Money 4 Nothing
99 episodes - English - Latest episode: 24 days ago -A podcast on music and capitalism hosted by Saxon Baird and Sam Backer. Dropped every other week.
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Episodes
Bandcamp and Epic Games Get Hitched
March 15, 2022 20:21 - 58 minutes - 53.9 MBWhen Bandcamp announced a few weeks ago that it had been sold, it came as a deep shock to the wide audience of music fans who had come to appreciate its artist-supporting activities and (relatively) equitable financial policies. When they read that it had been sold to Epic Games, the multi-billion dollar creator of the Battle Royale mega-game Fortnite, the widespread reaction was...huh? To try to make sense of the sale, and to figure out what it might mean going forward, Saxon and Sam dig in...
Neoliberal Jazz with Dale Chapman
February 23, 2022 19:24 - 1 hour - 59.4 MBAs soon as you hear it, the term "neoliberal jazz" makes sense—hip urbanites, attending concerts in revamped art-spaces sponsored by banks and financial services companies. But how did Jazz—a counter-cultural music if there ever was one—get there? And how have its evolving aesthetics enabled these developments? To learn more, we spoke to Dale Chapman, author of "The Jazz Bubble," a mind-bending book about urban culture, market forces, and...Wynton Marsalis. Come fly with us, as we trace Jaz...
Web 3.Bro with David Turner
February 08, 2022 18:19 - 1 hour - 61.5 MBWhile the boom and busts have come and gone, NFTs haven’t disappeared. A set of crypto based technologies, and speculatively disruptive companies are still out there, working to create a new, on-chain future. We have thoughts. Especially when it comes to how music intersects (or doesn't). And to try to make sense of them, we have on David Turner of Penny Fractions. Moving from specific projects, and working theories to broad-based analysis of tech ideology we... go out there. But to create a...
Neil Young vs. Spotify
January 29, 2022 02:04 - 25 minutes - 22.9 MBOn this short bonus episode, Sam and Saxon discuss Neil Young's decision to take down his music from Spotify in protest of the Joe Rogan Podcast...except did Neil even have the rights to make this decision? And how does this impact his $200 million publishing rights sale to Hipgnosis last year? Also, why did Spotify buy Joe Rogan's podcast in the first place? And how does Eve 6 fit into all of this? Turns out this #CancelSpotify feud can tell us a lot about how the music industry works, how ...
Sync Life (featuring Sebastian Adé)
January 25, 2022 16:47 - 1 hour - 61.3 MBSync is pretty much what it sounds like—the act of connecting music to visual images. But it’s also a whole lot more. Thanks to the VERY specific contours of American music, it’s a complex set of negotiations and pay-outs that structures pretty much everything you hear on TV, at the movies, or in video games (and maybe, someday Tik Tok?). It's also one of the more viable revenue streams for artists. To dig into how sync works, and what it might mean for music, Sam talks with artist, taste-ma...
New Year, Fresh Mailbag
January 11, 2022 19:46 - 1 hour - 58.6 MBWe thought that the best way to start the new year would be by…clearing up the various misconceptions, random questions, playful hassles, and outright stumpers generated by the old. Our listeners have hit us with a series of questions in recent months, and we’re going to do our best to answer them. Radio stations and advertising? Got you. State-owned Russian streaming service rivaling Spotify? Got you. Curated histories via new tech platforms and how that impacts musical preservation? Got y...
Sparks: This Film Ain’t Big Enough For The Both Of Us
December 28, 2021 18:25 - 58 minutes - 54 MBMoney 4 Nothing goes to the movies! With the holidays upon us, Sam and Saxon decided it would be a nice to time to kick back, pull out the popcorn, and watch one of the more intriguing music docs in a year full of them. That’s right folks—in a fit of accurate choices, we’ve decided to spend an episode talking Sparks, the legendary cult band whose lengthy, make-no-compromises career is the subject of the recent film “The Sparks Brothers.” Ostensibly the story of the best band that never made ...
Spotify Wrapped....Wrapped
December 14, 2021 04:26 - 51 minutes - 47.3 MBIn the last few years, "Spotify Wrapped" has ascended the seasonal pantheon for music lovers. Come December, our social media feeds are inundated with detailed numerical statistics from friends and relatives, breaking down their yearly listening habits. It’s inescapable. But why do we love it? And what does it tell us about where we are as listeners? Saxon and Sam dig into the jolliest form of surveillance capitalism since Santa Clause, unpacking the ideology–and the business—of this musical...
