Substack CEO Chris Best isn't banning AI writing, he's naming the actual crime: Claudefishing, when you invest attention in something with no human on the other end. The fix is a Pangram partnership that scans notes, comments, and posts for AI-generated text, plus a "How I make this" statement for creators. The bet is that as generation gets better, provenance matters more, not less. When he wants Claude's opinion, he'll ask Claude.
Chartmetric's data team teamed up with Splice for this one, pairing listener charts with what producers are actually downloading, and the payoff is a real answer to a question you've probably felt but couldn't prove: producer activity spikes before a genre hits the charts. Corridos tumbados, amapiano, hyperpop, afro house all trace the same arc. If you're chasing the next sound on streaming numbers alone, you're already late. Watch the sample packs.
Read →Joel Gouveia opens with fans fainting at Michael Jackson concerts and builds toward an uncomfortable point for anyone still chasing the old dream: mystique was never magic, it was a supply problem. Radio slots and Ed Sullivan minutes are gone, and the algorithm that turned Imagine Dragons into a faceless cog will do the same to you. If you're waiting to be discovered without posting, Gouveia says the gatekeeper who'd make you famous no longer exists.
Read →An essay reflecting on the recent deaths of Atlanta rapper Alley Boy and Jacksonville DJ Bigga Rankin, exploring themes of Black mortality, substance use in hip-hop culture, and how economic pressures and existential anxiety drive self-medication and unhealthy coping mechanisms among Black men.
Resident Advisor gets nearly eight hours in Ricardo Villalobos's Berlin studio, timed to the Sun Ra reimagining When There Is No Sun. The profile tracks how the prince of the afters built his cosmos: from Pinochet-era exile and Frankfurt's Dorian Gray to Alcachofa's crossover, Ibiza's roll-through era, and the womb recordings and modular jams that keep him on the freaky margins.
Matmos sit down with Line Noise, and Drew Daniel and Martin Schmidt are funny about the mess (Daniel names his computers after Shakespeare characters, their sample libraries are a rat's nest next to Matthew Herbert's) right up until they aren't. Daniel, turning 55, reframes recent albums like Metallic Life Review as acts of survival: a gay man reckoning with peers lost to AIDS, and with the falsehood and pleasure of memory.
The New Yorker takes the FIFA World Cup's first-ever halftime show as a stress test for music's cross-cultural panacea premise. Madonna, Shakira, BTS, and Bieber delivered nothing technically wrong, but the piece lands on something harder to name: that abundance without vulnerability produces spiritual hollowness. The Don Draper reference earns its keep. Verdict: more Animal, less love.
The New York Times reports that Mike D, one of two surviving Beastie Boys, will release his first solo album, Thank You, on August 28, the trio's first new music in fifteen years. It is really a grief story: after MCA's death in 2012, Diamond couldn't make music alone, shutting the laptop again and again. His sons broke the spell; at sixty, a founder of hip-hop speaks in it again.
Take the beatmatched precision every club DJ lives by, then invert it: Futurism Restated's interview with Lifted finds the ambient duo using CDJs not for seamless blends but for feel, cutting between sounds the way a film editor cuts to the wind moving across a field. Their studio process runs three modes, from multitrack improv with local players to live two-deck sessions from pre-sorted folders.
Nate Chinen covers an interview with trumpeter Steven Bernstein about his new trio project ResoNation Trio and the album-release show at Solar Myth. The piece includes discussion of Bernstein's musical upbringing, his approach to the album, and related band projects like Sexmob.
An interview with Lauren Martin about her book 'Aftershock,' an oral history of dubstep that explores the genre's foundational role in electronic music culture, her experience discovering dubstep in Glasgow, and the interview-based approach she took to documenting the music and its key players.
A roundup essay examining 24 overlooked post-dubstep artists from the genre's heyday before streaming and social media transformed dance music culture. The piece reflects on post-dubstep as a moment of hybridity and experimentation, and identifies lesser-known figures who played important roles in the genre despite being overshadowed by more celebrated names.
A study on the psychology of testing can potentially change the way musicians think about memorizing music for live performance accuracy.
The fastest-growing line at Sony's music business isn't streaming, it's the vaguely labeled 'Recorded Music: Other,' up more than 4X and worth $1.6 billion in new annual revenue. Music Business Worldwide digs into what that anonymizing bucket actually contains and argues the term 'major label' no longer describes what these companies do.
Thundercat is going on tour in support of his recent record, "Distracted." More accurately, the Thundercat character is going back on the road.
