Money 4 Nothing
A podcast on music and capitalism, released bi-weekly. It explores the intersection of these two topics, likely discussing how economic systems influence the music industry and vice versa. The show is hosted by Money 4 Nothing and is available on Substack.
Episodes
Mask Off Oligarchy
What’s the connection between the Mark Walters sports-teams-insurance-money scandal, the underwhelming GTA6 crypto leak rug-pull, and the Fenix Flexin’ AI hit fallout? It might not seem obvious, but to us it all seems to be a big, neon flashing sign of the times. Move aside 16th century France, we’re rolling out a new kind of modern, smash and grab oligarchy—but with an added dash of nihilist, fak
Fenix Flexin Gets in Treblo
You knew it was bound to happen—an AI generated song, released by a human, hit the Billboard charts. But who could imagine it would happen like this? A retro-80s jam too embarrassing for Chromeo, “Rubberz” is a piece of icily alienated new romanticism, pretty catchy in a very robotic way which…well..makes sense. The humans ostensibly behind the song (Rapper Fenix Flexin and producer Purp On The Be
World Cup, Hallelujah
We set out to do a music and sports episode but the patchwork, saccharine Chris Martin produced World Cup halftime show was so terrible that we ended up spending half of this episode breaking it down. But it did get us thinking about the relationship of music and sports, how we got here and can it ever change? Along the way we consider the death of American culture, the growing irrelevance of time
Global Music Streaming with Ryan Blakeley
Obviously, we talk about streaming a lot on this show. It is, after all, the 3,000-pound gorilla determining the basic political economy of the contemporary music industry. But all too often we—and let’s face it, pretty much everyone else in the Anglo media-sphere—are actually talking about a handful of geographically focused companies, rather than a truly global ecosystem. You know the ones, and
Drake Stream Gaming + LiveNation Are AntiTrust LOSERS
Looking at the current state of the Billboard charts, it seems like reports of Drake’s demise at the hands of Kendrick Lamar may have been a bit premature. Storming out of whatever supervillain ice-cave lair he’s been inhabiting, Drake dropped THREE new albums into the top three slots of the charts, reminding the world that he remains the most successful rapper of the streaming era. But what does
Wild Geese Chase and a $64 billion offer for UMG
Early last month, billionaire hedge-fund manager Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square made an offer to purchase major-label heavyweight Universal Music Group. Ackman, already a major investor in the company, believes that despite consistent success in the business of making and selling music, UMG hasn’t been doing nearly well enough for its customers—i.e. the shareholders. Could a “New UMG” organized by
Music and War (w/ David Suisman)
Did you know that the U.S. military is the largest single employer of musicians on earth?But...how did this happen? What does it tell us about war? Or, you know... about music? These questions are at the heart of David Suisman’s new book Instruments of War: Music and the Making of America’s Soldiers. From Civil War battlefields to WWI training camps, Vietnamese bars, and Iraq-era iPods, he traces
Do Bad Times Make Good Punk?