45 Billion Dollars and Universal‘s IPO
November 27, 2021 04:14 - 59 minutes - 54.4 MBOne of the the biggest music stories of this past year is Universal Music Group going public for...billions. If the question wasn't already answered over the past decade, the Majors are back baby. But what does Universal’s ever-inflating valuation tell us about the music business and it's future? What future does Lucian Grainge, CEO of UMG, envision and are all our listening habits and the culture of music guided by his hand? To understand how we got here, Sam and Saxon go back in time to wh...
How the iPod Changed Everything with Eamonn Forde
November 12, 2021 20:59 - 53 minutes - 48.9 MBIt’s been 20 years since Apple launched the iPod and a lot has changed in the music industry…as in everything. The mp3, iTunes, Spotify, penny fractions for streams, UMG's recent IPO, music catalogs as attractive asset class, 360 deals and the list goes on. The launch of the iPod doesn’t explain everything in how we got here, but it's undeniably a major watershed moment for a deeper understanding of this history. Saxon interviews award-winning journalist Eamonn Forde about his recent piece i...
Music‘s Environmental Impact with Kyle Devine
November 01, 2021 17:27 - 1 hour - 58.3 MBHow is music made? Not how do record companies work, but how is music made? And where does it go after we're done with it? According to Kyle Devine, a professor of Musicology at the University of Oslo, we’ve all been paying far too little to this story, closing our eyes to the environmental implications of our favorite sounds. Kyle talks to Saxon and Sam about his book “Decomposed: The Political Ecology of Music,” an eye-opening exploration of the material infrastructure that lies behind vin...
”Getting Signed” and the Ideology of Record Contracts Featuring David Arditi
October 15, 2021 18:12 - 1 hour - 95 MBWhat happens if you or your band is good, like—really good? You get SIGNED. A record contract! You've made it!....or did you? The fact that major label contracts aren’t particularly fair is well known, but what if they’re doing more than just ripping off artists and an empty promise? In his recent book, “Getting Signed: Record Contracts, Musicians, and Power in Society,” Scholar David Arditi argues that label contracts are actually a key element in an ideological system that structures popul...
Digital Dark Ages
September 23, 2021 21:09 - 1 hour - 95.3 MBThe streaming economy—and much of the discourse around it—is based on a simple promise: all of the music. Not some of the music, not most of the music, but ALL of the music being available to stream on-demand. But as we all know, the cloud is far from complete. Artists from De La Soul to Aaliyah have long been absent, while entire eras of music blogs, mid-aughts mixtape culture and MySpace emo bands are simply unavailable, perhaps forever (RIP to the glory days of G-Unit, Dipset and your hig...
Dub Economics: The Life and Times of Lee “Scratch” Perry
September 04, 2021 16:50 - 1 hour - 98 MBWhen Lee "Scratch" Perry left this world on August 29th, we lost a towering figure of 20th century culture as a producer, singer, and trailblazer who spent decades at the forefront of Jamaican music. And while there has been a wave of articles celebrating the legacy of "The Upsetter," Saxon and Sam thought there had been far too little examination of the economic, political, social, religious and cultural background that structured his career, shaped his genius and cultivated his eccentric p...
How MTV Changed the World
August 18, 2021 19:35 - 1 hour - 116 MBMTV had a remarkably unheralded 40th anniversary this month. While Music Television (still the channel’s official name) has been out of music videos for decades, it was a truly transformative force for a long struggling record industry back in the early 80s. Diving into those early years, Sam and Saxon go long on this episode and try to figure out how a scrappy little corporation (fully backed by America Express and Warner Media, natch) managed to get a nation of teenagers watching everythin...
Oligopoly in the U.K. with David Turner of Penny Fractions
August 03, 2021 02:13 - 1 hour - 103 MBWhat would happen if a government took a serious look at the music industry and decided everything wasn’t alright? To our surprise, the UK Parliament has done just that, issuing a blistering report on label consolidation, monopolistic abuses, and streaming payouts—and issuing some interesting suggestions about how things could change. To help us dig in, we're lucky to have David Turner of the must-read of the Penny Fractions newsletter back on the show. We talk about the potential benefits o...
The Political Economy of The Grateful Dead with Jesse Jarnow
July 08, 2021 13:32 - 1 hour - 83.8 MBThe Grateful Dead are one of America’s weirdest musical stories, an avalanche of tie-dyed hippies, 30-minute drum solos, acid, and endless, endless touring. But over their 30+ year career, the band also proved themselves to be incredibly prescient, helping to create everything from noise cancelling headphones and concert live-streaming to the “experience economy.” In fact, the idea of distributing free music to enable live shows that they invented has become the basic model of the industry o...
Ticketmaster Blues: The past (and future) of the Live Music Industry
June 22, 2021 19:08 - 1 hour - 96 MBIt can feel hard to believe, but it seems like live music in the US might be coming back (finally). Which also means that bands and fans are getting ready to line up and spend a LOT of time and money with the concert behemoth that is Live Nation / Ticketmaster, a massive public corporation with a lock on the American concert industry. But how did these companies achieve their position? What exactly does a promoter do anyway? And what was the deal with that whole Pearl Jam vs. Ticketmaster th...
BONUS: Morgan Parker talks Fugazi
June 14, 2021 19:55 - 24 minutes - 33.8 MBAward-winning poet Morgan Parker talks with Saxon Baird about Fugazi, having a DIY ethos and how to navigate being an artist in the tangled web of an exploitative, capitalist system. Further Listening: Can Fugazi help us imagine a better future for music? Follow Morgan Parker @morganapple Subscribe to the Money 4 Nothing newsletter
Gangsta Rap and LA History with Felicia Angeja Viator
June 07, 2021 19:30 - 1 hour - 99.9 MBWhen talking about West Coast gangster rap, the focus is usually on the era-defining stars who reigned during 1990s—Dr. Dre, Tupac, and Snoop Dog foremost among them. In her new book, “To Live and Defy in LA: How Gangster Rap Changed America,” Professor Felicia Angeja Viator argues that starting with the success of Dr. Dre's The Chronic or even N.W.A's Straight Outta Compton leaves out half the story. The aesthetic and cultural innovations of gangster rap were deeply rooted in the political ...
Can Fugazi help us imagine a better future for music?
May 25, 2021 02:03 - 1 hour - 93.3 MBEver since they appeared in the late 80’s, the legendary D.C. rock band Fugazi has stood as the absolute pinnacle of stick-to-your-guns DIY success. Holding prices to $5 shows and $10 albums, refusing to make merch or sign to a major label, the group still managed to sell hundreds of thousands of records and created diehard fans across the world. Since they went on “indefinite hiatus” in the early 2000’s, the group’s reputation has only grown. But what—if anything—can their way of running a ...
Making the Mainstream: The History of Top 40 with Eric Weisbard
May 06, 2021 21:01 - 1 hour - 98.8 MBYou know what Top 40 radio is. But…think about it for a second. Top 40 what? Songs? Albums? Bands? And top for who? Once you get started, the supposedly homogenous “mainstream” at the center of American listening is actually pretty complicated. To help us explore the past of pop, we talk with Eric Weisbard, music critic and professor of American Studies, whose book “Top 40 Democracy: The Rival Mainstreams of American Music” examines how radio formats and the artists that populated them helpe...
Twitch Trolls Metallica
May 03, 2021 19:29 - 32 minutes - 44.9 MBMetallica recently got trolled by Twitch when the gaming platform dubbed over a live performance. The Internet LOL'd considering the metal band's history with suing its own fans and taking down Napster. But there's so much more behind this move that is more important and could shape the future of music copyright. Sign up for our newsletter!
Pulling Back the Veil on Posthumous Albums
April 20, 2021 14:40 - 55 minutes - 75.8 MBPlenty has been written about the music and legacy an artist leaves behind when they pass prematurely. But there hasn’t been much of a discussion on how the obligatory posthumous album is handled and marketed. Sam and Saxon discuss the different ways the music an artist leaves behind is handled by taking a critical look at Nirvana, Elliott Smith, the red-tape legal battles (and exploitation) of Jimi Hendrix and Tupac and the head-scratching collaborations of a deceased Michael Jackson. Also,...
Bootleggers, Hippies, and...Lawyers: How piracy remade music with Dr. Alex Sayf Cummings.
April 06, 2021 14:42 - 1 hour - 91.3 MBWhen people talk about music piracy, it almost always carries a 21st century slant— Napster, Pirates Bay, iPods and so on. As it turns, battles over who has a right to make and sell music has a FAR longer history, one that stretches from the jazz loving Hot Record Society in the 1940s to acid-fried hippies trying to take Dylan to the people, and the battles around sampling that reshaped hip hop in the 90s. To learn more, we talked to Dr. Alex Sayf Cummings, whose book “Democracy of Sound” di...
NF(t) DOOM or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Blockchain
March 23, 2021 00:49 - 1 hour - 99.1 MBIn the last month, the music world has gone positively gaga for NFT’s, the blockchain-based goods that (some say) promise to transform basic dynamics of the industry, bypassing major labels, reversing decades of artistic austerity, and basically doing everything short of reuniting the Beatles. We…aren’t so sure. Saxon and Sam dig into the phenomenon, trying to separate pump-and-dump tech-bro scams from the genuine potentials of technology. Are NFTs digital beanie babies? Almost certainly yes...
BONUS Episode: Stephen Thomas Erlewine
March 16, 2021 15:37 - 39 minutes - 36.2 MBOn this **Bonus** episode, music journalist Stephen Thomas Erlewine talks with Saxon Baird about the death of the greatest hits album, the encyclopedic glory of Allmusic, The White Stripes and more. Subscribe to our newsletter!
“God is My Girlfriend”: Christian Rock and Niche Genres with Andrew Mall
March 09, 2021 05:55 - 1 hour - 86 MBChristian music and especially Christian rock is a world of its own, a self-contained universe that mirrors the trends and styles of the mainstream. But how does it work? And what can it tell us about the interactions between audiences and industries that structure popular music? We talk to Andrew Mall, the author of “God Rock Inc.: The Business of Niche Music” to explore everything from the Jesus People to Christian Metalcore, while discussing how the complex relationship between sacred and...
Financialization Feeding Frenzy with Cherie Hu and David Turner
February 22, 2021 15:55 - 1 hour - 113 MBWhen we first covered the vast amounts of cash that companies like Hipgnosis were throwing into the music publishing market, we thought things had hit some sort of insane peak. Well were we VERY wrong. In the months since, the press has been filled with one enormous deal after another, peaking (at least for now) in the reported sale of Dylan’s entire catalog for 300+ million dollars. But does…any of this make business sense? Or is it just rank speculation? And how will it shape the future of...
Liz Pelly on Alternative Platforms and Possible Futures
February 08, 2021 21:45 - 1 hour - 93 MBWe talk to writer and critic Liz Pelly who has long been one of the most astute critics of the modern musical economy. But while we all know that streaming is broken—what comes next? Liz has recently been exploring a set of new platforms that are seeking to create alternatives to existing industry structures. We dig into everything from public library-based programs that support local music to swing-for-the-fences proposals for government intervention in the streaming markets. Tomorrow’s eth...
Consent Decrees
January 26, 2021 04:06 - 1 hour - 68.1 MBWhat’s a consent decree and why did one over 80 years old recently make headlines? Sam and Saxon explore the Department of Justice's latest decision to NOT remake the music industry, before diving into the history of ASCAP, BMI, and Tin Pan Alley to figure out some of the shady battles at the heart of payouts and this whole performing rights thing. BUT FIRST—we talk King Gizzard commodities, re-contextualized profit-centers, and Tom Lehrer’s copyright end-run. Something for the whole family,...
The Life and Death of The Greatest Hits Album
January 12, 2021 02:01 - 1 hour - 57.8 MBFor decades, greatest hits albums were inescapable. They summed up artists’ careers, provided intros to unknown sounds, and served as a dependable cash-grab for labels that were able to resell music they had already paid for. But now? Seems like they’re more or less done for, killed by the infinite "playlistification" of all things (unless you're trying to make a retro statement...hello White Stripes!) We spend some thinking through what the greatest hits was, what it did, and what that migh...
