Money 4 Nothing

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 policies have remade how we listen, who we listen to, and what they get paid.

To get a deeper perspective on both the book and the histories it emerges from, we also called up David Turner—of the late (lamented) Penny Fractions—pulling him out of retirement for one last big music + capitalism score. Together Liz, David, and Sam dive into everything from the economics of ghost artists and the aesthetics of vibes-based listening to the intentional destruction of cultural context in the streaming age. It’s a conversation that helps clarify the singularity of Spotify culture—and allows us to better detach its operations from the meaning of digital music. Come for the playlists. Stay for what they’ve done to you.

 

Buy Liz Pelly's book "Mood Machine"

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"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 course they did. They are in the business of producing viral mega-hits.

 

While the context of the lawsuit—namely, multiple violent attacks on Drake’s house—is quite serious, it’s hard not to find the whole thing ridiculous. After over a decade of industry machinations, Aubrey really had the nerve to sue UMG for…hurting his feelings? [Yes, it’s actually for defamation of character, but in the court of public opinion, those two are pretty much synonymous] Despite this, the actual content of the legal filing is fascinating—offering readers a guided tour of exactly what UMG is doing out there, hosted by someone who really knows how the sausage gets made. Payola? Selective copyright enforcement? Contract negotiation hardball? You betcha. THEN: Saxon and Sam get a little loose and take a jog through the Grammys. Album Of The Year? Sure. But also…who did you have for Immersive Audio?  

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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. Given the rate of both change and adoption, the next 4 years will almost certainly be crucial, potentially locking us into a long-term pathway with both these machines AND the companies that make them.

So…what might happen? And how will it impact music, given the massive copyright lawsuits currently working their way through the courts? Saxon and Sam put on their tinfoil hats, got out their crystal ball, and…did their best. The resulting conversation moves from big (contradictory impulses between protectionism and libertarianism within the Trump coalition?) to bigger issues (War? Stock market crash?) to the generally intangible (shifting relationships between Americans and the ideologies of cultural authority?) Come for a connect-the-dots conversation that links Elon Musk and AGI to the possibility of earning a living by making art. Stay because at least we’re all doomed together.

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For more background, check our our episode on AI + Copyright Lawsuits in Music.

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 financialization—a profit-driven effort to increase global capital’s hold over the workers who create culture.

 

But…how did this happen? When did it happen? And how has it impacted not just the firms that produce music and films—but the actual music and films themselves? To help us through this complex history, we’re joined by Andrew deWaard, author of “Derivative Media: How Wall Street Devours Culture,” taking us through a wide-ranging conversation about derivatives, the geopolitical implications of "financial discipline," mergers, acquisitions, board-member kickbacks, 30 Rock, play-listing Drake, modern cultural analysis, and more. Come for the doomerism you know and love. Stay for a better understanding of how our corporate overlords get it done.  

 

If you want to read Andrew's book--it's free and open source here! Also some sick charts to accompany the discussion.

 

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Music: Crumb - Ghostride

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 profoundly opaque statement), the two corporations suddenly announced they had come to terms. The fight was a massive gamble for both sides—a test to see, when push came to shove, who really had the leverage in one of social media’s most important relationships. But…what actually happened? And what, if anything, was the fallout? To learn more, we talked to Kristin Robinson, a senior writer at Billboard, and the author of the excellent "Machine Learnings" newsletter. Fractured solidarity between artists and labels? The impenetrable veil of music biz secrecy? Slowed and reverbed copyright infringement? The crushing power of monopoly exerted, step by step, against indy labels? All that and more.

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Music: Kyozo Nishioka - "Gypsy Song"

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 precisely zero cultural lines are being drawn. Instead, the newest wave of big-tent pop is, quite intentionally, for everyone—teens, college kids, aging millennials, gen x-ers still watching SNL, etc.

To celebrate the return of the mainstream (and to suss out the role played by the major labels who had…started to miss it), we put on our media theory hats and start investigating. How do careers function now that new music doesn’t need to be new? Has digitally based fragmentation started to produce its opposite? Is the culture industry—with all of its coercive power—back? Come for the socio-technical implications of the Chappelle timeline. Stay for what it says about the nature of post-post-modernity.

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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 fundamentally different system of copyright and finance and technology than…say buying? And how does that all service data collection, listening habits, personalized feeds and everything else? These questions are at the heart of Eric Drott’s wonderful new book “Streaming Music, Streaming Capital,” which starts to grapple with the fundamental questions of what streaming is exactly—and what it’s done to us.

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Buy Eric Drott's Book "Streaming Music, Streaming Capital"

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 tasteless trash—the worst of rockism, utterly beyond the pale. Why though? Could the last truly successful (from a chart perspective) rock movement REALLY have no redeeming qualities? And if it did…why hasn’t anyone been thinking about them? Well—one hero has. It’s Holiday Kirk, the “CEO of NÜ Metal,” whose remarkable twitter-project “crazy ass moments in nu metal history” has brought welcome attention back to the style—and shone a spotlight on a new generation of artists reimagining the sound. We talk to Holiday about why he fell (back) in love with the style, the mixture of dumb and brilliant that defines its output, And why Korn were the best sellouts of all time. Then we get heady, and try to think through the political implications of the genre’s white male rage—and what it means that it was so thoroughly rejected by the tastemakers of the Obama era. Come for a validation of the musical trauma of throwing away your copy of Hybrid Theory. Stay for a discussion of the class, politics, taste, and the meaning of Rock in American history.

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Music: Uniform - "Permanent Embrace"

 

 

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 harvest vast profits, prevent the emergence of meaningful competition, and damage the interests of both artists and fans. If the DOJ wins? That monopoly might get broken up. And what happens then is anybody’s guess.

Given the importance of live performance to the music industry, all of this is…a really big deal. Which is why we were delighted to talk all things restraint-of-trade with Kevin Erickson, the director of the Future of Music Coalition. Crucially, it’s not just that any major regulatory move could shatter the long-standing, “convenience-fee”-driven status quo. Turns out, Ticketmaster/Live Nation has its fingers in a LOT of pies. Even the lawsuit itself could go a long way towards revealing the hidden influence that the powerful company has exerted on everything from touring schedules or merch practices to advertising cultures and venue sustainability. Discovery? Can’t Wait.

Come for platform monopolies slowly strangling your favorite local venue. Stay for…that too, because it's SUPER real. But also for a pragmatic perspective on our musical ecosystem—and the rare chance to change its trajectory for the better.

 

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Music: King Tubby - "African Roots"

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 better understand what these companies are promising—and what they could do to the music industry—Saxon and Sam think through some possible futures, from the mind-bendingly good to the vast universe of echoing slop.  

 

But even if the tech is there, the world might not follow along as smoothly as the CEOs would like. In particular, the major labels, incensed at what they believe was the wholesale theft of their copyrights, have launched a series of lawsuits aimed at kneecapping the wannabe unicorns. This past week, Suno and Udio responded in startling fashion. Yes, it turns out, they did indeed train their models on recorded music. But it wasn’t stealing, because… the recordings were already online? At stake is more than just the future of not having to learn Garageband in order to make mediocre house. Instead, the battle over audio is shaping up to be a defining moment for generative AI more generally—a conflict with billions on the line. Come for our new theme song. Stay for the techno-social dynamics of copyright within sonic capitalism.