In just under one generation, we moved from appreciating albums as cohesive works to consuming individual tracks, and then to music becoming reduced to muzak: background noise for gaming, viral videos, or endless scrolling. Disappearing is music as an art in its own right, which commands sustained attention and deep engagement. A song’s success is... See more

Music has always adapted to the culture enabled by its dominant format . When radio was king, you needed to grab attention in the first 15 seconds or risk getting skipped. But radio DJs were gatekeepers who could champion unique picks to their taste if they believed in them. When Jay-Z and Kanye West 's “Otis” premiered in 2011, Funkmaster Flex... See more

I think that at this point in life—after ten or so years of a proliferative mode in the online idiom—there is a craving to return to an earlier, slower internet. Before real chronology and temporal relationships were replaced with sped-up simulations of real-time.