Category: Podcasts

Podcast: Talking with Helienne Lindvall Because Streaming is Still Broken

Neil Young pulls his music from Spotify to protest the content on Joe Rogan’s podcast, and Joni Mitchell and Crosby, Stills, and Nash follow suit. It’s a big story for a week, and some noise about “cancel culture” and Rogan himself lingers, but we’ve mostly moved on. Meanwhile, the economic model for music streaming is still broken. Songwriters make pennies for millions of streams, and the dynamics of the data-driven market are not quite conducive to the kind of experimentation and risk-taking that dominated the period when artists like Young and his contemporaries rose to fame. So, why don’t legacy artists who can command so much attention use that power to advocate for fair compensation for the next generation of artists?  I don’t know the answer, but the question prompted me to invite songwriter/columnist Helienne Lindvall to join me for this episode.

Helienne hosts “Sounds” on BBC, talking about the ways in which streaming has changed the craft of songwriting. 

Podcast: Talking NFTs and Grift with Neil Turkewitz & David Lowery

In this episode, I talk to artists’ rights activists Neil Turkewitz and David Lowery about the scope and nature of fraud in the NFT trade–and why NFTs are yet another false promise to help independent artists in the digital age. 

Read Neil Turkewitz’s interview with artist bor, a member of the activist group @NFTTheft, and read his follow-up piece about the scope of fraud on the site OpenSea.

Read David Lowery’s post about the HitPiece NFT ripoff. 

Read Aaron Moss’s post about HitPiece at CopyrightLately.

Check out Molly White’s blog Web3 is going just great.

And because it came up in discussion, one Cambridge University study finds that mining Bitcoin uses 121.36 terrawatt-hours per year–or more than the nation of Argentina.

Jonathan Mann weighs in.

Photo source by: inmicco

Podcast: David Golumbia Talking Facebook & Fascism

In this episode, I speak with David Golumbia, author and associate professor of digital studies, American literature, literary theory, philosophy, and linguistics at Virginia Commonwealth University. I asked Golumbia to join me after reading his blog post published on October 20th in which he asserts that Facebook is not just dropping the ball when it comes to curbing hate on its platform but that, in his words, Facebook Loves Fascism.

Facebook’s “Screw it Let’s Talk Astrology” ad, part of its Groups campaign.

Episode Contents

  • 00:00:55 – David Golumbia background.
  • 00:03:24 – Facebook loves fascism.
  • 00:08:24 – Defining “right” vs. proto-fascism.
  • 00:11:36 – Paths to authoritarianism.
  • 00:13:50 – mysticism and fascism.
  • 00:18:56 – Facebook’s astrology  TV spot.
  • 00:23:48 – More subtle forces driving division.
  • 00:32:02 – Facebook is too good for democracy.
  • 00:36:32 – Better/more information is not a solution.
  • 00:45:11 – “Educate yourself.”
  • 00:48:50 – Considering outcomes.
  • 00:54:05 – Rapidly changing narratives.
  • 00:56:25 – Latent extremism let out of the box.
  • 01:00:35 – What do Facebook et al really want?
  • 01:07:06 – The Big Tobacco analogy.