Tag: music industry
Talking Punk, Nirvana, and the Ethics of Art Under Capitalism With Steve Albini
Last week, legendary musician and audio engineer Steve Albini died at the age of 61. Albini helped define alternative rock in the 1980s and ’90s through work with bands like Nirvana, Pixies, and Jesus Lizard.
Daniel Bessner from the Nation podcast American Prestige got a chance to interview Albini in August 2020 to discuss his career and the state of the music industry today for a forthcoming podcast that will examine the political and economic history of grunge and Nirvana.… Read more
‘American Fiction’ and the ‘Just Literature’ Problem
“Why are these books here?” asks Thelonious “Monk” Ellison, the writer protagonist of the film American Fiction, as he points to four novels stacked neatly on the shelf of a chain bookstore. The name Ellison sticks out from their spines.
Monk wants to know why his Greek-tragedy-inspired novels are housed not in “Mythology” but in the “African American Studies” section. A bookstore employee offers the obvious explanation: “I would imagine that this author, Ellison, is … Black.” He has
Madonna Is Always One Step Ahead
We like our female icons, as they age, to go quietly—to tiptoe backwards into semi-reclusion, away from our relentless curiosity and our unforgiving gaze. Tina Turner managed this arguably better than anyone else, holed up for the last decade of her life in a gated Swiss château with an adoring husband and a consulting role on the hit musical about her life, watching a younger performer step nimbly into her gold tassels. Joni Mitchell retreated to her Los Angeles
The Indigenous Roots of Robbie Robertson’s Rock and Roll Revolution
Sinéad O’Connor (1966–2023): Premature Anti-Fascist
How Michael Franti Finds Hope in Troubled Times
The End of the Music Business
Is Old Music Killing New Music?
Old songs now represent 70 percent of the U.S. music market, according to the latest numbers from MRC Data, a music-analytics firm. Those who make a living from new music—especially that endangered species known as the working musician—should look at these figures with fear and trembling. But the news gets worse: The new-music market is actually shrinking. All the growth in the market is coming from old songs.
The 200 most popular new tracks now regularly
America Is Running Out of New Ideas
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Let’s start with a simple mystery: What happened to original blockbuster movies?
Throughout the 20th century, Hollywood produced a healthy number of entirely new stories. The top movies of 1998—including Titanic, Saving Private Ryan, and There’s Something About Mary—were almost all based on original screenplays. But since then, the U.S. box office has been steadily overrun by numbers and superheroes: Iron Man 2, Jurassic Park 3, Toy Story 4,