It’s an attractive silver-lining of an idea—“At least bad times make good punk.” Reagan begets…Reagan Youth, you know? Looking around at our rapidly deteriorating world, we decided it was a good moment to put this theory to the test, subbing punk for the broader category of “political music,” and applying it to the last hundred years of popular performance. But what are bad times? And what makes g
Creating College Radio (w/ Katherine Rye Jewell)
If you live in the United States, you probably know the college radio feel—scrappy vibes, student DJs stumbling over liner notes, great station interstitials, even better music. That music tends to be a very specific mix of bleeding edge up-and-comers, critically-acclaimed (yet relatively low-selling) classics, and occasional forays into genres like reggae, funk, jazz, or (help us) ska. But despit
WTF is Tidal + Musk Vs. The Publishers
A two topic special for you this week. First—we explore the strangely under-reported story that Elon Musk is suing…basically the entirety of music publishing. The reason? They (gasp!) want him to either pay for music on X or, you know, stop allowing it. The mechanics are a lot weirder, though. We briefly run through consent decrees, blanket licensing, and Silicon Valley’s vision for intellectual p
New Year, Same Us
To ring in the new year, Sam and Saxon pull out both their wayback machine AND their increasingly scuffed-up crystal ball to think through some of the biggest trends from the last year—and to make some predictions about what might be coming in 2026. Was this the year when Spotify finally lost its grip on the PMC intelligentsia? Will Tik Tok’s potential American spinoff release a flood of incrimina
AI Music Onslaught
Well…it’s here folks. From the back roads of the digital countryside to the clubs of London, AI music has finally hit the charts. And the major labels, which had spent much of the last few years promising that they would do everything in their power to protect their artists’ rights and intellectual property and humanity have…signed deals with the major AI companies behind it? We don’t want to say
RetroConversion Freakout Feat. Travis Wagner
The Internet, as you know, is a vast and strange place, chock full of subcultures doing all sorts of things. And some of them are…well…curating Vine compilations, putting them onto VHS, carefully crafting distinctive packaging (complete with colored tapes!) and distributing the resulting “art pieces” via Etsy. Just hypothetically speaking, of course. But why would anyone want to do this? Why would
Spotify's Billions Club and the Future of Criticism
In the wilds of music streaming lurk eldritch terrors—perhaps few more strange, preposterous, and sanity-shattering than “the Spotify Billions Club,” a constantly updated list of tracks that have well and truly hit the big time. We pierce the post-temporal, post Tik-Tok veil and ask…what in the world is going on here? What are some of these bands? How did they get here? And what can the failure of
SkyDunce: Billionaires Vs. The Media
There’s been a conspicuous uptick in the past decade of billionaires buying up media companies. Elon and Twitter. Bezos and the Washington Post. Laurene Powell Jobs and The Atlantic. Forbes, Fortune, LA Times and a slew of other major newspapers are all now controlled by…very rich folks who didn’t make their money in media. But why? We thought print (and honestly, anything NOT a born digital strea
What is the Value of Music?
What is the value of music? We often think of this question in economic terms, but it doesn’t always have to do with money. After all, there’s a value difference between someone strumming a guitar at home, playing in a band, or trying to land a major label deal in that band. Each has its own kind of “value,” but these values are not the same.Parsing out these different kinds of values is the focus
No Ethical Music Streaming in a Streaming World
Daniel Ek, overlord of Spotify, recently lead an investment round of $600+ for a private German defense tech company. Despite Ek having invested in this kind of military technology since 2021, it seems to have suddenly reached everyone’s attention. As a result, lovable indie weirdos Deerhoof are leading Ek’s recent round of bad press with claims that they’ll be pulling their music off Spotify beca
Hardcore Superstars and a Sly-less Future
This past week saw the passing of legendary musicians Sly Stone and Brian Wilson at the (relatively) ripe age of 82. While both men had grappled with the challenges of fame and mental health over their long careers, their deaths weren’t the result of these struggles—but rather the inevitable march of time. And they aren’t alone. The stars of the 60s and 70s are all slowing down: Aerosmith, Kiss, B
Welcome To The Machine (but with more succulents) Feat. Toby Bennett
On our latest episode, Sam and Toby Bennett talk about how the major labels have transformed themselves in the digital era. But, while the UMG, Warner, and Sony are continent-spanning IP behemoths, they are also made of people: people with ideas about themselves, and the work they do, and the industry they do it in. And if the industry was changing between, say, 2000 and 2010, then the people with
How Tariffs Could Impact Music
As you might have noticed, the global economic system has hit a bit of a…snag—namely, the United States upending almost 80 years of foreign policy with little-to-no clarity on process, structure, or medium-term aims. That’s right, baby…We’re talkin' tariffs! Now, some of the impacts are, to be honest, pretty straightforward: Those Mexican strats? Those Roland 808s? Those T-Shirts at the merch tabl
