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The Honest Broker

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The Honest Broker
How Many New Songs Are Released Each Day? It's a scary number—but here's what we do about it
2 months ago
The Honest Broker
My Lifetime Reading Plan I share some private details of how I educated myself through books
a month ago
The Honest Broker
Can Songs Really Replace Philosophy? Nobody has told you this before, but our rationalistic STEM worldview originated in magical songs
3 weeks ago
The Honest Broker
How an IBM Computer Learned to Sing (1961) The IBM 7094 anticipated the future of music—and also sounded like the Auto-Tuned pop stars of today
2 months ago
The Honest Broker
The Decline and Fall of the Hit Instrumental Song Nowadays vocalists control popular music—but that wasn't always true
a month ago
The Honest Broker
A Conversation with Jason Moran The celebrated pianist, composer, and Artistic Director for Jazz at the Kennedy Center talks with...
2 weeks ago
The Honest Broker
I Talk with an AI Music Historian Maybe a chatbot can teach me a few things
2 weeks ago
The Honest Broker
Who Inspires You Among Living Musicians, Writers, and Other Creative Individuals? It's Open Mic Day at The Honest Broker
2 months ago
The Honest Broker
Where Did Musicology Come From? I share an extract from my new book 'Music to Raise the Dead'
2 months ago
The Honest Broker
Introducing Substack Notes—A New Forum for Ideas & Dialogue on the Web I’m launching today on this new platform & you’re invited to join me
a month ago
The Honest Broker
Why Do Young People Keep Telling Me That Jazz is Romantic? I have a theory, but it's a little disturbing
a month ago
The Honest Broker
Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow Turns 50 An essay from the archives
3 months ago
The Honest Broker
Why Musicians Can't Retire Sometimes it's better just to walk away—but very few superstars pull it off
3 months ago
The Honest Broker
Judgment Day Has Arrived for the Journalism Business From Upworthy to Buzzfeed, all the click chasing gimmicks have failed—but there is one sure option...
3 weeks ago
The Honest Broker
Did the Music Business Just Kill the Vinyl Revival? New data tells an ominous story
4 months ago
The Honest Broker
In 1970, Alvin Toffler Predicted the Rise of Future Shock—But the Exact Opposite Happened And it's much, much worse
6 days ago
The Honest Broker
I'm Confessing that I Love Doris Day As a jazz singer—but I don't know if that makes it better or worse
a week ago
The Honest Broker
Spotify Gives 49 Different Names to the Same Song Composers and recording artists are all different too, but the music is identical—what's going on?
a month ago
The Honest Broker
8 Pieces of Advice for Struggling Young Musicians (or Other Creative People) They keep reaching out to me with the same sad story—and here's what I say
4 weeks ago
The Honest Broker
How Christopher Burney Discovered Mindfulness in a Nazi Solitary Confinement Cell The captured British spy later declared that his 526 days in isolation were "an exercise in liberty"
a month ago
The Honest Broker
Why I've Decided to Become a Shareholder of Substack I'm doing something today I've never done before in my long writing career—and I want to tell you my...
2 months ago
The Honest Broker
Why Recording Studios Are Unplugging From the Internet And other recent articles of interest
a month ago
The Honest Broker
When Duke Ellington Came to North Dakota Or how a milestone moment in American music happened in a most unlikely place
a month ago
The Honest Broker
The State of Protest and Political Music in the Year 2023 Protest songs are everywhere—except on TV, radio, and the leading playlists
2 months ago
The Honest Broker
The Brilliant Bad Decisions of John Luther Adams He never finished high school, took demanding work outside of music, moved to a cabin in Alaska,...
3 weeks ago
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3 weeks ago
He never finished high school, took demanding work outside of music, moved to a cabin in Alaska, etc. Can you really win a Pulitzer Prize this way? Well, yes. . .
The Honest Broker
Audiences Grow Weary of Stories that Never End Disney and Netflix make billions by creating a culture without closure—but unhappy viewers are...
2 months ago
The Honest Broker
Why Were Execution Ballads So Popular in Europe? For hundreds of years, these songs circulated widely, and were even sold at the gallows—for reasons...
2 months ago
The Honest Broker
How Wayne Shorter Transformed Jazz Composition in the 1960s I look back at 10 historic performances
3 months ago
The Honest Broker
Jazz Piano Innovator Ahmad Jamal Is Dead at Age 92 Over the course of an influential career, he transformed the rhythmic and melodic textures of...
a month ago
The Honest Broker
How Saxophonist Jimmy Giuffre Taught Me Organizational Theory Or what I didn't learn about team-building at Stanford Business School
a month ago
The Honest Broker
A Scandal Is Taking Place in American Music This Week Mack McCormick's 'lost' Robert Johnson bio gets published after 50 years—and the story behind it is...
a month ago
The Honest Broker
Six Recent Studies Show an Unexpected Increase in Classical Music Listening Something has changed in the last 12-18 months, especially among younger listeners—but why?
