Archive for the 'Pop Culture' Category


Income Inequality Manifested

1 I don’t understand the hatred of Spotify. The constant denigration of its payment system and the animus directed at Daniel Ek. Then I read this article in today’s “New York Times”:  “How Liberalism Went to Die on the Texas-Arkansas Border” Free link: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/12/opinion/liberalism-texarkana-economy-democracy.html?unlocked_article_code=1.dk8.Q46T.dtVsEBHA75e2&smid=url-share You need to read this article, but you also need to […]

Youthquake

This is society’s Napster moment. They never could kill P2P with the legal system. It took a bright twentysomething from a foreign country to save the record labels’ lunch. And now said labels are trying to survive by purchasing the distribution systems of much younger companies led by entrepreneurs. NO ONE running a major label […]

You Can’t Reach Everybody

And everybody does not know. If everybody in the U.S. watched Sunday night’s John Oliver show, the Big Beautiful Bill would be dead on arrival. But almost no one does. In case you’re not a viewer of this HBO institution, once or twice a season John Oliver pulls a stunt. Recently, he offered to rebrand […]

Swift?

From: Gerard Kinzelmann Subject: Taylor and Rolling Stone article WTF not a puff piece but a hurricane. I laughed out  loud at some sentences. Tayor’s publicists probably wrote this. How far RS https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/how-taylor-swift-won-commentary-1235351833/ _________________________________ That article is behind a paywall. Not that the news that Taylor Swift has reacquired her catalog of recordings is hidden, I saw […]