Jimmy sits down with Shot Tower Capital's Rob Law, the banker behind the Recognition-to-Sony deal and Concord's Genesis catalog buy, to map where music IP dealmaking stands in 2026. Law traces his path from a Bear Stearns analyst puzzling over sheet-music fees to advising the Michael Jackson Estate, and reads the catalog market with the candor of someone who's priced these assets from the inside.
Platforms risk losing music’s biggest cultural moments to social media unless they evolve from fan listening spaces into interactive spaces.
Stop treating Spotify like a library and start treating it like Instagram for music: that's the operating logic behind Hypebot's argument, drawn from watching tens of thousands of One Submit artists. The algorithm rewards fresh activity, so consistent monthly singles beat the polished album drop, which floods the system with tracks and momentum behind none of them.
Live Nation Entertainment faces the prospect of a competition investigation in the UK, with the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) contacting industry figures to arrange meetings as it prepares for a possible formal probe into the live music sector. The CMA's outreach is understood to be a precursor to a formal investigation.
The most interesting catalog UMG could buy this year turned out to be itself. Flashlight tracks the €487.7 million buyback that nearly exhausted the first authorization by July, plus €250 million to clear out Ackman's Pershing Square stake. Financed partly by selling half its Spotify shares, the move is a bet on a real gap: private buyers pay up for individual catalogs while discounting the public company that owns thousands of them.
As AI floods social feeds with more content than audiences can meaningfully process, the creator economy is entering a new phase: proof.
The bedroom artist, who died earlier this year, was working on silent before her passing. Where her catalog favored sparse voice-and-guitar 'negative pop songs,' these introduce experimental electronic touches: discombobulation on the jittery 'Wakaranai Koto,' glossy synthesized strings on 'Karaapo.' A gorgeous, bittersweet document of being caught between life and death.
A Munich-based group whose record feels birthed out of the Ethiopian synth-funk lineage, with Western jazz players moving toward the afro-sound. Dinner Music slots it into a run of exile-adjacent grooves that bridge community traditions and studio craft.
The latest dispatch from Kieran Hebden's unpronounceable Wingdings alias, born as a workaround to sneak untraceable loosies onto his 192-hour Spotify playlist. Where 2024's Three ran downbeat, this keeps tempos brisk: half the tracks skate atop house and UK garage grooves. Track five, a crowd-stoking anthem built on modular whorls and an 'I've got feelings' hook lifted from Britney's 'I'm a Slave 4 U,' defines contemporary UK house at its most pleasing, while the opener's slow unfurling against zithers and heartbeats marks his most explicit engagement with Indian music since Morning/Evening.
Shatter the Standards frames the Alchemist and Oh No's Gangrene as the place loops get chosen on the basis of how ugly they are, the pair rapping stoned, angry, and pleased with themselves over samples no sane producer would give a client. It's the deliberate inverse of the smoothed-over daytime client work both men leave at the door.
The grooviest cut on the self-titled Blue Note debut from the trio of Kiefer, CARRTOONS, and Nate Smith, where synths whirl over keys, drums, and bass in synchronous flow. Recorded in roughly 48 hours of improvised sessions with Kenny Beats as producer and creative director at his Putnam Hill studio.
Kelela's most accomplished record yet, complementing her genre-splicing adventurism with a new sense of lightness and self-assurance. The opener "idea 1" leaps from downtempo meditation to space-age hymn on quicksilver guitars and skyscraping harmonies, while shoegaze textures from her D.C. indie years resurface across "linknb" and "crystalize." "don't piss me off" foregrounds UKG's slippery low-end with new confidence, and guests like PinkPantheress and AK Paul open up space that suits her.
The Gig singles out RAYE's Montreux opener, a cover of Sandy Denny's 1966 song, delivered with power and pliability and a steady command of dramatic tension and tonal shading. Her Nina Simone name-check elides the more complicated history of that 1976 set, but the vocal itself justifies extending grace.
Lamniformes calls this 2026 Discombobulated track an absolute jam where the Richard Dawson bits are the most straightforward stretches. Stick around for the killer sax solo: the band stays consistent while the arrangement shifts like a constantly moving amoeba, never the same shape twice.
From the trio's debut LP Magic Object, where percussionist Booker Stardrum (SML, Weyes Blood), saxophonist Will Epstein (Nicolás Jaar, Darkside), and synth player Ben Vida oscillate between spiritual jazz and Krautrock. Epstein's brass becomes the focal point above a Vida-Stardrum rhythm section, with overdubbed saxophone unisons giving the illusion of multiple horns in conversation. Grown out of a bar-band residency at Tubby's in Kingston, New York.
