| 1 | Hitsujibungaku | "more than words" | single | Taking money from the rich to give to the poor |
| 2 | キングサリ | "okaerikimi" | single | is too late, |
| 3 | milet | "Noёl In July" | 5am | a performative and earnestly superficial stunt |
| 4 | ASTERISM | "Sunny" | BESIDE 5 | that will be successful only as long as it takes the rich to hire better temporary security |
| 5 | NARLOW | "アオハルマイノリティ" | 毒舌に尽くし難し/アオハルマイノリティ 4 | while they quietly replace the amateur thieves |
| 6 | Faulieu. | "kirai" | single | with their own professionals. |
| 7 | THEO NOVA | "Sunrise" | single | Concentrated riches are not a social resource, |
| 8 | カミツキ | "Re:ASTER" | single | they are a symptom of systemic dysfunction, |
| 9 | Starmarie | "Amber summer rider" | single | and allowing them to declare or concede their own altruism is admitting the depth of the flaws. |
| 10 | Mirai Kodai Orchestra | "Let There be Light" | The larva of Babel 5 | The rich welcome disorganized banditry, |
| 11 | INUWASI | "Strange Core" | single | but are only barely more troubled by organized banditry. |
| 12 | milet | "b r o k e n" | 5am | Wealth, critically, is a proxy for power, |
| 13 | ASTERISM | "No Way" | BESIDE 5 | and power is always happy to cower behind proxies. |
| 14 | Without Warning | "Dark Abyss" | single | The powerful tolerate pickpockets along their routes with fond bemusement |
| 15 | Bergfried | "The Ordeal" | Romantik II | and mental notes about where to bus the homeless. |
| 16 | Arshenic | "For you" | single | All these things further confirm the establishments. |
| 17 | Nereids | "Symphony of Gods" | single | The rich and poor remain. |
| 18 | Halekin | "El Canto del Eltuwe" | single | Still, pointless flashes of ill-considered defiance are preferable to disingenuous flashes of petty bullying |
| 19 | Never Obey Again | "9:45" | single | thinly disguised as benevolent brutalism. |
| 20 | Stitched Up Heart | "Thunder" | To The Wolves | Thus, for example, Universal Music Group's ludicrous proposal to cut the royalty payments of "non-professional" musicians |
| 21 | Madame Mayhem | "Get It Right" | single | in order to pay (their own) "professional" musicians more. |
| 22 | Maggot Heart | "Archer" | single | This is regressive by definition, |
| 23 | Ofdrykkja | "Bergakall" | single | but the particular thresholds selected make it also both baldly cruel and absurdly ineffective. |
| 24 | Ekyrian | "Ítaca" | Cuentos Junto a la Hoguera | The press-release fails to explicitly note the numbers of artists involved, |
| 25 | Icarus Witch | "Rise Of The Witches" | single | which is a bad enough sign in itself, |
| 26 | Primal Fear | "Bring That Noise" | Code Red | but triangulating from other numbers later in the text we can tell that the "professional" musicians, |
| 27 | Soen | "Sincere" | Memorial | by this definition, already account for 98% of the streams. |
| 28 | Revolution Saints | "Eagle Flight" | Eagle Flight | This is supposed, I think, to underscore their professionalism, but it also clarifies |
| 29 | Toehider | "PACK IT UP" | Snapshots From Beacontown Spring Dance '85 4 | that the proposed redistribution would cut the royalties of "amateur" artists in half |
| 30 | Seventh Crystal | "Silence" | single | in order to spoon an additional uniform 1% raise onto the already-moneyed. |
| 31 | Nomy | "Break me" | Break me | As you probably do not know, but they really should and I now do because I just checked, |
| 32 | Draconicon | "Heresy" | single | the average month-to-month fluctuation in streaming royalties for even a semi-professional musician is about 10%. |
| 33 | Lacrimas Profundere | "Breathing Souls" | single | So by taking from the poor, this scheme would be able to further enrich the rich by a factor an order of magnitude below the existing random variation in their inertial wealth. |
| 34 | Insomnium | "Song of the Dusk" | single | In the end, though, post-structural redistribution is hopeless whether you do it with graceful irrelevance or awkward thuds. |
| 35 | Marduk | "Memento Mori" | Memento Mori | The gap between the future we want for musicians and their lives, |
| 36 | Fluisteraars | "De Maan, Zon van de Doden" | De Kronieken Van Het Verdwenen Kasteel II: Nergena 2 | and the presents we seem to be able to currently afford to give them, |
