Spotify is to music, as McDonald’s is to food, as Ikea is to furniture.  They all do good and terrible things to their respective spaces.   Many chefs admire the calibrated combinations of salt and fat in fast food, but also…

The recipient was a critically acclaimed veteran Canadian indie singer-songwriter.  23 thousand monthly listeners on Spotify vs. 240 thousand for Blue Rodeo vs. 52 million for Drake, to place him on the music industry’s ladder of achievement.   23 thousand listeners…

It’s true that the economic life of a middle tier musician has changed inversely to the rise of online music streaming.  Is correlation really causation?  I think what no one wants to talk about is that this is a supply…

When I was in grad school for math finance, I said that “exponential growth in perpetuity is a stupid assumption.  This is an impossibility in a physical world.  We'd all be buried in widgets by now”.   A classmate advised me…

“Crushed in a game that turns into a blowout.  Don’t get hurt, don’t let it burn into tomorrow”.  This is the first verse of some lyrics I wrote for a song called Underachiever (on Spotify)  The problem, which…

My parents had a deep appreciation of “quality”, however you might define that.  The book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance offers a very good long explanation of quality if you’re interested.  The short version is that the can…

It's been about a year since I quit my day job.   The year has been consumed by two things.  The first is clearing a backlog of creative ideas.  The pandemic isolation hasn't offered any live performance opportunities (though I have…