An excerpt from Lauren Napier's forthcoming scene memoir 'Tattooed, Pierced, & Fucked-Up: A Scene Memoir 2004–2008' about her friendship with Paul Bakija of the punk band Reagan Youth. The piece reflects on memory, archiving the punk and emo scene of the 2000s, and features essays and interviews with commentary from Napier on her younger self.
Douglas Greenwood reflects on celebrity death and mourning in the age of digital media, recounting his personal experience with Amy Winehouse's death in 2011 and considering how information disseminates differently now compared to historical celebrity tragedies.
The Quietus reviews Kate Carr's Vertical London (New Year's Day), built from a single day of field recordings tracing the city vertically, from Underground tunnels to the Shard. Carr pulls something genuinely strange from the material: DLR electromagnetics bloom into near-symphonic arrangements, a tube's deceleration squeal bends into Stars of the Lid territory. London rendered as hall of mirrors, not postcard.
An essay arguing against engaging with brand social media accounts, warning that interactions with corporate accounts will seem embarrassing in retrospect. The author urges readers to stop liking brands' comments, tagging brands in posts unprompted, and performatively praising brand marketing efforts.
David Poland reviews Nolan's The Odyssey, discussing the film's treatment of Odysseus's journey versus his family, the casting controversies, and the director's masterful execution despite some narrative choices that left Poland uncomfortable.
Clare's argument: The Odyssey is, at its core, about veganism, and she builds the case from there. The piece uses Jordan Peele's Nope and Christopher Nolan's habit of rediscovering basic human emotions as a frame for a broader critique of what she calls "baby's first idea" filmmaking. Sharp, specific, and worth reading after you've seen it.
Live in New York, August 1981. The Velvet Underground's icy chanteuse had spent a decade stripping her sound down to harmonium drones and that cavernous voice, and here she is back in the city that first made her a myth, outlasting the scene that once treated her as ornament.
Chris Cunningham straps a six-armed animatronic monkey to a drum kit and lets it thrash through Aphex Twin's "Mt Saint Michel + Saint Michaels Mount." No narrative, no context, just polyrhythmic violence rendered in latex and servos. Cunningham's creatures always seem to be suffering something; this one suffers the beat itself, limbs jerking in mechanical possession
The director showed up; Young Thug mostly didn't. Ryan Staake turned a doomed shoot into the video itself, narrating the no-shows and improvised chaos in deadpan title cards over the footage he could grab. The result is funnier and stranger than the planned version could ever have been, and Thug's absence becomes the whole point.
Machine Girl's whole project is sensory overload as philosophy: breakcore, gabber, and noise punk fed through a blender until genre tags feel beside the point. This is a duo that's spent a decade making abrasion feel joyful, their maximalism never quite tipping into parody. The title alone tells you they're still in on the joke
De La Soul flipped Steely Dan and Otis Redding into the same three minutes, then dressed the whole thing in a daisy-age sweetness that shouldn't have worked on wax or screen. Before the Native Tongues became a movement, this was the proof of concept: hip-hop could be goofy, lovestruck, and sample-drunk all at once.
Chris Cunningham built two porcelain Björks and let machine arms assemble them into a kiss. Coolant, sparks, and tenderness share a single frame. It's among the very few music videos in MoMA's permanent collection, and twenty-five years of CGI later the robot romance hasn't dated a second.
Will Anderson buries his voice under so much distortion it becomes another texture in the wall, a smear of vowels fighting through the fuzz. Hotline TNT's whole trick is making guitar noise feel like tenderness, and this one's the proof: a love song you have to lean into just to catch the words.
The fuzz comes like a saw through brick, and, under it, Douglas Dulgarian narrates his block: the Philadelphia corner store he hits daily, his friend T out front asking for spares, a dead TV glowing in the window. This is shoegaze as squealing cinéma vérité.
Beauty is the organizing idea behind Lido Pimienta's work, and The New York Times traces how the Polaris-winning, Afro-Colombian and Wayuu artist moves from the anger of 2020's "Miss Colombia" toward "Caribenya," out July 17. After scoring a New York City Ballet suite, she flips that project's ambitions, treating beauty less as protest than as something to inhabit.
Genre fossilized as an organizing principle, which is what makes Steve Lacy's genre-topping run so odd, and The New Yorker uses his third LP, "Oh Yeah?," to trace how he got here. The album fuses early-nineties R&B warmth (Babyface, TLC) with the disaffection of screen life. What lands is Lacy's unguarded rawness in a moment built around curation and optimization.