| 37 | A Pregnant Light | "My Right Side" | The Eighth 5 | is not a bookkeeping challenge. |
| 38 | Boris | "Nuclear Fission" | me when the when i | We won't fund a new middle class by raising the first step another inch, |
| 39 | grief thief | "fellatio" | grief thief | but we won't cultivate it by taxing Taylor and Ed, either. |
| 40 | Heretoir | "Twilight of the Machines" | single | The richest musicians are barely rich by non-music standards, |
| 41 | Spurv | "En brennende vogn over jordet" | En brennende vogn over jordet +3 | and a world with a million musicians living off their music currently looks more reachable |
| 42 | Mokoma | "Taivaan tuuliin" | single | by passage through wardrobes than through time. |
| 43 | Kvelertak | "Endling" | single | The path we're on leads towards that future in the same way that the roads from my house to the Boston harborfront lead towards Belgium. |
| 44 | Marnie Stern | "Plain Speak" | single | UMG isn't going to fix this. |
| 45 | THE MAYTH | "ego" | single | The major labels are the main structural beneficiaries of the current music business, |
| 46 | HOWL | "Laundy Pain" | single | because that's historically what "the music business" even meant. |
| 47 | MOLYBARON | "Reality Show" | single | It has not yet been reinvented into a materially different form, |
| 48 | MY FIRST STORY | "CRAZY BEAUTIFUL NIGHT" | single | and if it is to be transformed, it is almost axiomatic that this will have to be done by some other force or faction. |
| 49 | Bocchi | "Yakouressha" | single | Although I would love for that force to be streaming services, since I both want a better future and work for one, |
| 50 | UNiTE. | "constellation" | constellation / cogito tensai no 5 | if streaming services and major labels are issuing joint press-releases you can probably bet that we'll need more help than that. |
| 51 | the dresscodes | "襲撃" | 式日散花 3 | Or, possibly, we're not just wrong for trying to "fix" an existing economy from within it, |
| 52 | Richie Jen | "想家" | 在路上 | but wrong in our assumptions about what we want or need. |
| 53 | My Life Story | "I'm a God" | I'm a God +2 | "Musicians living off their music", we keep saying. |
| 54 | New Arcades | "Brighter Days" | Leave Something Behind | Musicians, music, living: these things we definitely want. |
| 55 | Harsh Symmetry | "Faint Disguise" | Imitation | But the "off" part encodes the same kind of status quo as the cycles of theft and charity |
| 56 | Silent Runners | "No Manifesto (bonus track)" | single | that currently burn through our matchstick crowds. |
| 57 | The Coventry | "Atropine (Single Edit)" | Atropine 2 | The reason it's hard to establish a "fair" rate for streaming a song |
| 58 | Rulo y la contrabanda | "Confeti" | single | is that there's nothing inherently fair about having to pay to hear music |
| 59 | Tiziano Ferro | "Abbiamo Vinto Già (con J-Ax)" | Il Mondo È Nostro | or having to pay to eat, while making music, with the possibility of people maybe wanting to hear it after it's made. |
| 60 | Gemeliers | "Na De Na" | single | This is unequivocally the best time in at least the modern history of the world to be a musician, |
| 61 | Francois van Coke | "O, My Donner" | O, My Donner 5 | because it has never so far been easier to find some way to live such that you also have time and energy to make music. |
| 62 | Spoegwolf | "Sterre" | Lente | The exponential profusion of artists on streaming services are the most empirical testament to this. |
| 63 | Crime In Stereo | "Hypernormalisation" | Hypernormalisation +1 | We have reached the point where nearly anybody can make music. |
| 64 | Ruelle | "Yes We Can" | single | I could have written a new song last weekend if I'd chose to do that instead of reading a book about why the Grenfell Tower fire happened, |
| 65 | Oreana | "Beacon" | single | and I'll count myself in "nearly anybody" because Gail Giltner spent so much energy when I was in middle school getting me to play the cello parts in the Brandenburg Concertos without adding my own bonus arpeggios, |
| 66 | Terror Jr | "Cowgirl" | single | but we have loops and AI for that now. |
| 67 | Anna-Sophie | "Fast Lane" | single | Measured by how many of the people who want to make music can, |
| 68 | SVRCINA | "You Again" | single | we are nearly all rich already. |
| 69 | