Critical Listening

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 in person!

We are starting our new season with two episodes recorded in the city of Groningen in the Netherlands, where we were invited to participate on some panels and to host a live taping of the show at the annual conference and festival ESNS. That live taping—an interview with Dutch investigative culture reporter Henk Willem Smits—will drop later in the month. But before then, we have another conversation we recorded while we were in Groningen, reflecting on some panels we saw as well as ones we participated in. 

Did Max survive his first music industry conference? Did Liz learn anything being on a panel alongside someone from a certain French DSP that has been labeling AI tracks? Why did we choose to attend something called “Automate or Die Trying” when we could have done literally anything else? And why are there never any musicians at these things? All this and more on Episode 11 of Critical Listening.

Support the show for access to bonus episodes and our Discord at patreon.com/criticallistening.

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 Needle Drop. We discuss how public perception of streaming culture discourse has shifted this past year, his efforts to offer a critical perspective on the music industry in his videos, the state of on-screen music journalism in 2025, and more.

We also dive into Anthony's background as a music journalist, the influence of public radio on his work, what media integrity means for video-first critics, and his general thoughts on music media after over 15 years of running a successful online platform. We had a lot of fun chatting with Anthony and we hope you will enjoy this culmination of Season 1. Thanks to all who pledged their monthly support to make this first season of Critical Listening happen, we can't wait to show you what we have in store for 2026. If you haven't yet please subscribe to the Patreon atpatreon.com/criticallistening. See you all in the New Year!

The tracklist for this episode includes some of our shared fav releases from the past year. Support these artists by buying their music:

Keiyaa - Take It

Purelink - Rookie ft. Loraine James

Chat Pile / Hayden Pedigo - Never Say Die

Deerhoof - Immigrant Songs

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 deal to create "artist first" generative AI tools in partnership with major labels and distributors. We also review the platform's continued growth as it rounds out its second full year of profitability and what that means for both artists and users alike.

We have just uploaded the second part of this episode for Patrons only where we take questions directly from the students of Purchase College themselves, sign up now at patreon.com/criticallistening to catch up on the full season and bonus episodes before our season finale at the end of the year!

Do you want the Critical Listening team to do a live taping at your college, music venue, conference, record store, or general hang in 2026? Shoot us an email at [email protected] and let's chat!

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 with Matt Evans as Neti-Neti. We discuss the inseparability of politics from pedagogy as teaching artists, the importance of solidarity amongst working artists and the need for us to Do-It-Together rather than simply DIY. Amirtha has a new podcast out called Outernational that explores the relationship of music and revolution through poignant conversations with fellow artists around the world, subscribe and support her work via her Substack and Bandcamp.

Support critical and independent media at the intersections of music, tech, and culture industry hell by subscribing to our Patreon.

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 deals with gen-AI companies. At the time we recorded, those reportedly landmark deals were thought to be signed within weeks, and since recording we’ve already started to see more details emerge. We discussed some implications of Spotify being included on the list of companies major rightsholders are working out gen-AI deals with, and more details of that collaboration have already dropped, too. Lastly, we of course also spoke about what it means that Daniel Ek is stepping back from his role as CEO of Spotify. Thanks for tuning in, remember to support the show by joining our Patreon & head over to the Discord if you want to chat about anything mentioned on the show!