Links / Music
-
Why We Quit Spotify
№ 71Hearing Things, an independent music publication, on why they’ve decided to stop hosting their playlists on Spotify. The decision comes after Spotify CEO Daniel Ek’s investment in defense startup Helsing and Spotify’s latest policy change, denying royalties to songs with under 1,000 streams.
I’ve long been on the fence about Spotify. The platform has become ever more convoluted, its business decisions increasingly indefensible. From a design and user friendliness point of view, there’s an exorbitant amount of friction, too.
It seems to me there’s a great big gap in the market that a forward-thinking, music-loving organisation could step into. Think... the 2025 version of Rdio?
-
A special episode where Charlie Jermyn recites an essay he wrote for the first issue of TRANSCRIPT Magazine.
The reading is a written documentation of a ten hour experiment conducted in August 2021: a walk from Leiden to Amsterdam in search of creative enlightenment. Each hour is interspersed with music that reflects the landscape and circumstance he found himself in.
-
I’ve been flip-flopping between Spotify and Apple Music myself, and can relate to this piece by Kyle Chayka. Changes to their apps in recent years have not favoured (album) listeners like myself. It’s fascinating and saddening to see one platform steer the way we consume music into a certain direction.
-
I’ve been replaying James Blake’s latest album “Playing Robots Into Heaven” somewhat obsessively, and was reminded of this conversation he had with Brian Eno, for who he plays the music and who then provides him with his honest impression.
-
A fantastic profile of Jonny Greenwood, best known for his work with Radiohead and The Smile, elaborating on his work as a composer of incredible film scores.
-
Dan Charnas—who wrote Dilla Time, one of my favourite books of last year—digs around and highlights how a cassette tape titled Another Batch did wonders for J Dilla’s notoriety. "The sounds, signatures, and techniques that actually made Dilla influential all coalesced on Another Batch."
-
After reading Dan Charnas' book on J Dilla, I am even more convinced he belongs among the legends. This op-ed in the LA Times briefly explains why. If you’re a fan of J Dilla—or The Roots, or Thundercat, or Kamasi Washington, or Erykah Badu, or...—I highly recommend you read Dilla Time.
-
As I watched Jerrod Carmichael’s latest special Rothaniel – which is really, really special – I was reminded of this conversation he had with Tyler, The Creator back in 2018. An interview unlike any other, and I’ve thought about it often since I first saw it.
-
This 5-chapter podcast by journalist Alex Pappademas is the best podcast on music I’ve found in quite some time. Instead of dissecting the music beat by beat, he dives deeper into the creative process and the context in which the music was made, speaking to the collaborators that helped Kendrick make the album, as well as to the man himself. "Good Kid was the classic, DAMN. was the blockbuster, and To Pimp A Butterfly the masterpiece."
-
A profile of Kendrick Lamar and the moves he’s made since leaving T.D.E., the label he was with since 2007.
"It’s hard to overstate the shock it caused in the rap world when Kendrick announced that he was leaving T.D.E. It was like when the Jackson 5 left Motown. When Prince left Warner Bros. When Jay-Z left Def Jam."
The last album he released on T.D.E., "Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers", is monumental, but this Big Step does feel like a clean slate, and I am so looking forward to seeing all the things he – Pulitzer Kenny – will do next.