The patience of a Bryson Tiller show, songs left to breathe while the crowd sings the lyrics back, is the payoff for connection built long before the arena. Hypebot ties his Neo Trap Soul Tour to the restraint TRAPSOUL established in 2015: no strobes or relentless momentum, just an artist trusting the room to carry the emotional weight most headliners try to manufacture with spectacle.
The stalled major-label pop career became a template, Track Ten argues, tracing how Charli XCX turned Atlantic's rejection into a strategy. Releasing No. 1 Angel and Pop 2 as mixtapes in 2017 sidestepped the promo machine and let her feed a fanbase instead of waiting for a hit. The candid label-friction interviews and indie collaborators, from cupcakKe to A. G. Cook, did the work a rollout couldn't.
The trick of "i got a gun," the standout from Chinatown band Chanpan's new autogratis EP, is that its frenetic hook could send you dancing past the message, the way "Paper Planes" once did. But the accompanying interview leaves nothing to misread: vocalist Grace Dumdaw and twin brothers Lance and Matthew Tran talk through Fanon, Mangione, and how power decides which acts get labeled violence.
Leading a band, Tomoki Sanders tells POW Mag, is less about dominance than listening and vulnerability. That's the through-line in this profile of Pharoah Sanders' child stepping out from the sideman role, most recently with Kassa Overall, into their own bandleader spot at the Montreal Jazz Festival. Closing with "The Creator Has A Master Plan" makes the inheritance literal without letting it swallow the debut still to come.
The album is the least optimized way to release music in 2026, and that's precisely the argument for it. Song Sommelier, drawing on a 2017 Spotify strategy retreat where a record-shop voucher went unclaimed, reframes the format not as a content container but as a way to mark time. Even the Stones' new Foreign Tongues gets two weeks before it vanishes. Jesca Hoop supplies the case: albums keep the light in the moon.
Zach Sokol's interview traces the through-line from a stoned Myspace-era art collective to a distinct producer's signature: Shlohmo talks skating, graffiti's vandal-not-Banksy ethos, and dropping out of art school the day music took off. In Sex Magazine, he grounds WEDIDIT's subcultural instincts in word-of-mouth scene solidarity, the same off-kilter appetite audible in his black-metal-through-Ableton work on Salem's Fires in Heaven.
The knock on Villalobos was always that his loose, indulgent approach couldn't scale. Resident Advisor argues the opposite in a marathon Berlin studio profile: his refusal to sound like anyone else is exactly why he's still the most name-checked DJ in minimal, and why a Sun Ra reimagining project fits so naturally. Duality as durability, in a scene going sanitized.
China's draft regulations on "anthropomorphic interactive services" are the most specific AI disclosure rules yet written, and Luiza Jarovsky's newsletter breaks down what they actually require. The law targets AI that mimics human behavior, mandates clear labeling, and sets conduct rules for providers. For anyone building AI voice or persona tools for streaming, the compliance floor is rising faster than most realize.
Montreal AI Ethics Institute's latest brief runs two stories that share a structure: regulation arriving after the damage. Canadian communities have gone from scattered protests to coordinated resistance against data centre sprawl, while British Columbia is suing OpenAI over a shooting tied to ChatGPT activity it never reported. Ottawa's Bill C-34 punts the notification question for three years. Courts and town halls are doing the work that governance frameworks haven't.
The EU AI Act's first hard transparency requirements land August 2: any AI system talking directly to users must disclose it's an AI, and synthetic audio, image, video, and text outputs must carry machine-readable watermarks. Systems already on the market get a grace period to December 2. For anyone deploying AI-generated content at scale, the watermarking requirement is the one to watch.
Zinstrel makes a clean structural argument: "Made with AI" is doing too many jobs at once, and failing at most of them. The piece breaks down three distinct risks — fabricated facts, unconsented likenesses, and false expertise — and points out that each needs its own label. The NO FAKES Act gets a nod for at least targeting something specific. A useful frame for anyone building disclosure logic into editorial or content systems.
The Future of Life Institute's July 2026 AI Safety Index grades the major labs, and the pattern is consistent: safety rhetoric outpaces revealed behavior across the board. No company scored above a C- on existential safety, three received failing grades, and Anthropic, OpenAI, Google DeepMind, and Meta have all quietly weakened their pledges to pause if red lines are crossed. Luiza Jarovsky's newsletter breaks down the findings clearly.
The case against dedicated alignment research: it's just capabilities work by another name. Writing on Substack, the argument runs that alignment happens by default as models get more capable, that pausing development hands ground to less safety-conscious competitors, and that AIs monitoring other AIs is the more realistic path forward. The aviation analogy carries the piece: patch specific failures as they emerge, don't wait for a unified theory.