Upsample with Carson Tworow & Will Chernoff

Berklee students want the school to cut it out with AI music courses, but it's looking bleak. The same venture capital interests that brought us the CEO of Suno saying no one enjoys making music, have a friend who is installed as Berklee's president. Per a recent Adam Neely video , both the student experience and the school's prestige are at risk. In the second annual Upsample summer special toget...

The future of getting paid for our songs rests on blockchain vs. bureaucracy, as Will reports back on Australian musician Jo Loewenthal's 19-part "deep forensic investigation" of global publishing. We also touch on the launch of Subvert after opening with a dismissal of the year's biggest Upsample-core story. (0:00) We're skipping Pysop Geese-gate (2:35) Subvert launched (8:55) The joloew publishi...

Evan Dungate of Gigpit joins us! Gigpit, headquartered in Victoria and also running in Vancouver, is a new local live music platform that offers concert listings and a ticketing service, currently with no fees. The company has five young co-founders: Evan, Aidan Polglase, Ellie Scott, Josh Taylor, and MacKenzie Joyal. Will and Carson get a feel for their work and take a detour in the middle to dis...

(0:00) Toronto Blue Jays opening day (2:31) Will's physical media level-up (4:59) OpenAI shuts down Sora (17:35) Spotify Artist Profile Protection (30:29) Jasmine Sun on AI and creative writing (50:44) Triple recommendations Carson recs: Gregory Uhlmann - Extra Stars , Photokem - A Mat in the Garden , kJADE - On Everything I Love . Will recs: Tomeka Reid Quartet - dance! skip! Hop! , Marquis Hill...

let's talk about fully automated slopitalism and the threats to performance rights organizations & songwriters No episode 2 weeks from now (Mar. 13), we return later in March. (0:00) Music MCP (which got taken down) (8:40) SOCAN's AI policies & advocacy (36:23) "Pre-deplatformed" cool content (50:27) Dave King of The Bad Plus' rant (54:54) Recommendations Darren Hemmings linking to Music M...

"Move fast and break... Kings!" That's what Cory Doctorow calls for in his recent talk . We discuss a potential "post-American internet" future per that talk, then we weave in two related stories: Anna's Archive scraping virtually all of Spotify for torrenting, and Pitchfork launching a paywall. No episode 2 weeks from now (Feb. 13), we return later in February. (0:00) Intro (2:15) Cory Doctorow t...

It's Year 2 of Upsample starting now, and the leading AI music company Suno has already intruded into Will's day-to-day in the local scene. What else is in store? (0:00) Intro & Self-Taught Legend (4:27) Hooks by Suno (12:50) Suno Partner Program (32:06) Bandcamp wants to ban AI music (45:35) Recommendations Recs: Will - listen to Julian Lage: "Opal" , "Talking Drum" , and "Night Shade" 3 sing...

3 days after we published the Side Door episode, a tragic incident injured a loved one of someone from the Side Door community. There's a GoFundMe that the community organized to support them through the hospitalization and recovery. We're back at Carson's house to discuss a book that has influenced our show's entire first year: Filterworld by Kyle Chayka. Stick around for when we look back at all...

After we rage against Spotify Wrapped and follow up on our previous episodes, Carson unpacks three recent stories related by the theme of AI blowback: a maximally high-effort and human album, an anti-AI revival of Vine, and a platform that might get enshittified by its buyer. (0:00) Intro (4:11) Does Will do year-end lists? (5:57) Canada Music Fund $16 million top-up update (7:42) Side Door correc...

We discuss the story of the Canadian live show platform "where every space is a venue" called Side Door, from the company's founding to its coming end, as announced on Nov. 4. Correction: at about 53 minutes, we say Arlene invested out of Dragon's Den, and we later say that Side Door didn't raise again afterward. Per Simpson's comment on the YouTube version of this episode (Nov. 25), it fell throu...

Carson declines to jinx the Jays. Then it's time to lock in for one of our most theoretical conversations yet, in response to the Never Post podcast episode titled "A.I. and New American Fascism" . Will chases it with a Canadian story about the possible non-renewal of a $16 million boost to federal music funding. Correction: at pretty much the very end, I say Universal is the majority shareholder...

Madelyn Read (musician, songwriter, and BC Co-Op Association Community Engagement & Education Manager) is our first-ever guest! (01:07) Introducing Madelyn and her work (05:26) VSO musicians strike update (it's over) (10:33) How Madelyn set up her Europe tour in 2024 (21:54) Talking about streaming (26:44) Leaving Spotify (31:14) Madelyn's nuanced disagreement with us (32:45) Madelyn and Will'...

Update from later today: VSO musicians have begun their strike . After Will vents about the Canadian Football League controversy, we discuss a potential strike by the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra (VSO) musicians (4:32), purported salary discrepancies (17:52), and we catch a brief response by the VSO in real time while recording (23:22). We jumped the usual schedule to talk about this news, so the...

