The Best Path Forward
4 A’s worth sharing this week: how to discover your taste, a proposed new deal for streaming, new music, and more...
Here are four things (A’s) I thought were worth sharing this week:
A1. How to discover your own taste, without the help of an algorithm. 🤓
“Write down the albums you like. Google the artists who you like. Read about their biographies. Maybe follow them on Instagram. Maybe see what else they’re thinking about and reading and who they’re listening to. Or if you like an author, read who they are reading and follow the web of connections that they build.”
Writer, Kyle Chayka on how to discover your own taste (he’s on tour and doing the rounds for his new book, Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture).
A2. The best path forward for Pitchfork. 😞
Last Wednesday, Condé Nast, the publishing giant that acquired Pitchfork in 2015, said in an internal memo that the online music publication had been merged with GQ, and that Pitchfork’s editor-in-chief, Puja Patel, would be leaving the company.
Additional changes in staffing and content were not announced, but seem inevitable.
"This decision was made after a careful evaluation of Pitchfork's performance and what we believe is the best path forward for the brand so that our coverage of music can continue to thrive within the company.”
— Anna Wintour, CCO of Condé Nast
Pitchfork has been an incredibly valuable resource for me personally, as I began, while attending jazz school in my mid-twenties, to look for new, cool, yet artistically interesting music outside of the realms of what I was studying. Along with the new music section of iTunes, Pitchfork was in many ways my compass to what was going on in music outside of academia. When Condé Nast purchased the site eight years ago, I mourned the potential loss of a port in the storm. But my mourning ended up being premature—the site continued to write insightful reviews and editorials, the festival in Chicago went on. Now it seems, however, the cracks were real, the music journalism levee is about to break.
My thoughts are with everyone who, like me, have come to rely on the good work at Pitchfork, and for all the talented writers, graphic designers, etc. who will likely be looking for a new gig…
For more on this, check out Casey Newton: How platforms killed Pitchfork: Critics were once our best guides to new music. Then came streaming and AI (Platformer).
A3. Can Apple win back music? 🥸
The new streaming for artists, as proposed by Jack Stratton, founder of the American funk band, Vulfpeck:
“90/10, fan centric. Artist gets 90%, artist takes 10%. Fan centric means whatever the fan listens to, that’s where there money goes to. So, if you’re in a coma for twenty-nine days out of the month, and on the last day you wake up and stream ‘The Final Countdown’ once, Apple takes their 10% and that $9 left goes to the artist of ‘The Final Countdown.’”
Note: the current deal is 70/30, pro rata. Artists get 70% and Apple gets 30%. “Pro rata means they pool all the subscription money together and divvy it up by who got the most streams, which gets real confusing and unfair.”
A4. New music this week: Thom Yorke, Jonny Greenwood, and Tom Skinner returned for their second full-length album as the Smile. Wall of Eyes goes deeper into the band’s subconscious, both lyrically and musically (Apple Music / Spotify). The Colombian American singer, Kali Uchis has said her fourth album “is inspired by the timeless, eerie, mystic, striking, graceful and sensual allure of the orchid,” as referenced by the Spanish-language LP’s title, Orquídeas. (Apple Music / Spotify). And on their debut album, Spiel, the Auckland, New Zealand, indie rock trio Office Dog “assembles intricate musical collages, and fearlessly explore the depths of complex emotions through layers of tension, release, and celestial lyricism” (Bandcamp / Apple Music / Spotify).
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I think you’re super,
Charlie
Coda: “The best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago. The second best time is now.” — anonymous (but shared with me by my good friend Emma Hedrick)
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