In November 2024, Canadian rapper Drake filed to sue Universal Music Group and Spotify in the wake of an ongoing feud with American rapper Kendrick Lamar. This was unsurprising, given that Lamar’s diss track “Not Like Us” implicated Drake as, among other things, a sexual predator. The… Read More
In January 2019, Warner Music Group signed a twenty-album contract with the artist Endel. And then in May 2023, Endel came to an agreement with Universal Music Group to collaborate with the label’s artists. These major record label deals would be impressive under any circumstances, but what’s… Read More
In this conversation, Allison Jerzak spoke with cultural anthropologist Nick Seaver, who studies the intersection of people, technology, and culture. His 2022 book, Computing Taste: Algorithms and the Makers of Music Recommendation, draws on several years of ethnographic fieldwork at music recommendation companies in the United States. A … Read More
A note about Pandemic Piece (2020): Ethnography is a research method that involves deep human contact—studied, immersed involvement with communities over months, years, or even decades. Relationships with real people always involve give-and-take, so ethnographic research as a rule cannot be mapped in advance. Ethnographers know that they will experience… Read More
Acoustic hailing devices (AHDs) are high-intensity directional sound systems that produce narrow sound beams with very loud, high sound pressure levels that can be aimed at particular locations: that is, directed to target specific auditors. They are optimized to project intelligible voice messages as well as impactful, attention-commanding warning and… Read More
When the German software company Celemony premiered the first market-ready version of Melodyne at the North American Music Merchants (NAMM) conference in Anaheim, California, in 2000, music software buyers and enthusiasts responded to the product tepidly, and with a bit of confusion. Melodyne’s engineering team had envisioned and designed the… Read More
The editor of Reminisce magazine, with Sunday’s Grammy Awards in mind, rightly thought we would be interested in their collection of vintage radio and record ads that they have assembled for the occasion. He writes: Bendix 1945 With the boom in national identity… Read More
by Michael Accinno Spoiler Alert: This post treats Series 4, Episode 3 (US Episode 2) of Downton Abbey, which was broadcast by UK network ITV on 6 October 2013 and by US network PBS on 12 January 2014. Music can be seen and heard everywhere on the newest season of… Read More
In 1914, at the height of a successful career as concert pianist, Donald Francis Tovey (1875–1940) became the [John] Reid Professor of Music at the University of Edinburgh. There he worked for the rest of his career, and his previous experience as full-time performing musician came to shape every aspect… Read More