Every Band is a Foreign Country (With Franz Nicolay)
What is a band? Think about it for a second, and it becomes less obvious. What you see is a couple of people on stage rocking out. But think about it more and it gets more complex. Actually, bands really aren’t really like anything else—part business, part social club, part artistic partnership, part job…operating at the interstitial zone between disciplined employment and liberatory self-expressi
Digital Distribution and the Ideology of Being Indy
Late last year, Universal Music shelled out 775 million dollars to snap up Downtown Music, a “global music company” that manages “over 50 million music assets”. Perhaps famously, Downtown owns Cd Baby—a digital distributor that, along with peers like Tunecore and Distrokid, has become central to the infrastructure of the streaming economy. These companies enable artists to upload their music to pl
Spotify Culture (Featuring Liz Pelly + David Turner)
This week? Heavy Hitters. As you may (or may not) have heard, journalist/Daniel Ek tormenter/friend-of-the-pod Liz Pelly is making waves with her wonderful new book “Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist.” It’s easily the best thing yet written about the company at the center of modern music, insightfully reconstructing how Spotify’s shifting interests and polici
"Homeboy Need a Subpoena": Drake Sues UMG
Look. Times are dark. So this week, we decided to tackle a somewhat lighter topic and look into Drake’s remarkably tone-deaf lawsuit against Universal Music Group—the label to which both he and (beef opponent) Kendrick Lamar are signed. In essence, Drake alleges that UMG used all their influence to make Kendrick’s Grammy-winning diss track “Not Like Us” a viral mega-hit. Which, like…yeah. Of cours
What Trump Could Mean for AI and Music
The second Trump administration will impact pretty much everything, but we decided to take some time and focus on the specific conjecture of industry + culture + technology that is AI. After all, when Biden came to office, LLMs were just really starting to get going—while the last 12 months have seen a mind-bending set of developments, both in terms of corporate activity and technical possibility.
Financializing Everything (W/ Andrew deWaard)
As you might have noticed, we spend a...fair bit of time talking about the three labels at the heart of modern music—and tracking what their unprecedented centralization has done to the industry. And while that’s important, it’s only part of a far larger trend, one that cuts across pretty much all of the culture industries. Crucially, this is a process, not just of mergers or consolidation, but of
TikTok VS….Music? (W/ Kristin Robinson)
This past January, Universal Music went to war. Or at least, it tried to. Shocking both listeners AND artists, the major label announced that it was cutting ties with TikTok, the short-form giant, over payout rates and copyright infringement. Its artists (and publishing)—completely pulled from the platform. T-Swift viral dances? Tragically silenced.The breakup lasted until May, when (in a profound
Roan Rising: The zoomer soft coup and the future of mass culture
After an eternity of millennial performers with a chokehold on the charts, we’ve finally seen the emergence of a new cohort of gen-z icons. Chappelle Roan and Sabrina Carpenter (building on the foundation laid by Billie + Olivia) are suddenly everywhere—headlining festivals, topping the charts, defining the zeitgeist. You might call it a moment of generational turnover…except for the fact that pre
Streaming Music, Streaming Capital (W/ Eric Drott)
How did streaming change music? Not like how did it change the music industry (we talk about that plenty, obviously). And not how did it change bitrate. But how did streaming change the nature of the music that you listen to? How and why and does it matter that you now pay a limited rate for an unlimited amount of music? Within capitalism, how does it matter that "streaming" functions under a fund
NÜ METAL FOREVER (w/ Holiday Kirk)
NÜ metal sucks. Right? It’s what critics have screamed ever since the taste-defying mashup of funk-metal, rap, industrial, and post-hardcore stormed onto the charts in the mid ‘90s. When bands like Slipknot, Linkin Park, System of a Down, Korn, or Limp Bizkit dominated the charts, the take was muted by raw success. But the second the acts slipped…the entire movement was (more or less) decried as t
Taking on Ticketmaster (W/ Kevin Erickson)
This summer, the other shoe finally dropped on Ticketmaster/Live Nation.After decades of complaints by everybody from Pearl Jam to Zach Bryan (and after several years of increasingly intense Post-Swifty scrutiny), the Justice Department has filed a lawsuit accusing the massive firm of being a monopoly. In it, lawyers argue that the company is built around size and market-share—allowing it to harve
AI Music VS. The Lawsuit Tsunami
In recent months, AI companies like Suno and Udio have been in the news for the incredible promise of their text-to-tunes tech. Just type in a few phrases, and… an original piece of music of your very own, created in seconds. It’s a revolution! At least that’s the narrative being pushed by the world of venture capital, which has thrown hundreds of millions of dollars at the fledgling firms. To bet
Are you Ex-Sphere-enced?
