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A podcast on music and capitalism hosted by Saxon Baird and Sam Backer. Dropped every other week.
Episodes
Thursday Jan 11, 2024
Thursday Jan 11, 2024
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 could have possibly seen this coming? Certainly not us…
And then Spotify, where the times—or at least the streaming payout structure—are a-changin’. On the surface, new rules regarding monetization (under 1000 plays? No cash for you!) might seem relatively minor, but they reflect a more fundamental set of shifts within the power-structures of the industry. Everyone is gearing up for a fight about the next 25 years of music—moves like this are the first steps towards a new world order. And if recent events are any indication, Spotify doesn’t seem like it’ll be the one calling the shots…
Music: Black Lips - "Bone Marrow"
Saturday Dec 16, 2023
Saturday Dec 16, 2023
Re-Listen: "Consent Decrees" Episode
Tuesday Nov 21, 2023
Tuesday Nov 21, 2023
Friday Nov 03, 2023
Friday Nov 03, 2023
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 control with rampant overselling, producing a potentially deadly crowd-crush and an NYPD investigation. Fascinated and horrified, we decided to dig a bit deeper to figure out…who ARE these guys? And what in the name of Frankie Knuckles is their deal? As we dug into the often insane specifics (Superfund Halloween Rave, Best Friends With Mayoral Staffers, Etc.), we realized that the question shed light on a deeper issue: as dance music and nightlife become big business, how do are events and venues balancing the desire for profits and the demand for safety? And could the finance money pouring into the space change things for the worse?
Read: Clubbing is Becoming Big Business. What Does This Mean for Dance Music? - Resident Advisor
Friday Oct 20, 2023
Friday Oct 20, 2023
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 from definitely-not-shady new owners Songtradr put it "After a comprehensive evaluation...50% of Bandcamp employees have accepted offers to join Songtradr”). It’s…not great. Unfortunately, it’s also not entirely unexpected. To try to get our heads around what’s happening, we talk union-busting, the decline of music criticism, the death of tech optimism, the rise of the influencer economy, the zombie-like survival of grifting, and what the future might hold for a synch-happy tech-bro Bandcamp. Somedays, it feels like it's their world, and we just live in it. Today might be one of those days.
Friday Oct 13, 2023
Friday Oct 13, 2023
Wednesday Sep 20, 2023
Wednesday Sep 20, 2023
Music - Panic Girl - "Washed Ashore"
Saturday Sep 02, 2023
Saturday Sep 02, 2023
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 know, exists, we talked with Cherie Hu of Water and Music. We discuss production tools, major label plots, social media possibilities, and push-button production, and tried to figure out the ways these technologies could be revolutionary—or more of the same. To put it another way? Come for the change—stay for the continuity.
Thursday Aug 10, 2023
Thursday Aug 10, 2023
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, long time.
Until now. Coinciding (suspiciously, perhaps) with the release of Scott’s new album “Utopia,” a grand jury decided that no one was criminally liable for the deaths—and the Houston PD released their entire investigative report. How did this happen? Who was at fault? And what would stop it from happening again? To try and answer these questions, Sam and Saxon dug deep into the documentation, trying to understand the fatal breakdown. And the answers…well...they aren’t reassuring. Far from a riot or a panic, Astroworld seems like it mostly went according to plan. The problem was that the plan was fundamentally flawed—dependent on inexperienced workers, unfamiliar collaborators, and shaped by a fear of the crowd it was supposed to protect. Ultimately, Astroworld seems increasingly like a microcosm of the rotten, financialized state of American life. And while a slight sliver of hope might exist in antitrust activity, it doesn’t seem like things are going to get better anytime soon. The opposite of Utopia.
Friday Jul 21, 2023
Friday Jul 21, 2023