We begin by jinxing the Jays. Then we get into the KARRA story “I invested $100,000 to create my album & Spotify deleted it” & part 2 (2:24), are labels bad if they just use DistroKid? (19:49) and is this gonna make us all leave finally? (35:31)  Recs: Carson - listen to God's Gonna Give You a Million Dollars by Shallowater , Will - watch Pablo Torre Finds Out⁩  FIND US: Will -Yo...

Be careful out there or you'll get yelled at by shirtless dudes in Pontiacs! Will has a music library app now on his desktop, and Carson needs a new website (02:10), Bandcamp launches Clubs (08:38), EVEN is a hip-hop-coded post-Bandcamp platform (25:35), we check out the familiar mission of another challenger called Ampwall (31:12), and some people really hate Stripe (46:19). Bandcamp Clubs: https...

(0:00) Will LOVES that you don't read his emails (1:52) Subvert turned down $200K and want to launch with no fees (18:15) "AI Music Night" in Texas (27:26) We need skills to make the platform internet suck less (38:28) Which tech move is Will going to make first? (48:19) JP Saxe's tour got canceled (1:05:18) Recommendations Subvert 0% Platform Fees links: Changelog link Blog post AI Music Night li...

We have closure on The Velvet Sundown! Then we get into the very creative ticket pricing, or lack thereof, at Bumbershoot in Seattle and the Guelph Jazz Festival in Ontario (11:43), and a Vancouver city council motion that put several of our favourite ideas on the table, but didn't pass (27:42). Recs: Carson - Tyler Childers album Snipe Hunter , Will - Brighde Chaimbeul album Sunwise FIND US: Will...

After clearing the WeTransfer air , we get into subvert.fm , a collectively owned music commerce platform in development. The Subvert team calls the platform a direct alternative to Bandcamp. We discuss the concept of Subvert and who founded it (11:17), Bandcamp controversies: being sold twice and union drama (15:08), Carson vs. Will on enshittification (29:46), Subvert's structure and current sta...

The story around Daniel Ek's military tech investments has reached a fever pitch, and nothing about it is likely to improve. Is now finally the time to quit using Spotify? We dive into Deerhoof's announcement about pulling their music from Spotify (4:03), our feelings about what to do as an artist (18:30), and what to do as a user (36:57). Recs: Will - Without A Stage: LA's Independent Jazz Scene...

We're back from going to festivals! We kick it off in urban affairs with "The Uncertain Future of Granville Island" by Uytae Lee on the YouTube channel About Here (2:23), then swing into AI as Carson shares the Timbaland music training/generating controversy (24:31) and Will gets into The Velvet Sundown, an accelerationist mix of AI-generated everything + bot playlist marketing (47:09). Timbaland...

We hang at Carson’s house to celebrate 5 years of Will’s music website Rhythm Changes! (0:00) Intro (2:28) The very beginning of RC in the summer of 2020 with 50 email sign-ups, (7:11) “The worst gig of my life” story and reuniting with David Blake, (15:50) Is vancouverjazz dot-com lost forever? (20:04) The curse of always being The Podcast Guy, (23:29) Times that Will touched a nerve with subject...

Shout-out to our friends in The Shorties ! We then get into a story called "Why it’s Time to Support Grassroots Venues with a £1 Ticket Levy" by Dan McCarthy in The Quietus (5:09), an out-of-nowhere but relevant reference to the 2015 vote on our local transit authority in Vancouver (21:41), and the video "Why EVERY Artist should be on YouTube" by Jon Talks Beats (26:55). Recs: Will - album Sancoch...

After Will admits to giving Meta his money again, we get into a big hairy question: what is the meaning of ‘labour’ we use in the arts (03:14)? Anti-streaming labour activism (14:21), the labour economics of playing gigs and small local shows (21:38), a detour into Vancouver venues closing (32:46), the Cultural Land Trust (38:10), and which things that an artist does are actually labour? (49:41) R...

(0:00) Will has a camera! (3:07) "'A Billion Streams and No Fans': Inside a $10 Million AI Music Fraud Case" , by Kate Knibbs of WIRED (17:24) Spotify tracks on the wrong artist profiles (37:59) What happens when the AI-gen floodgates burst? (44:27) Is Will being too naive about AI videos? (52:52) Recommendations We reference Search Engine's podcast episode "The Russian Cake Switcheroo" and the An...

(0:00) Will dreams of his Brentwood show & advertiser bucks (05:47) Feature on studio owners written by Nathan Caddell in the Georgia Straight (32:12) André 3000's 7 Piano Sketches project (53:50) Recommendations Recs: Will - Giacomo Turra scandal & Adam Neely "The Ethics of Fake Guitar" , Carson - album Under Tangled Silence by Djrum FIND US: Will -YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@willia...