There’s been a conspicuous uptick in the past decade of billionaires buying up media companies. Elon and Twitter. Bezos and the Washington Post. Laurene Powell Jobs and The Atlantic. Forbes, Fortune, LA Times and a slew of other major newspapers are all now controlled by…very rich folks who didn’t make their money in media. But why? We thought print (and honestly, anything NOT a born digital streaming service) was…if not dead, than dying? It’s almost as if these billionaires see more value in these media platforms than the market. It certainly it has nothing to do with the continual ability of these media companies to shape narratives, ideologies and stories reifying our ever increasing death drive towards a modern oligarchy that full aligns with the billionaire class. (Coughs)And then, the latest nail in the 20th-century-media-coffin: The sale of Paramount (which also includes CBS, MTV, Comedy Central and many others) to Skydance Media. You might be asking yourself “Who?” But don’t worry—Skydance, owned by David Ellison, son of billionaire and Oracle founder Larry Ellison, is the little media shop that could...raise billions via private equity and family funds.To try and suss out the political, economic, and cultural stakes of this new era, Sam and Saxon set their focus on Paramount and ask: What in the literal f*%k is going on? How is a nepo baby movie studio buying out a major media legacy brand like Paramount and more importantly: Why? And how does this all relate to a Trump quid pro quo, Colbert getting canceled and David Ellison’s horrific vision of a utopic world where a surveillance state keeps the world a more morally virtuous place?Come for theorizing of major music labels as the plural bipartisan black sheep of billionaire media industries. Stay for our overuse of the word barbarity because Sad Adorno. Get full access to Money 4 Nothing at money4nothing.substack.com/subscribe
What is the value of music? We often think of this question in economic terms, but it doesn’t always have to do with money. After all, there’s a value difference between someone strumming a guitar at home, playing in a band, or trying to land a major label deal in that band. Each has its own kind of “value,” but these values are not the same.Parsing out these different kinds of values is the focus of Making Value: Music, Capital and the Social, a recent book by our guest, Timothy D. Taylor, Professor of Ethnomusicology at UCLA. In the book, Taylor takes a novel approach, using anthropological value theory to examine how people’s ideas about value shape both the production and consumption of music while theorizing on the relationship between music’s economic and noneconomic forms. The result is a more a more comprehensive and complicated look at life and music under capitalism, one in which supposedly non-commodified, utopian spaces outside the market turn out to be far messier and more entangled within its overarching structures that we’d often like to admit.Sam and Taylor dive deep into this topic, tracing threads from Echo Park’s indie scene of the 2010s to Franz Liszt’s 19th-century star power to broad conceptions of gift-giving through the work of Marcel Mauss. Get full access to Money 4 Nothing at money4nothing.substack.com/subscribe
Daniel Ek, overlord of Spotify, recently lead an investment round of $600+ for a private German defense tech company. Despite Ek having invested in this kind of military technology since 2021, it seems to have suddenly reached everyone’s attention. As a result, lovable indie weirdos Deerhoof are leading Ek’s recent round of bad press with claims that they’ll be pulling their music off Spotify because they don’t support war, drones, American imperialism, A.I. and a number of other things detailed in multiple text-only posts on Instagram (whose parent company Meta definitely doesn’t invest in anything terrible that’s also accelerating the rise of T-1000s coming soon to a battlefield near you.)Ironic joking aside, it’s an interesting and unique case of music intersecting with geopolitics which feels ….rare? After all, since the commodification of music, have fans ever faced so many ethical quandaries? And how to even begin dissecting Ek’s investment under the shadow of Trump demanding Europe start footing more of their defense bill? And what difference would getting off Spotify actually make in the world (none), but maybe we should do it anyways (sure)?Sam and Saxon bring out that ole dog and pony show of ethical consumerism and consider that maybe those nice music listeners who are just trying to do right in a wrong world should strain to rethink where they locate politics. In the end, Sam gets hopeful, Saxon remains skeptic and both consider the real potentials of a federated streaming service that includes both Cyndi Lauper and Sun City Girls …plus blockchain.Money4Nothing is a podcast and newsletter on music and capitalism produced solely by Sam Backer and Saxon Baird. If you dig what we do, consider a (very cheap) subscription. Get full access to Money 4 Nothing at money4nothing.substack.com/subscribe
