Money 4 Nothing

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, laying a heavy sonic signature on the 1970s—and pretty much much everything that has come since. Think...Floyd. Think Stevie. 
 
To learn more, we talked to Albert Glinsky, the author of “Switched On: Bob Moog and the Synthesizer Revolution,” the definitive biography of the man behind the tones. And the story? It’s wild. Featured topics include: home-grown Theremins, electronics stolen from Con-Ed, Japanese industrial conglomerates, hippy rip-off albums about the zodiac, open-faced breadboards, John Cage & Co, and the determinative power of the keyboard. How an inveterate tinkerer, ensconced in upstate New York, remade the world. 

 

 

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Music - Panic Girl - "Washed Ashore"

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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. 

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Music - Man Rei - "I Don't Want Money"

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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.

 

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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 physical consumption tell us about the digital world? Does it follow the endless trend for infinitely increasing commodification? Or does its very irrationality suggest…an off ramp? THEN, a discussion of one of the biggest labor stories in a year full of them: the Hollywood strikes! Saxon and Sam dissect some of the macroeconomic forces behind demands from writers and actors, and try to puzzle out why this all went down now. More topically, they also wonder whether anything like this could ever happen for music—and think through what a lack of labor representation means for the industry shaping conversations of the future.
 
Music: Lona Mesa - "Spaceman" 
 
"Time to Break Up Hollywood"  - Matt Stoller
 

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"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 functional subjects in the service of Capital. Starting from the conceptual ideas of John Cage and Eno's late modernist visions illustrated by 'Music for Airports,' Sam and Saxon attempt to trace a history of contemporary Ambient with a look towards alternative possibilities and potentials that go beyond chill-out rooms and curated mood playlists. Also discussed: the merits of 17th century Harp Music, homemade iPhone field recordings, and the liberating benefits of being inefficient.

 

Music: Emily Sprague - "Water Memory"

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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, Wall Street know-it-alls in WAY over their head, and at least one climactic stock-offering battle. 
 
Now that the smoke has cleared, what did all the fuss tell us about Kpop? To learn more, we called Kara, host of the Idolcast, and our resident expert in all things K & J Pop. With her help, we explore the roots of this story, from Korea’s Bobby Brown being arrested on stage to the SM production machine that launched generations of dazzling stars. Ultimately, we tease out a picture of an industry in transition, as a world-conquering cultural model begins to look for the next thing—as its current structure starts to show its age. Come for the incredible saga of
Lee Soo-man, our new favorite media mogul. Stay for the commoditized communities coming soon to a fandom near you.
 
Music: James K - "Ultra Facial" 
 

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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 a look at the Merlin Network, powerful grouping of independent labels that banded together to grab a seat (or at least, a half-a seat) at the streaming table. Now responsible for roughly 15 percent of the modern music economy, Merlin has been a tremendous success, allowing independent labels like XL, Domino, Beggers Group and others spanning the globe to continue to thrive in an increasingly hyper-concentrated, almost entirely digital industry. But at what cost? We think through what independence can even mean within platform capitalism—and how the lessons of the past can be repurposed (if at all) to our multi-media future. 

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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 up with isn't actually going to be determined by technology in and of itself. And if recent major disruptions in music tell us anything, it's that the actual power relations within the industry need to be considered when thinking about the new potentials of machine learning. Come for the skepticism, stay for the audience participation and pushback. Ignore the technical difficulties. Live from the Wavelengths Summit in Brooklyn, New York!
 

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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 estate, specifically the classic song “Got To Give It Up”—a brilliant track that VIBED a lot like “Blurred Lines” without sharing much, if any, direct musical DNA. It was a bombshell.

In the years since, the music industry has changed. Songwriters became more cautious, backroom deals were struck, catalogs got bought, and everyone accused Ed Sheeran of stealing their songs.  But why was the lawsuit actually decided in favor of Gaye? And what does that tell us about the legal structures that shape modern music? To get a better sense, Saxon and Sam dig into the details of the case, unpacking the epically unmoored nature of modern copyright, the invisible impact of sampling, the music biz negotiations that followed the ruling, and the AI possibilities hurtling at us all. Come to hear us try and remember what 2013 sounded like. Stay for some beautiful—and we mean beautiful—depositions.

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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 analysis of what—exactly—they are, or how they’re meant to work.

Answering these seemingly simple questions is the goal of Nick Seaver’s new book “Computing Taste,” which explores the identities, goals, and practices of the programmers behind these technologies. Far from Machiavellian manipulators, the coders he describes are surprisingly idealistic music-lovers, desperately trying to analyze an almost infinitely complex cultural practice. Their failures to do so—and the ideologies they adopted as a result—would have enormous implications for the development of digital music, remaking genres, redefining listening, and shaping the platforms at the heart of the modern industry. Put it this way—we’ll definitely never look at a "Discover Weekly" playlist the same way again.

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