Obviously, we talk about streaming a lot on this show. It is, after all, the 3,000-pound gorilla determining the basic political economy of the contemporary music industry. But all too often we—and let’s face it, pretty much everyone else in the Anglo media-sphere—are actually talking about a handful of geographically focused companies, rather than a truly global ecosystem. You know the ones, and you know the places. But what does streaming look like outside the U.S./Western Europe—or beyond Spotify? To learn more, we talked with Ryan Blakeley, a Visiting Assistant Professor at Northeastern University, whose research focuses on a wide variety of locally-oriented streaming services, from state-affiliated systems in Greenland to fast-growing (Chinese-backed?) African startups. He also digs into the business infrastructure that makes such services possible, shedding light onto the firms that connect local companies to global rights-holders—and in doing so, pull them into the structural logic of the streaming industry. Come for a discussion of how streaming works in the Middle East. Stay for the ways in which nationally-organized streaming could remake the artistic economy. Get full access to Money 4 Nothing at money4nothing.substack.com/subscribe

Looking at the current state of the Billboard charts, it seems like reports of Drake’s demise at the hands of Kendrick Lamar may have been a bit premature. Storming out of whatever supervillain ice-cave lair he’s been inhabiting, Drake dropped THREE new albums into the top three slots of the charts, reminding the world that he remains the most successful rapper of the streaming era. But what does it mean to be this type of industry anchor in 2026? How has superstardom changed since Drake first grabbed the commercial crown? We talk lawsuits, record contracts, wallpaper music, playlist manipulation, and digital casinos—all on the trail of an artist who is still, somehow, too big to fail. That same logic did not help Ticketmaster/Live Nation—the live music mega-corporation that, despite the chicanery, despite the current administration, despite the track record, managed to LOSE a major monopoly trial through the sheer unmitigated volume and pungency of its bad behavior. And yes, while you did already know Ticketmaster was rotten, unless you’ve dug through the court filings, you really have NO idea how much anti-consumer sleaze you can fit in one company. Don’t worry—we go through it. With freakin’ PLEASURE. Beyond the general schadenfreude and kvelling, we also try to imagine what might come out of this…actual good thing that occurred? Honestly, we were caught a bit off-guard, because nothing like this has really occurred since we started the show. Maybe…things could…get better? Weird for us as it is for you. Get full access to Money 4 Nothing at money4nothing.substack.com/subscribe

Early last month, billionaire hedge-fund manager Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square made an offer to purchase major-label heavyweight Universal Music Group. Ackman, already a major investor in the company, believes that despite consistent success in the business of making and selling music, UMG hasn’t been doing nearly well enough for its customers—i.e. the shareholders. Could a “New UMG” organized by his hedge fund unlock higher valuations while finally giving those hardworking investors the dividends that they deserve? Saxon and Sam dig into this unquestionably great news, exploring the exciting possibilities that a music industry even less interested in artists—and with its financial worth tied to stock market returns based on income-only-ever-go-up assumptions—will offer for everyone. Two Thumbs Up! BUT FIRST: we have some bad news. Geese—your favorite band to argue about whether or not they should be someone else’s favorite band—hired a viral marketing firm. And then that firm (gasp!) did viral marketing using potentially-fake user accounts to drive online conversations. It’s a scandal that’s consumed the ever-shrinking world of indy rock. But what does the kerfuffle tell us about our contemporary digital imagination—not to mention the media ecosystem that supports it? Why did it make people (both those who were horrified and those mocking those who were horrified) so upset? And what should we do with the unpleasant feeling that our minds are being colonized—and our knowledge that they…kinda always were? Come for a historically situated analysis of current projections that music could be constituted as a reliability counter-cyclical cash flow. Stay for tin-foil-hat takes on The Discourse. Get full access to Money 4 Nothing at money4nothing.substack.com/subscribe

Did you know that the U.S. military is the largest single employer of musicians on earth?But...how did this happen? What does it tell us about war? Or, you know... about music? These questions are at the heart of David Suisman’s new book Instruments of War: Music and the Making of America’s Soldiers. From Civil War battlefields to WWI training camps, Vietnamese bars, and Iraq-era iPods, he traces how performers, songs, and recordings have served to maintain energy, sustain emotional balance, and shape new, powerful collective identities among fighting men and women. All the stuff that we love on the dancefloor? It turns out that it also works pretty well on the battlefield and training camp. Come for country-vs-soul jukebox battles, submarine pianos, scatological marching songs, and Drowning Pool supercuts. Stay for an entirely new perspective on what the power of music can accomplish—for better and worse.To learn more about David’s work—and listen to some amazing recordings—be sure to check out his website here ==> https://www.davidsuisman.net/instrument-of-warMoney 4 Nothing is created as a labor of love by Sam and Saxon. Consider a paid subscription so we can keep the lights on. Get full access to Money 4 Nothing at money4nothing.substack.com/subscribe

It’s an attractive silver-lining of an idea—“At least bad times make good punk.” Reagan begets…Reagan Youth, you know? Looking around at our rapidly deteriorating world, we decided it was a good moment to put this theory to the test, subbing punk for the broader category of “political music,” and applying it to the last hundred years of popular performance. But what are bad times? And what makes good political music?What follows is a deep dive into our thinking on materialist cultural criticism—from the imagined traditions of the folk revival or the escapist fantasies of 1930s Hollywood musicals to self-contradictory rebellion in the 1960s and the hauntological possibilities of Nirvana’s anti-corporate idealism in the TikTok present. Come for the false futures being asserted by our corporate overlords. Stay for the fact that those futures, despite everything, are still unwritten. Get full access to Money 4 Nothing at money4nothing.substack.com/subscribe

If you live in the United States, you probably know the college radio feel—scrappy vibes, student DJs stumbling over liner notes, great station interstitials, even better music. That music tends to be a very specific mix of bleeding edge up-and-comers, critically-acclaimed (yet relatively low-selling) classics, and occasional forays into genres like reggae, funk, jazz, or (help us) ska. But despite this, the actual boundaries of what makes college radio, well, college radio aren’t so clear. Are hits disqualifying? Does it—is it supposed to—reflect the tastes of the students? And why do colleges even have these stations in the first place? The questions are important because, as Katherine Rye Jewell, the author of “Live From The Underground: A History of College Radio,” explains, college radio has been influential on both the development of underground music and the reimagining of academic life over the last 50 years. Perched between commercial training and educational anarchy, stations gradually developed a strange middle ground—tied to the systems of power but apart from them. Maybe not so different from underground rock more generally? Come for FCC shenanigans, battles with administrators, fights over rap, and the creation of the indy-industrial complex. Stay for a deep history of a rarely-considered pillar of the American music landscape. Live From The Underground by Katherine Rye Jewell Get full access to Money 4 Nothing at money4nothing.substack.com/subscribe

A two topic special for you this week. First—we explore the strangely under-reported story that Elon Musk is suing…basically the entirety of music publishing. The reason? They (gasp!) want him to either pay for music on X or, you know, stop allowing it. The mechanics are a lot weirder, though. We briefly run through consent decrees, blanket licensing, and Silicon Valley’s vision for intellectual property.Then: the increased tumult around Spotify has seen many looking for an alternate streaming platform, with Tidal often touted as a more ethical (and higher audio quality) alternative. But…what’s Tidal’s deal, actually? And what can it tell us about the history—and future—of streaming? We talk the bizarre, star-studded, Jay-Z-led launch, Cash-App Takeovers, super-shady pro-Kanye stream inflation, and mission-pivoting techno-babble. Come for a shadow history of music in tech. Stay for the time that Frank Ocean built a staircase to nowhere. Get full access to Money 4 Nothing at money4nothing.substack.com/subscribe

To ring in the new year, Sam and Saxon pull out both their wayback machine AND their increasingly scuffed-up crystal ball to think through some of the biggest trends from the last year—and to make some predictions about what might be coming in 2026. Was this the year when Spotify finally lost its grip on the PMC intelligentsia? Will Tik Tok’s potential American spinoff release a flood of incriminating music-biz evidence? And what’s up with…rock music out pacing Latin and Country lately? Will anyone write an anthem about work sucking again? Come to hear us tell you how we were right. Stay (and take notes) so you can tell us where we get things wrong.(and please….excuse the hiss of our radiators. We live in cold places.) Get full access to Money 4 Nothing at money4nothing.substack.com/subscribe

Well…it’s here folks. From the back roads of the digital countryside to the clubs of London, AI music has finally hit the charts. And the major labels, which had spent much of the last few years promising that they would do everything in their power to protect their artists’ rights and intellectual property and humanity have…signed deals with the major AI companies behind it? We don’t want to say we told you so but…well…we did. To get a handle on what’s been happening, we consider a bevy of Very Threatening Lawsuits, talk through some recent lawsuit-squashing deals, and unpick the heavy-handed playbook that Universal, Sony, and Warner are running on yet another pack of VC-backed tech bros. Nice generative AI company you got there. Shame if anyone were to accuse it of copyright infringement. But beyond the revenue streams, cultural influence, and never-to-be-officially-discussed buckets of settlement cash that these tactics promise, the latest developments also reveal hints of what the majors see as the future of AI music: A Walled Garden of user-generated content? A licensing bonanza? A cudgel against Spotify? A slop halo? (Don’t worry—we’ll explain that last one). Come for the rise of the musical replicants and the (potential) fall of the digital squatters. Stay for what all of this might do to a new generation of listeners. Get full access to Money 4 Nothing at money4nothing.substack.com/subscribe

The Internet, as you know, is a vast and strange place, chock full of subcultures doing all sorts of things. And some of them are…well…curating Vine compilations, putting them onto VHS, carefully crafting distinctive packaging (complete with colored tapes!) and distributing the resulting “art pieces” via Etsy. Just hypothetically speaking, of course. But why would anyone want to do this? Why would anyone want to buy this? And what does the fact that, despite its surface weirdness, the resulting object probably makes a certain amount of aesthetic sense to you…say about our relationship to the media (and the entire digital landscape) in the contemporary moment? To learn more about this wild, wild world, we talk with Travis Wagner, an assistant professor in the School of Information Sciences at Urbana-Champaign, whose latest research has focused on the “retroconversion” scene in all its tape-dubbing glory. Does 2010s horror deserve VHS-era static? What are the deep urges beneath nostalgia for physical media? Was the ‘90s really the last good time in American culture? Is the ownership of magnetic tape really an act of rebellion against the digital automation of an algorithmically-driven, surveillance capital world? Bust out your Walkman, hit the play button and decide for yourself. Get full access to Money 4 Nothing at money4nothing.substack.com/subscribe