This past week saw the passing of legendary musicians Sly Stone and Brian Wilson at the (relatively) ripe age of 82. While both men had grappled with the challenges of fame and mental health over their long careers, their deaths weren’t the result of these struggles—but rather the inevitable march of time. And they aren’t alone. The stars of the 60s and 70s are all slowing down: Aerosmith, Kiss, Billy Joel, Elton John…the list of musical pillars hanging up the spandex and rhinestones suggests the true end of an era. But what does our inevitable future look like as we come to what is beginning to feel like the final close of a generation? We think through the economic implications, but settle on the totemic possibilities. When did we last agree on anything the way we agreed on the greatness of Sly and Brian? And what will mass culture look like in the wake of those shared touchstones?In the second-half, an alternate possibility is demonstrated by the (former?) hardcore (rock?) superstars-in-training Turnstile, who just released their long-awaited 5th album—but not before playing an absolutely massive free show in Sam’s beloved Wyman Park Dell in Baltimore. This is a band you either are sick of hearing about or have literally never come across—a dichotomy that reflects our contemporary musical landscape…particularly in comparison with the era of the ‘60s and ‘70s. We try and wrap our head around the phenomenon, figuring what it means to be a “big” band in 2025, who cares about whether or not anyone is a “sellout,” and….if this music makes literally any sense to us. Come for the breakdowns. Stay for the Bluenotes.Money4Nothing is a podcast and newsletter on music and capitalism produced solely by Sam Backer and Saxon Baird. If you dig what we do, consider a (very cheap) subscription. Get full access to Money 4 Nothing at money4nothing.substack.com/subscribe
On our latest episode, Sam and Toby Bennett talk about how the major labels have transformed themselves in the digital era. But, while the UMG, Warner, and Sony are continent-spanning IP behemoths, they are also made of people: people with ideas about themselves, and the work they do, and the industry they do it in. And if the industry was changing between, say, 2000 and 2010, then the people within it were too—a shift in ideology and outlook absolutely integral to the contemporary culture industry.Understanding this relationship between large-scale business practices and the intimate social transformations that both reflected AND caused them is the subject of the fantastic new book, “Corporate Life in the Digital Music Industry: Remaking the Major Label from the Inside Out” by Toby Bennett. An ethnographic analysis of bleary-eyed mornings and iPod diplomacy, it sheds light on what was going on inside the major label machine as it struggled to navigate the streaming revolution—and began to repaint itself in millennial pink. Sam and Toby Bennett discuss the social geography of major-label London, the complex hierarchies of office work, and the tightrope debates over what it means to “respect” pop. Also, don’t miss the lightly conspiratorial discussion of habitus-forming corporate education that will change the way you look at those “creative economy” college courses forever. Get full access to Money 4 Nothing at money4nothing.substack.com/subscribe
As you might have noticed, the global economic system has hit a bit of a…snag—namely, the United States upending almost 80 years of foreign policy with little-to-no clarity on process, structure, or medium-term aims. That’s right, baby…We’re talkin' tariffs! Now, some of the impacts are, to be honest, pretty straightforward: Those Mexican strats? Those Roland 808s? Those T-Shirts at the merch table? Tariffed!But, in typical Money 4 Nothing fashion, we look past the headlines and try to think through the broader implications of the New World Order. What could a recession do to an industry that’s already seeing a slowdown in streaming growth? How might a stock market crash impact the balance of power between tech firms and “counter cyclical” major labels? Will travel bans hit superfans? And, perhaps most importantly—just how much of our contemporary culture industry is based on the world’s century-long embrace of American identity? Come for a quick tour through “recession pop.” Stay for our totally justified gloating about predicting, not ALL of this, but definitely a LOT of this.Money4Nothing is a podcast and newsletter on music and capitalism produced solely by Sam Backer and Saxon Baird. If you dig what we do, consider a (very cheap) subscription. Get full access to Money 4 Nothing at money4nothing.substack.com/subscribe
What is a band? Think about it for a second, and it becomes less obvious. What you see is a couple of people on stage rocking out. But think about it more and it gets more complex. Actually, bands really aren’t really like anything else—part business, part social club, part artistic partnership, part job…operating at the interstitial zone between disciplined employment and liberatory self-expression. This strange, cobbled-together structure—and the conflicts, hierarchies, pleasures, and intimacies it creates—is at the heart of “Band People: Life and Work in Popular Music,” a revelatory new book from Franz Nicolay (who…has been in one or two bands himself). To learn more, we dig into everything from the complexity of (musical) democracy to the political economy of expression—not to mention how local unions might be the answer, the dangerous effects of Romanticism, and how there’s never a escape from the problem of power. Money4Nothing is a podcast and newsletter on music and capitalism produced solely by Sam Backer and Saxon Baird. If you dig what we do, consider a (very cheap) subscription. Get full access to Money 4 Nothing at money4nothing.substack.com/subscribe