Live music continues to evolve in our post-covid, pre-bird flu world—and nothing even approaching a new normal has yet to appear. To try and get a handle on the complexities of a constantly-moving situation, Saxon and Sam decided to go...both big and small.By small, we're talking about the ticket sales for the Black Keys (very canceled) stadium tour—one of a raft of recent underselling events (loo
How Hip Hop Conquered the Charts (feat. Amy Coddington)
Although rap currently stands at the center of American music, for much of the genre's history, its relationship to the charts was...fraught. Radio was notoriously reluctant to play the brash new style, and major labels took over a decade to embrace its commercial potential. So how did hip hop make it? How did it grow from a regional fluke into a global phenomenon? To learn more, we spoke to Amy C
Embracing Our Fandom (W/ Monia Ali)
Sure—Fans have always driven popular music. That’s what it means to be popular in the first place, you know? To have fans? But if you look around today’s sonic landscape, it feels…different out there. Forget clubs and message boards. Fandoms now have entire worlds, complete with enemies, economic strategies, and complex referential mythologies—dense communities increasingly integrated into the maj
The Political Economy of Rap Beefs
Drake vs. Kendrick was about more than personal insults or verbal one-upmanship—it was a referendum on the most dominant figure of the last decade of rap (Drake), as narrated by the only classicist with the critical clout and popular cred to issue the judgement. But while the conflict was ultra-current, the chosen forum dates back to the very beginning of rap, a symbolically charged space tied dee
Karaoke and Personal Pop
This past March, Shigeichi Negishi passed away at 100. While you might not know his name, you’ve certainly enjoyed the musical world he helped create. Negishi has long been credited as the inventor of Karaoke—pulling together consumer electronics, post-work drinking culture, and a love of pop tunes into an era-defining mix. A deeper dive, however, makes the story more complex (and honestly more in
Millennials Nostalgia Tour
Dear Listener, Have you found yourself coming down with more consistent cases of nostalgia lately? Do you consider yourself a millennial? Well, if so, you might be soon buying a pricey concert ticket to one of the hottest trends in live music: The 20 year Anniversary Album Tour. Yes, your favorite album of 2004 (or perhaps 2014) can soon be heard live, in its entirety, front to back at a concert v
Keep on Streamin’ in the Free World
This week, we take a roundabout tour of the platform power that drives our musical landscape. First up is Neil Young, whose one-man stand against Spotify for its support of Joe Rogan just ended in….well…total defeat. We explore why Ol' Neil was unable to escape the musical monopsony that defines our streaming age (with a few detours into the terrors of lo-fidelity audio and the dream that was Pono
A Living Wage and a Tik Tok Ban: Could…Congress Transform Music?
Much of the time, it feels like almost nothing could shake up the streaming status-quo. This isn’t one of those times. Over the past week, Congressperson Rashida Tlaib (with support from the Union of Musicians and Allied Workers) released the Living Wage for Musicians Act—a fascinating piece of legislation that (if passed) would completely transform the contemporary music industry. Like…really REA
Imagine Dragons: The Most Popular Band of the Millennium?
