music – The Slow Review

The Future of Music

When everything is content and content is priced at nothing, what’s the value of music? An attempt to wade through technology, the present digital landscape, and hopes for creators.

Why would anyone write about the future of music?

Even a seasoned futurist must sound like a fraud to claim a mainline on the future of music — mostly because music is so unpredictable. Who could’ve predicted The Beatles? Or Nirvana? Who can predict what makes a hit, let alone repeat the formula? And when you magnify that wide unknowability by the relative infinity of the Internet — which is where music (mainly) exists now and where any idea of music might stick — you’d have to be very cocky — or desperate — to make predictions about the future of music.

Interview: Cameron / Venus Theory

Sound designer, musician, YouTube ace. A long form interview about music, voice, and how to grow and pivot in the ever-changing ecology of Online.
Or: a master class in channel evolution.

Eight Hours, A Lifetime: The Beatles’ Get Back

It’s long, that’s true. Almost eight hours, seven and forty-eight minutes of documentary to be precise. By comparison, taking their original track listings and run times, and not counting the Past Masters collections, it will take you eight hours, forty-four minutes and nine seconds to listen to The Beatles’ thirteen studio albums, and even that estimation’s on the generous side, counting as it does George Martin’s orchestrations on the second side of Yellow Submarine, or, for another example, the appearance of “All You Need Is Love” on both Submarine and the Magical Mystery Tour LP. With a little entirely reasonable finessing we might stand the documentary and their recorded body of work side by side, perfectly matched in duration.