Late last year, Universal Music shelled out 775 million dollars to snap up Downtown Music, a “global music company” that manages “over 50 million music assets”. Perhaps famously, Downtown owns Cd Baby—a digital distributor that, along with peers like Tunecore and Distrokid, has become central to the infrastructure of the streaming economy. These companies enable artists to upload their music to platforms like Spotify, and their influence has grown alongside the ever-increasing flood of “independent” artists bypassing the label system to share their music directly with the people.But…is this kind of market-based independence really all it’s cracked up to be? Or is it another example of music serving as a microcosm for the broader structures of capitalism. And if so—what are the potential implications of the biggest of all majors stepping into the distribution fray? To try and understand it all, Saxon and Sam dive into the history of distributors, from their decades schlepping vinyl to their more recent focus on herding ones-and-zeros. We talk streaming 1.0 vs. streaming 2.0, debate the economic purpose of community, and fret about the vast tubes of data that lead directly to Lucian Grange’s voracious maw. What, after all, could possibly go wrong?Listen to “Digital Distribution and the Ideology of Being Indy” wherever you get your podcasts. Money4Nothing is a podcast and newsletter on music and capitalism produced solely by Sam Backer and Saxon Baird. If you dig what we do, consider a (very cheap) subscription. Get full access to Money 4 Nothing at money4nothing.substack.com/subscribe
This week? Heavy Hitters. As you may (or may not) have heard, journalist/Daniel Ek tormenter/friend-of-the-pod Liz Pelly is making waves with her wonderful new book “Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist.” It’s easily the best thing yet written about the company at the center of modern music, insightfully reconstructing how Spotify’s shifting interests and policies have remade how we listen, who we listen to, and what they get paid.To get a deeper perspective on both the book and the histories it emerges from, we also called up David Turner—of the late (lamented) Penny Fractions—pulling him out of retirement for one last big music + capitalism score. Together Liz, David, and Sam dive into everything from the economics of ghost artists and the aesthetics of vibes-based listening to the intentional destruction of cultural context in the streaming age. It’s a conversation that helps clarify the singularity of Spotify culture—and allows us to better detach its operations from the meaning of digital music. Come for the playlists. Stay for what they’ve done to you. Buy Liz Pelly's book "Mood Machine"Subscribe to our Newsletter! Get full access to Money 4 Nothing at money4nothing.substack.com/subscribe
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! Get full access to Money 4 Nothing at money4nothing.substack.com/subscribe
The second Trump administration will impact pretty much everything, but we decided to take some time and focus on the specific conjecture of industry + culture + technology that is AI. After all, when Biden came to office, LLMs were just really starting to get going—while the last 12 months have seen a mind-bending set of developments, both in terms of corporate activity and technical possibility. Given the rate of both change and adoption, the next 4 years will almost certainly be crucial, potentially locking us into a long-term pathway with both these machines AND the companies that make them.So…what might happen? And how will it impact music, given the massive copyright lawsuits currently working their way through the courts? Saxon and Sam put on their tinfoil hats, got out their crystal ball, and…did their best. The resulting conversation moves from big (contradictory impulses between protectionism and libertarianism within the Trump coalition?) to bigger issues (War? Stock market crash?) to the generally intangible (shifting relationships between Americans and the ideologies of cultural authority?) Come for a connect-the-dots conversation that links Elon Musk and AGI to the possibility of earning a living by making art. Stay because at least we’re all doomed together.Subscribe to our Newsletter!For more background, check our our episode on AI + Copyright Lawsuits in Music. Get full access to Money 4 Nothing at money4nothing.substack.com/subscribe
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 Get full access to Money 4 Nothing at money4nothing.substack.com/subscribe