2 months ago
The Honest Broker
A Chilling Paragraph from 1960 Sometimes people really can predict the future
3 months ago
The Honest Broker
Why Was King Tut Buried with a Trumpet? "Whenever someone blows into it, a war occurs"
4 months ago
The Honest Broker
The Hit Singles of Sun Ra On the 30th anniversary of the Afrofuturist's death, I explore the oddest discs in his discography
4 days ago
The Honest Broker
The 20 Greatest Hits of The Honest Broker We celebrate our 2nd birthday today—so I look back at the 20 most popular articles of the last 12...
a month ago
The Honest Broker
The Scarcest Thing in the World It's not oil or eggs or toilet paper—but something far more important
a month ago
The Honest Broker
Why Did the Beatles Get So Many Bad Reviews? An inquiry into how critics stumble
4 months ago
The Honest Broker
My Crazy Plan to Save the Newspaper Business But it only sounds crazy—if you actually did it, you could change all the rules of journalism
3 months ago
The Honest Broker
The Real Story of Blues Legend Robert Johnson's 'Deal with the Devil' at the Crossroads In this section from my new book, I uncover neglected source materials from the 1930s and provide...
3 months ago
The Honest Broker
Is Facebook's Metaverse Turning Into a Ghost Town? Does anybody use it? Does anybody talk about it? Does anybody care?
2 months ago
The Honest Broker
The 4 Types of Colleges Papers for English Majors And how I had to unlearn all of them to become a writer
3 months ago
The Honest Broker
We're Living in a Scroll-and Swipe Doom Loop Culture Here's how we escape it
2 months ago
The Honest Broker
How Long Does Pop Culture Stardom Last? I have a hunch that even huge stars are forgotten after 80 years—but does the data back that up?
3 months ago
The Honest Broker
What Did Robert Johnson Encounter at the Crossroads? (Part 1 of 2) I share a section from my new book 'Music to Raise the Dead'
3 months ago
The Honest Broker
How a Single Person Changes a Culture And what would happen if Miles Davis were a corporate CEO
4 months ago
The Honest Broker
I'm Starting the New Year by Asking Your Advice It's Open Mic Day and I want your suggestions for The Honest Broker
4 months ago
The Honest Broker
Boom Times for the End of the World I pay tribute to culture writer Scott Timberg (1969-2019) whose posthumous book is published today
2 months ago
The Honest Broker
When a Single Person Controlled the Copyright on All Music (Even Blank Music Paper) Music copyright law is a mess today—but it's always been that way
a week ago
The Honest Broker
How Musicians Were the First Heroes—And Their Songs a Kind of Superpower In this section from my new book, I explore the secret origins of musicology as a guide for...
a month ago
The Honest Broker
The Woman Who Abandoned a Successful Recording Career to Play Music for the Dying I celebrate 50 years of end-of-life interventions by Therese Schroeder-Sheker. This is what a real...
4 months ago
The Honest Broker
How I Disintermediated My Writing Career It's a clumsy word, but a lovely thing to do
7 hours ago
The Honest Broker
My Lifelong Quest for Silence It may seem strange to hear it from a music writer, but I'm always looking for a quiet moment
3 months ago
The Honest Broker
The State of the Culture (2023) This is the speech I really want to hear—so I'll give it myself.
3 months ago
The Honest Broker
Introducing the Slickest Con Artist of All Time Or 10 tweets about ChatGPT
4 months ago
The Honest Broker
The Most Important City in the History of Music Isn't What You Think It Is We can learn from the Córdoba Miracle—and not just about music
4 months ago
The Honest Broker
Impersonating Famous Musicians: A Two Thousand Year History From Orpheus to Elvis and beyond
4 months ago
The Honest Broker
Over the Course 72 Hours, Microsoft's AI Goes on a Rampage I thought the AI story was bizarre last week, but that was nothing compared to this
3 months ago
The Honest Broker
Remembering Wayne Shorter (1933-2023) I pay tribute to a great artist and share the inspiring open letter he wrote with Herbie Hancock in...
3 months ago
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3 months ago
I pay tribute to a great artist and share the inspiring open letter he wrote with Herbie Hancock in 2016. I believe this is the most significant piece of writing published about jazz—or creative enterprises in general—in recent years.
The Honest Broker
I Need to Tell You About My Interesting Brother Because he's just done another interesting thing
3 months ago
The Honest Broker
What I Learned from Emily Post's 'Etiquette' (1922) A book from 101 years ago can be as strange as science fiction—but not without its comforts
2 months ago
The Honest Broker
How I Got an AI Theme Song for My Substack Or why AI music in 2023 isn’t about innovation or creativity—it’s just a crude cost-cutting tool...
4 months ago
The Honest Broker
My 8 Best Techniques for Evaluating Character These methods have helped me enormously—and can save you much heartache and anxiety
4 months ago