. Gov thanks to the massive #SaveOurStages movement and how music and musicians responded to the Black Lives Matter p...

Repetition. Shouting. Culture Vulture Remixes. A 50 billion dollar company based on a vast strata of underplayed musicians. Viral dances. Tik Tok has it all! For this episode, Sam and Saxon asked Pitchfork’s Cat Zhang to bring us down the rabbit hole and into an app that is transforming how music functions, maybe forever. or…maybe it’s just another step towards the commodification of all social li...

This week we take you back in time to a moment that…in a lot of ways(?) seems sort of like today. Technology was changing incredibly quickly, artists were hopping between platforms to reach their audiences, and corporate consolidation was remaking the music industry. Welcome to the 1920’s. Professor Kyle Barnett discusses his book "Record Cultures: the Transformation of the U.S. Recording Industry...

There’s been some news on the streaming beat lately—righteous demands being levied by musicians against Spotify, and ill-timed reports that the streaming giant has been planning to roll out some suspiciously payola-like programs (gasp!). But what is Spotify, anyways? And how does it (hope to) make money? Is it actually just the major labels wearing the mask of a tech company? PLUS A M4N Exclusive...

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...

It’s mid-October, and by our calculations, musicians are STILL not getting paid. Live music has been off since March, and a major lobbying group is trying to #SaveOurStages. But does saving venues also mean a bailout for musicians? In the continued quest for artist revenue, Saxon and Sam explore some less obvious options. Could the platform OnlyFans hold the answer? Should musicians search for sal...

This week we go deep (like really really deep) on the Music Modernization Act—a landmark, near-unanimous 2018 law that will reshape the legal landscape of American music when it kicks in early next year. Despite this, it has received little or no critical press attention since. Let’s face it though—the last time this scale of legislation passed was in the 1970’s, so it’s a good bet that we’ll be l...

Ethnomusicologist Wayne Marshall joins Saxon Baird and Sam Backer to talk about his discovery of what he’s described as the the “American Clave”—a distinctive rhythm that unites everyone from Duke Ellington to Ray Charles, Elvis to Cardi B. We explore its origins from the Black artists who invented ragtime at the turn of the 20th century and then trace its evolution over a hundred years of styles...