This past January, Universal Music went to war. Or at least, it tried to. Shocking both listeners AND artists, the major label announced that it was cutting ties with TikTok, the short-form giant, over payout rates and copyright infringement. Its artists (and publishing)—completely pulled from the platform. T-Swift viral dances? Tragically silenced.The breakup lasted until May, when (in a profoundly opaque statement), the two corporations suddenly announced they had come to terms. The fight was a massive gamble for both sides—a test to see, when push came to shove, who really had the leverage in one of social media’s most important relationships. But…what actually happened? And what, if anything, was the fallout? To learn more, we talked to Kristin Robinson, a senior writer at Billboard, and the author of the excellent "Machine Learnings" newsletter. Fractured solidarity between artists and labels? The impenetrable veil of music biz secrecy? Slowed and reverbed copyright infringement? The crushing power of monopoly exerted, step by step, against indy labels? All that and more.Subscribe to our Newsletter!Music: Kyozo Nishioka - "Gypsy Song" Get full access to Money 4 Nothing at money4nothing.substack.com/subscribe
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! Get full access to Money 4 Nothing at money4nothing.substack.com/subscribe
How did streaming change music? Not like how did it change the music industry (we talk about that plenty, obviously). And not how did it change bitrate. But how did streaming change the nature of the music that you listen to? How and why and does it matter that you now pay a limited rate for an unlimited amount of music? Within capitalism, how does it matter that "streaming" functions under a fundamentally different system of copyright and finance and technology than…say buying? And how does that all service data collection, listening habits, personalized feeds and everything else? These questions are at the heart of Eric Drott’s wonderful new book “Streaming Music, Streaming Capital,” which starts to grapple with the fundamental questions of what streaming is exactly—and what it’s done to us.Subscribe to our Newsletter!Buy Eric Drott's Book "Streaming Music, Streaming Capital" Get full access to Money 4 Nothing at money4nothing.substack.com/subscribe
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 NewsletterMusic: Uniform - "Permanent Embrace" Get full access to Money 4 Nothing at money4nothing.substack.com/subscribe
This summer, the other shoe finally dropped on Ticketmaster/Live Nation.After decades of complaints by everybody from Pearl Jam to Zach Bryan (and after several years of increasingly intense Post-Swifty scrutiny), the Justice Department has filed a lawsuit accusing the massive firm of being a monopoly. In it, lawyers argue that the company is built around size and market-share—allowing it to harvest vast profits, prevent the emergence of meaningful competition, and damage the interests of both artists and fans. If the DOJ wins? That monopoly might get broken up. And what happens then is anybody’s guess.Given the importance of live performance to the music industry, all of this is…a really big deal. Which is why we were delighted to talk all things restraint-of-trade with Kevin Erickson, the director of the Future of Music Coalition. Crucially, it’s not just that any major regulatory move could shatter the long-standing, “convenience-fee”-driven status quo. Turns out, Ticketmaster/Live Nation has its fingers in a LOT of pies. Even the lawsuit itself could go a long way towards revealing the hidden influence that the powerful company has exerted on everything from touring schedules or merch practices to advertising cultures and venue sustainability. Discovery? Can’t Wait.Come for platform monopolies slowly strangling your favorite local venue. Stay for…that too, because it's SUPER real. But also for a pragmatic perspective on our musical ecosystem—and the rare chance to change its trajectory for the better. Subscribe to our NewsletterMusic: King Tubby - "African Roots" Get full access to Money 4 Nothing at money4nothing.substack.com/subscribe
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. Get full access to Money 4 Nothing at money4nothing.substack.com/subscribe
Live music continues to evolve in our post-covid, pre-bird flu world—and nothing even approaching a new normal has yet to appear. To try and get a handle on the complexities of a constantly-moving situation, Saxon and Sam decided to go...both big and small.By small, we're talking about the ticket sales for the Black Keys (very canceled) stadium tour—one of a raft of recent underselling events (lookin' at you Coachella) that have kicked up all manner of concern among the music press. What's happening? Well, it's some combination of the internet, the resale market, rapacious monopolies, inflation, and...mimetic vibes? That all? We discuss.And if that's not heady enough, we try to wrap our heads (if not our eyes) around The Sphere—James Dolan's energy-draining, future-baiting, Knicks-helping monstrosity in Las Vegas. Is it the logical endpoint of digital-age concerts? Berghain for Baby Boomers? A utopian use of finance capital in a dark age? An inevitable tax write-off? And...who can actually fill it?Come for The Sphere in the age of mechanical distraction. Stay for The Orb. Subscribe to our Newsletter Get full access to Money 4 Nothing at money4nothing.substack.com/subscribe
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 Get full access to Money 4 Nothing at money4nothing.substack.com/subscribe