Money 4 Nothing

Looking at the current state of the Billboard charts, it seems like reports of Drake’s demise at the hands of Kendrick Lamar may have been a bit premature. Storming out of whatever supervillain ice-cave lair he’s been inhabiting, Drake dropped THREE new albums into the top three slots of the charts, reminding the world that he remains the most successful rapper of the streaming era. But what does it mean to be this type of industry anchor in 2026? How has superstardom changed since Drake first grabbed the commercial crown? We talk lawsuits, record contracts, wallpaper music, playlist manipulation, and digital casinos—all on the trail of an artist who is still, somehow, too big to fail.
That same logic did not help Ticketmaster/Live Nation—the live music mega-corporation that, despite the chicanery, despite the current administration, despite the track record, managed to LOSE a major monopoly trial through the sheer unmitigated volume and pungency of its bad behavior. And yes, while you did already know Ticketmaster was rotten, unless you’ve dug through the court filings, you really have NO idea how much anti-consumer sleaze you can fit in one company. Don’t worry—we go through it. With freakin’ PLEASURE. Beyond the general schadenfreude and kvelling, we also try to imagine what might come out of this…actual good thing that occurred? Honestly, we were caught a bit off-guard, because nothing like this has really occurred since we started the show. Maybe…things could…get better? Weird for us as it is for you.


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Early last month, billionaire hedge-fund manager Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square made an offer to purchase major-label heavyweight Universal Music Group. Ackman, already a major investor in the company, believes that despite consistent success in the business of making and selling music, UMG hasn’t been doing nearly well enough for its customers—i.e. the shareholders. Could a “New UMG” organized by his hedge fund unlock higher valuations while finally giving those hardworking investors the dividends that they deserve? Saxon and Sam dig into this unquestionably great news, exploring the exciting possibilities that a music industry even less interested in artists—and with its financial worth tied to stock market returns based on income-only-ever-go-up assumptions—will offer for everyone. Two Thumbs Up!
BUT FIRST: we have some bad news. Geese—your favorite band to argue about whether or not they should be someone else’s favorite band—hired a viral marketing firm. And then that firm (gasp!) did viral marketing using potentially-fake user accounts to drive online conversations. It’s a scandal that’s consumed the ever-shrinking world of indy rock. But what does the kerfuffle tell us about our contemporary digital imagination—not to mention the media ecosystem that supports it? Why did it make people (both those who were horrified and those mocking those who were horrified) so upset? And what should we do with the unpleasant feeling that our minds are being colonized—and our knowledge that they…kinda always were? Come for a historically situated analysis of current projections that music could be constituted as a reliability counter-cyclical cash flow. Stay for tin-foil-hat takes on The Discourse.



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Did you know that the U.S. military is the largest single employer of musicians on earth?
But...how did this happen? What does it tell us about war? Or, you know... about music? These questions are at the heart of David Suisman’s new book Instruments of War: Music and the Making of America’s Soldiers. From Civil War battlefields to WWI training camps, Vietnamese bars, and Iraq-era iPods, he traces how performers, songs, and recordings have served to maintain energy, sustain emotional balance, and shape new, powerful collective identities among fighting men and women. All the stuff that we love on the dancefloor? It turns out that it also works pretty well on the battlefield and training camp. Come for country-vs-soul jukebox battles, submarine pianos, scatological marching songs, and Drowning Pool supercuts. Stay for an entirely new perspective on what the power of music can accomplish—for better and worse.

To learn more about David’s work—and listen to some amazing recordings—be sure to check out his website here ==> https://www.davidsuisman.net/instrument-of-war
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It’s an attractive silver-lining of an idea—“At least bad times make good punk.” Reagan begets…Reagan Youth, you know? Looking around at our rapidly deteriorating world, we decided it was a good moment to put this theory to the test, subbing punk for the broader category of “political music,” and applying it to the last hundred years of popular performance. But what are bad times? And what makes good political music?
What follows is a deep dive into our thinking on materialist cultural criticism—from the imagined traditions of the folk revival or the escapist fantasies of 1930s Hollywood musicals to self-contradictory rebellion in the 1960s and the hauntological possibilities of Nirvana’s anti-corporate idealism in the TikTok present. Come for the false futures being asserted by our corporate overlords. Stay for the fact that those futures, despite everything, are still unwritten.


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If you live in the United States, you probably know the college radio feel—scrappy vibes, student DJs stumbling over liner notes, great station interstitials, even better music. That music tends to be a very specific mix of bleeding edge up-and-comers, critically-acclaimed (yet relatively low-selling) classics, and occasional forays into genres like reggae, funk, jazz, or (help us) ska. But despite this, the actual boundaries of what makes college radio, well, college radio aren’t so clear. Are hits disqualifying? Does it—is it supposed to—reflect the tastes of the students? And why do colleges even have these stations in the first place?
The questions are important because, as Katherine Rye Jewell, the author of “Live From The Underground: A History of College Radio,” explains, college radio has been influential on both the development of underground music and the reimagining of academic life over the last 50 years. Perched between commercial training and educational anarchy, stations gradually developed a strange middle ground—tied to the systems of power but apart from them. Maybe not so different from underground rock more generally? Come for FCC shenanigans, battles with administrators, fights over rap, and the creation of the indy-industrial complex. Stay for a deep history of a rarely-considered pillar of the American music landscape.
Live From The Underground by Katherine Rye Jewell



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