Critical Listening

What happens when a private equity company takes over a music festival? For this Critical Listening live taping at the ESNS Conference in Groningen, we spoke with Dutch investigative journalist Henk W...

7 Apr 42min

Hey all, we're back with another headlines episode. This month we start by digging into UMG CEO Lucian Grainge's recent appearance on stage at a NVIDIA-hosted conference described as the "Super Bowl o...

1 Apr 3min

Welcome back to another episode of Critical Listening. For this month’s Headlines, we’re joined by Hearing Things co-founder and longtime music critic Jill Mapes to discuss her recent piece “The Wasse...

6 Mars 53min

WE’RE BACK. Today we start the year with a dispatch from what some may call the front lines: a bunch of AI-related panels at a European music biz trade conference. It’s also our first episode recorded...

11 Feb 51min

As 2025 comes to a close, so does the first season of Critical Listening. And with us to send off the year, we have none other than the internet's busiest music nerd himself: Anthony Fantano of The Ne...

24 Dec 20251h 21min

We are back for our penultimate episode of Season 1 of Critical Listening! Recorded on November 13th at the coveted Stood at Purchase College, we're discussing the latest developments in the Spotify d...

9 Dec 202554min

For Episode 8 we have composer, educator, curator, and activist Amirtha Kidambi stopping by. We discuss Amirtha's various musical outputs, including her Elder Ones ensemble and her recent duo release ...

26 Nov 20251h 37min

We’re back with another headlines ep, where Liz and Max each bring one story from across the music-tech biz press to summarize and contextualize. On this ep we are unpacking the imminent major label d...

5 Nov 202555min