Name3Songs podcast discusses the problem of sexual misconduct in alter music. Questions they pose: "Why sexual misconduct reoccurs at alarming rates in the music industry. What is the psychology behind this? How has this behavior been perpetrated across decades? How can this behavior be stopped and prevented? What is accountability and how do we apply it effectively?".
1980s pop singer Glenn Medeiros was often asked for sex by music industry figures in return for help with his careers - as he has told the Celebrity Catch Up podcast. Medeiros said he saw these offers "everywhere", and he refused them all, but other artists, as he said, would accept them: "I had friends who specifically said, 'I am going to be moving in with this person because this person is going to be helping me with my recording career. The person's attractive and I like them anyway, so it's OK"". Medeiros now runs a school in Hawaii.
The podcast industry thrived throughout the last year, The Chartable Blog reports. 2020 saw a more than 280% increase in the creation of new podcasts - from just over 300,000 new podcasts started in 2019 to almost 900,000 in 2020, which is 17,000 new podcasts each week. Just under half of the 900,000 new podcasts were in languages other than English. Many of these new podcasts have just one or two episodes - about 30%. However, 23% of podcasts started in 2021 have already published more than 10 episodes.
Guardian started a pew podcast Reverberate about the power of music, about the times when a song really did make a difference and when music sparked a moment. They started the podcast with a story about a song at the center of Hong Kong’s nascent pro-democracy movement. Listen to the podcast - here.
"I always liked things that most people didn't like" - Rick Rubin says in an interesting Stitcher podcast about his choice of artists he produced, and his creative process - "I've always been voraciously interesting in counter-culture. I'm just interested!". He says also how he guards his passion: "I try to be as true to my interests as possible. I don't listen to music to find out what's going on, I listen to music because I like music". Rubin also says how the creative moment isn't rational: "The magic doesn't happen in the head, the magic happens in the heart. The actual magic is not intellectual, it's faster than the intellect, it's much more primal, it's much more immediate, it's not to be figured out".
Australian indie-pop musician Ben Lee went into 14-day quarantine in a Sydney military hotel when he returned from Los Angeles, and he used that time to make a 30-minute podcast a day (find them all here). Rather than talk about his music, he discussed himself, as well as some general themes like conspiracy theories, blockchain, death, gurus, marketing etc. What he tried to do, as he's told the Guardian, is to answer questions like "What am I about? Why have I been attracted to all these things? What are the common threads?”.
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have signed a deal with streaming service Spotify to produce and host podcasts, CNN reports. In a trailer, the pair - introducing themselves as "Harry and Meghan", without the royal attributes - promised "different perspectives" and interviews with "amazing people". Their charity will receive an undisclosed sum from the partnership between their production company, Archewell Audio, and Spotify.
"I feel like we exist at the behest of other people, but, yeah, I feel like I don't exist" - Phoebe Bridgers said about life in lockdown while talking to her new friend Bettye LaVette, who responded - "isn't it beautiful that we don't exist until the light come off and everybody applauds". Bridgers added - "I feel like my social life is built so heavily into music where I hire all my friends, I tour with my friends, so I don't even know how to exist at home". Listen to the funny conversation of the two ladies for the Talkhouse podcast.
Billie Eilish and Finneas talk to Song Exploder podcast about how they made their hit-song 'Everything I Wanted'. It all started with a dream in which Billie Eilish dies and observes people (not) react to her dying. They couldn't finish the song, and had returned to it after half a year.
A serious analysis in the Baffler of Spotify and its business model: "Over the past year, Spotify transformed its stated aspirations as a company. It used to see itself as the go-to platform providing 'music for every mood and moment' - not just a music streaming service but one that knows your taste better than you know it yourself. That changed in February 2019, when Spotify announced its acquisitions of Gimlet and Anchor in a letter declaring itself 'Audio First'". Spotify went wider with the content becoming a podcast company as well, but - "in many ways, though, the $50 billion company is treating podcasters similarly to how it has historically treated musicians, with a system that privileges the already moneyed and powerful".