Live Streams, Protests and Music in 2021 with Jessi Olsen
December 29, 2020 03:51 - 56 minutes - 51.3 MBWell, THAT was awful. As 2020 death crawls to a close, we sort through the rise of live music streaming and how it exploded in popularity as artists looked for ways to replace touring during the pandemic lockdown. Also, we talk live venues getting a last minute lifeline from the U.S. Gov thanks to the massive #SaveOurStages movement and how music and musicians responded to the Black Lives Matter protests. Saxon is out this week, but we have Official Streaming Correspondent Jessi Olsen to hel...
Tik Tok and Music’s Mimetic Future with Cat Zhang
December 15, 2020 01:22 - 1 hour - 68.8 MBRepetition. Shouting. Culture Vulture Remixes. A 50 billion dollar company based on a vast strata of underplayed musicians. Viral dances. Tik Tok has it all! For this episode, Sam and Saxon asked Pitchfork’s Cat Zhang to bring us down the rabbit hole and into an app that is transforming how music functions, maybe forever. or…maybe it’s just another step towards the commodification of all social life? PLUS—the meme economy of bearded yellow dragons. Read Cat Zhang's writing on TikTok and mor...
The Origins of the American Record Industry with Kyle Barnett
December 01, 2020 13:18 - 1 hour - 66.7 MBThis week we take you back in time to a moment that…in a lot of ways(?) seems sort of like today. Technology was changing incredibly quickly, artists were hopping between platforms to reach their audiences, and corporate consolidation was remaking the music industry. Welcome to the 1920’s. Professor Kyle Barnett discusses his book "Record Cultures: the Transformation of the U.S. Recording Industry" and takes us through the early years of the record industry. We trace the rise and fall (and r...
A Major #Mood: Spotify, Labels, and our Dismal Streaming Future
November 11, 2020 01:38 - 1 hour - 59.4 MBThere’s been some news on the streaming beat lately—righteous demands being levied by musicians against Spotify, and ill-timed reports that the streaming giant has been planning to roll out some suspiciously payola-like programs (gasp!). But what is Spotify, anyways? And how does it (hope to) make money? Is it actually just the major labels wearing the mask of a tech company? PLUS A M4N Exclusive Report: Are #mood playlists destroying the delicate bonds of history?
The Environmental Impact of Music with Kyle Devine
October 26, 2020 17:29 - 1 hour - 56.6 MBHow is music made? Not how do record companies work, but how is music made? And where does it go after we're done with it? According to Kyle Devine, a professor of Musicology at the University of Oslo, we’ve all been paying far too little to this story, closing our eyes to the environmental implications of our favorite sounds. Kyle talks to Saxon and Sam about his book “Decomposed: The Political Ecology of Music,” an eye-opening exploration of the material infrastructure that lies behind vin...
Who is #SaveOurStages Actually Saving?
October 12, 2020 17:06 - 1 hour - 61.9 MBIt’s mid-October, and by our calculations, musicians are STILL not getting paid. Live music has been off since March, and a major lobbying group is trying to #SaveOurStages. But does saving venues also mean a bailout for musicians? In the continued quest for artist revenue, Saxon and Sam explore some less obvious options. Could the platform OnlyFans hold the answer? Should musicians search for salvation in the high-end speaker-system/concert series Oda? Or are we all looking in the wrong pla...
The Music Modernization Act and the Powers That Be
September 25, 2020 20:22 - 55 minutes - 51.2 MBThis week we go deep (like really really deep) on the Music Modernization Act—a landmark, near-unanimous 2018 law that will reshape the legal landscape of American music when it kicks in early next year. Despite this, it has received little or no critical press attention since. Let’s face it though—the last time this scale of legislation passed was in the 1970’s, so it’s a good bet that we’ll be living with the MMA for a long, long time. We figure out what’s going on in the bill (easier said...
Ragtime and The American Clave with Wayne Marshall
September 12, 2020 00:56 - 1 hour - 68 MBEthnomusicologist Wayne Marshall joins Saxon Baird and Sam Backer to talk about his discovery of what he’s described as the the “American Clave”—a distinctive rhythm that unites everyone from Duke Ellington to Ray Charles, Elvis to Cardi B. We explore its origins from the Black artists who invented ragtime at the turn of the 20th century and then trace its evolution over a hundred years of styles and sounds including the black roots of country music to its appearance in popular party chants....