Is rock dead? Not according to Imagine Dragons. You know the band with 10 different billion-streamed songs? The one that’s sold 46 million records? You’ve definitely heard of them, but....have you ever really HEARD them? Probably not. And that’s because despite being the most successful band of the past 25 years, Imagine Dragons has received next to no critical attention. Not even a proper 0.6 tak
Universal VS. TikTok: The Showdown No One Should Have Wanted
This past week, negotiations broke down between Universal Music—the biggest and most powerful of the three major labels—and Tik Tok, the world’s most viral social media platform. The result: Universal’s music has been pulled—almost entirely—from the mimetic app. It’s a show of raw muscle the likes of which we haven’t seen for years, and the implications are fascinating. But how did it come to this
Pitchfork, GQ, and the Music Criticism Lifestyle
Like the rest of the increasingly small world of music criticism, we were shaken by the news that Pitchfork had not only been more-or-less gutted by publisher Conde Nast, but pulled into GQ. Gentleman’s Quarterly. Of all possible things. G-freaking-Q...?We’re not gonna lie—this one feels grim. But, what kind of grim? Events split the team, with Saxon spinning out a narrative of corporate confusion
Royalty Rumble at Spotify and a Crisis at Hipgnosis
New year, same old music business. To get things kicked off right, we circle back to check in on two of our favorite industry players, and things….well, we hate to tell you, but things aren’t GREAT, you know? Regarding Hipgnosis, the once high-flying music fund is very much in hot water—conflicts of interest flying, shareholders revolting, and board-members unceremoniously shown the door. Who coul
BMI Sells Out
When we heard that BMI, an organization designed to collect money on behalf of songwriters, had decided (on its own?) to drop its non-profit status and go for the cash, our response was confusion. Like—can they even do that? What does that even MEAN? But then BMI sold themselves to a private equity fund. Backed by Google. And now...we’re concerned. To get a better sense of what’s going on, we dig
Can You Actually Support This Podcast On Patreon? (w/Penny Fractions)
This time Sam and David Turner dig into the financially rocky patch in which Patreon—the name that launched a thousand podcasts—has recently found itself. Looking at the longer trajectory of the fan-funding platform, they try to piece together how it moved from a replacement for YouTube ads to a supposed panacea for the value collapse of musical (and cultural) production—and try to understand the
E-Zoo and the Future of Nightlife
Over the summer, New York’s premier EDM festival Electric Zoo descended deep into the Fyre Fest zone—that magical place combining blatant rip-off and profoundly unsafe conditions. Purchased by by owners of Brooklyn mega-club Avant Gardner the previous year, the latest edition of the three-day rave took the Bold and Forward Thinking step of mixing abrupt cancellations and incredibly poor crowd cont
Bandcamp Blues: (Penny Fractions 4 Nothing)
Hi folks! As part of our collaboration with Penny Fractions, we are bringing you the first episode of a new format—David, Saxon, and Sam, thinking through our moment in an off-the-cuff convo about current events. We hope you like it! The music industry was recently shaken by news around beloved marketplace/web-magazine Bandcamp, where half of the staff was recently let go (or, as press release fro
Scooter, Baby! The Life and Times of the Most 2010’s Manager You Can Possibly Imagine
First off—big news in Money 4 Nothing-land. We’ve just OFFICIALLY joined forces with the amazing Penny Fractions newsletter to create a new and almighty Voltron (Sailors Moon?) of critical coverage on the music industry. We’ll be rolling out exciting new projects over the next few months, so please stay tuned! And now, on with the show… When news broke that a wave of Scott “Scooter" Braun’s clien
Moog’s World: The Story Behind the Synthesizer Behind Modern Music (feat. Albert Glinsky)
If you listen to essentially any piece of contemporary music, you’re likely—more than likely—to hear the influence of Bob Moog. Moog invented the first modular synthesizer, a device for creating electronic sound simultaneously more powerful and more accessible than anything that had come before. Initially adopted by the avant-garde, Moogs were quickly scooped up by the elite of rock and pop, layin
State of Pl-A(i) With Cherie Hu
Machine Learning. It’s in the news, and increasingly, it's in our tunes. Somehow. Maybe? Given the ravenous hype cycles of tech, it can be extremely difficult to separate the real, the potentially real, the squint-and-maybe-you-can-see it, and “the SEC wants to speak to you now” of it all. To try and get a better sense of how AI is factoring into the present-day music industry as it actually, you
Astroworld and the opposite of ”Utopia”
