Dear Listener, Have you found yourself coming down with more consistent cases of nostalgia lately? Do you consider yourself a millennial? Well, if so, you might be soon buying a pricey concert ticket to one of the hottest trends in live music: The 20 year Anniversary Album Tour. Yes, your favorite album of 2004 (or perhaps 2014) can soon be heard live, in its entirety, front to back at a concert venue near you. But why is this becoming such a trend? Is it the pre-packaged social media ready presentation? Or that Millennials got deeper pockets now and will shell out big bucks on tickets (and a babysitter) to hear their favorite album played live? Or is it just Hollywood risk-aversion bleeding into the touring industry? As a jumping-off point, Saxon and Sam discuss an excellent recent article on Passion of the Weiss wondering on this very subject and then suss out whether Earl Sweatshirt really is touring ...too...much?

Read: We Outside: Congrats, Your Favorite Album is Old Enough to Go on Tour by Pravash Trewn

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This week, we take a roundabout tour of the platform power that drives our musical landscape. First up is Neil Young, whose one-man stand against Spotify for its support of Joe Rogan just ended in….well…total defeat. We explore why Ol' Neil was unable to escape the musical monopsony that defines our streaming age (with a few detours into the terrors of lo-fidelity audio and the dream that was Pono). Then, we look at what Universal Music has been up to, more specifically, by examining a set of recently announced partnerships with Spotify (they have videos now?) and K-Pop powerhouse Hybe (everyone, quick, into the WeVerse!) If platforms were already inescapable, what does it mean when the major labels start doubling down on them? Come for the secret, dollar-drenched sound of Scooter Braun and Taylor Swift burying the hatchet. Stay for how we LOST THE UNIVERSE.

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Music: Chromatics - Fade to Black

Much of the time, it feels like almost nothing could shake up the streaming status-quo. This isn’t one of those times. Over the past week, Congressperson Rashida Tlaib (with support from the Union of Musicians and Allied Workers) released the Living Wage for Musicians Act—a fascinating piece of legislation that (if passed) would completely transform the contemporary music industry. Like…really REALLY change things, in ways both obvious and subtle.

While it’s hard to see an immediate path towards it being signed into law, the act demonstrates a genuine hunger for large-scale structural change—and helps to lay out an imaginative framework for what that could look like. We dig into the details, but also explore what this newfound sense of possibilities might mean for the future—a question that also connects to current, racially-coded attempts to ban music-biz-hotbed Tik Tok. Connecting such seemingly disparate events, we wonder what this emergent energy means, and where it could go next. Come for the 12-Million Stream Cap—stay for the beautiful dream of major label transparency.

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Music: La Sécurité - "K9 Freaks Mix (Freak Heat Waves Remix)"