Calling Bullsh*t on the Napster Narrative
August 28, 2020 18:52 - 1 hour - 75.4 MBDavid Turner of Penny Fractions joins the show to make a case against the popular narrative that Napster, led by the precocious teen tech-head Shawn Fanning, single-handedly took down the record industry in the early aughts. Turner explains that what caused the music industry bubble to burst was actually a much more complex series of factors including record labels a little too high on its own supply. Also, those $19.99 CDs prices sure didn't help.
You Can't Segregate the Airwaves (but you can definitely own them)
August 14, 2020 19:27 - 59 minutes - 54.9 MBSam Backer talks to Brian Ward about his book ‘Just My Soul Responding’ to discuss American R&B and the music industry in the 1950s. The two challenge some popular narratives and reveal how behind the music was a public arena where the fight for civil rights and equality was crucially fought.
Hipgnosis Hypnotizes the Music Industry
August 01, 2020 00:17 - 59 minutes - 54.7 MBHipgnosis Song Fund and it's founder Merck Mercuriadis are making waves in the music industry by offering top dollar to buy out the catalogs of hit song makers. The approach is similar to valuing music and hit songs now something like an expensive painting bought less for its artistry and more as valuable asset to invest in. Heavily funded and having bought over 1,000 number one hits so far from such artists as Bruno Mars and Mark Ronson, the company has gone public and shows little signs of...
King Records: Rock 'n' Roll Originator, Indie Label OG and Radical Racial Integration
July 11, 2020 15:23 - 1 hour - 58.6 MBKing Records may not be a household name like Motown, Stax, Chess or Sun Records, but it's music and legacy is just as important. As one of the first successful independent labels in America, the Cincinnati-based King Records became a key link to the popularity that r&b, rock 'n' roll and country would see during the '50s, '60s and beyond. Lead by the bullheaded, DIY attitude of its founder Syd Nathan, the label also became a radical innovator in racially integrating popular music when segre...
The Federal Music Project with Professor Kenneth Bindas
June 22, 2020 22:10 - 1 hour - 98.3 MBMass unemployment, venues closed, economy in the dump and the stimulus set to run out at the end of July. What's an artist in America to do? On this episode of Money 4 Nothing, a podcast about music and capitalism, we talk to Professor Kenneth Bindas about the Federal Music Project of the 1930s. As part of FDR's New Deal and the Works Progress Administration, the project set out to employ musicians during the Great Depression while offering some affordable entertainment across the country. S...
Tekashi 6ix9ine is Kind of Right: The Return of Payola
June 01, 2020 10:37 - 1 hour - 63.3 MBTekashi 6ix9ine called out the Billboard charts for being rigged by the return of pay for play....and he's kind of right. Everything you didn't know about payola in 2020 and getting a song on the radio. Plus, the joy of Future and the Atlanta rapper's sustained success.
Deconstructing Prince
May 26, 2020 18:42 - 1 hour - 78.4 MBThe man, the myth, the legend, the imitator, the symbol. Saxon Baird and Sam Backer delve into the myth of Prince, going beyond just his hits, to deconstruct all things related to one of the most unique and eccentric artists in recent history. Matt Thorne, writer and author of the book 'Prince: The Man and His Music,' joins the pod to discuss.
Live Music in Quarantine
May 15, 2020 19:35 - 1 hour - 66.3 MBOn the second episode of Money 4 Nothing, a podcast about music and capitalism, hosts Sam Backer and Saxon Baird discuss the financial impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on live music and the forces behind the music industry's shift towards live performances and musical experiences. Plus, Travis Scott on Fortnite, jam bands ahead of the streaming curve, Saudi Arabia buying into Live Nation, Post Malone doing Nirvana and how much watching a concert online sucks when there are no live shows.
Fiona Apple, Pitchfork, and What is a 10?
May 15, 2020 18:19 - 1 hour - 56.8 MBOn the inaugural episode of Money 4 Nothing, a podcast about music and capitalism, Sam Backer and Saxon Baird delve into the critical praise of Fiona Apple's 'Fetch the Bolt Cutters' and the mechanisms behind numerical ratings, Pitchfork, and the role of music criticism today.