On Nov 5th, 2021, the first night of Travis Scott’s Astroworld festival collapsed into horror—a terrible crowd crush at the Houston event killed 10, and reportedly injured thousands. In the wake of the catastrophe, fingers were pointed at Scott, at Live Nation, at the Police, at Rap music, at “the kids.” And then? Silence. We didn’t really know what happened, and no details emerged for a long, lon
Super Fans and Super Strikes
This week, the crew digs into two timely stories providing some new perspective on this crazy little thing called music. First, they dig into the rising influence of so-called “super fans”: folks who consume content from their favorite artists along 5 or more distinct channels. According to recent research they are not just a thing—they’re increasingly driving the industry. What does this rampant
Ambient Music: Functionality and Liberating Potentials
"Ambient Music" has seen a renewed interest for reasons that we can only speculate. 2016 election? Increased atomization of individuals? The multi-headed hell-scape of pandemic + climate change + economic woes? Sure. Whatever the reason, the past decade as seen a revival of soundscapes and synths that is both helping us escape from the toils of our everyday and also, more darkly, making us more fu
K-Pop Merger Mania (feat. the Idolcast)
Early this year, K-pop was the site of some truly Succession level drama, as Hybe (the company that launched BTS) attempted to steal SM Entertainment (a longtime mainstay of the industry) out from under Kakao (a Facebook + Spotify level media conglomerate). The story had it all: legendary businessman refusing to go quietly, alleged stock market manipulation, patricidal nephews, alleged corruption,
Merlin and What It Means (and Meant) to be Indie
It used to be so simple. There were the major labels (all 6 of them, or whatever) and there were the independents or "the indies." Over the 80’s and 90s, a position initially adopted out of economic necessity grew into a distinctive cultural mode, with a host of aesthetic and political dimensions. Now things have changed and being "indie" no longer means the same.To understand this shift, we take
The Great Music AI Contradiction (Live at Wavelengths Summit)
Everyone is talking about AI—and that includes the music biz. No one is disputing the wide-ranging potential of these new tools, but is our rapidly-approaching deep-fake future really (or at least, FULLY) being driven by technology? Sam and Saxon offer a dissenting voice to the cloud of excitement hovering around our up-and-coming machine overlords—arguing that the entertainment landscape we end u
Blurred Lines and the Future of Copyright
Five years ago, Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams finally lost the (musical) lawsuit of the century. Their song, “Blurred Lines,” had been an inescapable summertime hit, a wedding-DJ-standby, and the center of a very Obama-Era debate over whether it was creepy to have a song called “Blurred Lines” in the first place (it was.) Now, it was also found to have violated IP owned by Marvin Gaye’s estat
Inside the Algorithm Factory: Music Recommendations (w/ Nick Seaver)
In the digital economy, recommendation algorithms get…a LOT of attention. To some, they’re the special sauce behind everything from Spotify’s personalized playlists to Tik Tok’s “For You” page. For others, they represent a dark, vibe-generating demiurge slowly sapping music’s social power. But for all the discussion of how these programs are transforming our world(s), there’s surprisingly little a
Streaming in the Dark: No One Knows Anything (w/ Meredith Rose)
No one knows anything about the streaming economy. Not Really. That’s the stark message at the heart of Public Knowledge’s new whitepaper “Streaming in the Dark,” which catalogs the remarkable “wall of NDAs” operating at every level of the modern music industry. The relationship between labels and streaming services? NDA. The relationship between distributors and streaming services? NDA. and on an
Spotify Redux (Quiet Threats + Desperate Flailing)
For this episode, Saxon and Sam check in on Spotify, which is…not in great shape. Even in the best of times, the company was handcuffed to the majors, and threatened by mega-sized competitors like Apple & Amazon. And these, my friend, are no longer the best of times. But it’s okay! They’ll get...faster! And more efficient! And, um, remake their homepage? That’ll do it. Definitely. Meanwhile, the
From Houston to the World: The Political Economy of DJ Screw (with Lance Scott Walker)
In the '90s, a remarkable sound was being developed in Houston—its cavernous drums, booming, crawling vocals, and distinctive, hiccuping rhythms reflect the indelible influence of DJ Screw. During the latter half of the decade, the hardworking musician produced hundreds if not thousands of tapes, mixing regional classics with on-the-fly freestyles to develop a new template for southern rap. While
Metadata Errors in the Lime Green Lamborghini (With Kristin Robinson)
