Money 4 Nothing

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? Subscribe to our Newsletter!

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. Subscribe to our Newsletter! Music: Crumb - Ghostride

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. Subscribe to our Newsletter!

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. Subscribe to our Newsletter Music: Uniform - "Permanent Embrace"

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.

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 Coddington, the author of "How Hip Hop Became Hit Pop: Radio, Rap, and Race." Her work recovers rap's tortuous path through the financialized complexity of the '80s music industry—navigating around established Black radio stations that refused to play it, as a key part of multi-racial dance music coalitions, and through eye-catching MTV videos that reimagined the white-coded mainstream. The results push past the "authentic-or-not" dichotomy that defines hip hop history, revealing how rap was shaped—and driven forward—as much by pop trifles as hardcore truth tellers. After all...you STILL can't touch this. Subscribe to our Newsletter

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 deep to its genetic code. What does a rap battle mean? How has it evolved? And why does it carry so much importance? To explore the question, Saxon and Sam go through the history of rap beef, tracing changing conventions and their relationship to both the music industry and the aesthetic structures of feeling that surround it. Then, they try to figure out what made this battle so intense—moving from Drake as 21st century Bowie to the "contentification" of music in the social media era. The Bridge to Gucci to the Grahams….with a few detours. Subscribe to our Newsletter!

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 venue near you. But why is this becoming such a trend? Is it the pre-packaged social media ready presentation? Or that Millennials got deeper pockets now and will shell out big bucks on tickets (and a babysitter) to hear their favorite album played live? Or is it just Hollywood risk-aversion bleeding into the touring industry? As a jumping-off point, Saxon and Sam discuss an excellent recent article on Passion of the Weiss wondering on this very subject and then suss out whether Earl Sweatshirt really is touring ...too...much? Read: We Outside: Congrats, Your Favorite Album is Old Enough to Go on Tour by Pravash Trewn Subscribe to our Newsletter!

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 REALLY change things, in ways both obvious and subtle. While it’s hard to see an immediate path towards it being signed into law, the act demonstrates a genuine hunger for large-scale structural change—and helps to lay out an imaginative framework for what that could look like. We dig into the details, but also explore what this newfound sense of possibilities might mean for the future—a question that also connects to current, racially-coded attempts to ban music-biz-hotbed Tik Tok. Connecting such seemingly disparate events, we wonder what this emergent energy means, and where it could go next. Come for the 12-Million Stream Cap—stay for the beautiful dream of major label transparency. Subscribe to our newsletter! Music: La Sécurité - "K9 Freaks Mix (Freak Heat Waves Remix)"

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? Why are two of the biggest forces in the music business in a battle that neither should have wanted? To better understand the story, we dig into the payout structures that define the conflict, the inter-sectoral strategies that shaped it, and the negotiations that led to everything falling apart. Once again, it’s a fight about the future of sound—and which type of business is going to own it. Come for everyone talking about AI without anyone talking about AI. Stay for a KILLER data-science research project. Subscribe to our newsletter! Follow us on Twitter!

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" Subscribe to our newsletter! Follow us on Twitter!

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 broader implications of the division it (implicitly) draws between the filthy-lucre of commerce and the pure connection of community. Come for Sam not knowing the basics of indy-streamer cultology. Stay for the fundamental question of whether fandom is a zero-sum game. Subscribe to our newsletter! Follow us on Twitter! Subscribe to Penny Fractions!