What Wilco’s ‘Yankee Hotel Foxtrot’ Got Right About Music Streaming
Wilco’s net-streaming experiment with Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was part of the utopian promise for technology’s future, and it worked.
music business
For the Love of the Crappy Cassette Tape
The peculiar technology of the lo-fi, crappy cassette tape exemplifies the inherent contradictions of popular music better than any other medium.
What Puts the Pop in Pop Music?
As the Beatles learned, good music, even good looks, is seldom enough to break a band into the American mainstream. So what puts the pop in pop music?
When Record Labels Blasted Through the Barriers in Segregated America
While their motives were more mercenary than musical, American small record label impresarios could hear the barriers falling between the races right before their ears.
Primavera Sound Madrid Is a Cautionary Tale in Macrofestival Logistics
The inaugural Madrid edition of Primavera Sound, one of the world’s largest musical festivals, saw many of us trudging through mud like zombies in the middle of the night, exhausted and confused.
How Keith Richards’ Drug Bust Opened the Mainstream for Disability Activists
Keith Richard’s 1977 drug bust in Toronto led to the controversial “Blind Date” benefit concert in nearby Oshawa. Many benefited, but not in the way you think.
Does Gay Fandom Help Pop Divas?
Looking at Rina Sawayama, Azealia Banks, Charli XCX, and Kim Petras’ rise and fall in the charts one wonders – does gay fandom help pop divas’ careers?
How Musicians Are Surviving the Pandemic — and the Music Industry
Nine US-based musicians discuss surviving and adapting to the changing music industry in our extraordinarily challenging time of pandemic shutdown.
How to Rap with a Sword: milo, Rapitalism, and Feeding Hunger with Thingness
Few of us devote much time to thinking about what a lifetime of labor is, especially creative labor. Milo is the kind of artist who invites us to think about it.