The success of YouTube has been inextricably linked to the music business. Initially a remarkably effective streaming pirate, recent years have seen the site pivot to industry ally, paying out millions in royalties for the copyrighted material played on its platform. But who gets the money? And how? And…who is making sure it goes to the right people?These are the questions opened up by Billboard j
Reggaeton Gets Sued
It was revealed just this past week that basically all of Reggaeton is being sued. No, really. As you may or may not know, the massively popular genre from Latin-American and the Caribbean is actually based mostly on a few Jamaican riddims (the instrumental background or “rhythm” in contemporary Jamaican music). Now the production duo of Steely & Clevie, who wrote the riddim behind the massively p
A.I. in Der Klub (And Your Next Playlist)
The music industry is becoming increasingly disenchanted with Tik-Tok, finding it difficult to bend the wildly popular app for its own profitability...let alone find the next mega-star. Does that mean we might see the big three start to put the squeeze on Tik-Tok for dipping into its massive catalog without much of a payout? It worked well with Spotify for Lucian Grainge and co. But can the same s
What Taylor Swift Tells Us About the Billboard Charts
Taylor Swift made headlines recently by grabbing all top 10 spots on the Billboard Hot 100 chart — a first in its 64 year history — with the release of her latest record Midnights. Cool. Good for Taylor and her Swifties. But….what does that actually mean? You might think it's a simple answer, but actually the Billboard charts are a complex beast with a long and winding history that didn’t even sta
The Rise and Fall of SST Records with Jim Ruland
The modern music industry is defined, in large part, by major labels and centralized digital services. To try and imagine a world without (or at least around them), we’ve been looking backwards to the 1980s, when a thriving underground economy enabled a remarkable flood of American rock. If one label could be said to define that moment, it would be LA’s SST Records. Founded in Hermosa Beach by Bla
Penny Fractions Live with Cherie Hu and Liz Pelly
Our good friend David Turner celebrated five years of Penny Fractions earlier this month with a live show at Nowadays. On stage, David was joined by our very own Sam Backer along side heavy-hitters Liz Pelly and Cherie Hu. Enjoy this live recording from the show as the crew run through everything you'd expect from a M4N discussion on the current state of the music industry: criticisms, hot takes,
Dan Ozzi on the Political Economy of Selling Out
It’s a tale as old as Nirvana. A band (ideally punk or punk influenced) forms and gets some buzz. Major labels swarm. The kids sign on the dotted line…and are promptly thrown to the wolves. Fade to black. And while that often-repeated story isn’t exactly false, it doesn’t do much to capture the shifting dynamics that shaped the economies of rock over the 90’s and 2000’s—an era when the relationshi
The Music Catalog Acquisition Cool Down
In the past few months, the insane flood of money that has been flowing into the purchase of music rights (and really, into financial and tech related firms of pretty much all stripes) has begun to slow down. Crazy what rising interest rates will do, huh? These changes have prompted a wave of takes about the potential collapse of a host of music rights firms that overpromised, overpaid, and now se
Damon Krukowski on Unions, Streaming, and Musical Labor
You might know Damon Krukowski from his role in the groundbreaking indy band Galaxie 500. Or maybe you’ve listened to his podcast, “Ways of Hearing” or read his excellent newsletter, or his widespread journalism. More recently, however, he’s put on another hat, as an influential rabble rouser for Union of Musicians and Allied Workers. A new group that emerged from the disruptions of Covid, UMAW h
The KLF: A Foolproof Way To Hit No. 1
A foolproof way to hit number 1 is what the Time Lords—AKA the JAMS, AKA the KLF—promised the readers of “The Manual,” their 1988 book. After all, they had just done it, with the insipid brilliance of their Gary Glitter Meets Dr. Who mashup “Doctorin’ the Tardis.” And if they could do hack it, so could you, right? But if you did…would it even matter? Today, we’re talking through the careers of Jim
Born to Sell: Springsteen’s Tickets + Meta Makes Moves
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
K-Pop Histories Beyond BTS (Featuring The Idolcast)
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
Kate Bush is Running Up Those Charts
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
Independent Labels and Electronic Music with Chal Ravens
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,
Hard Landing: The End of Free Money and The Future of the Music Industry
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
What Makes a Hit in 2022? (with Andrew Unterberger)
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 of Asian Man Records
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
New vs. Old Music
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
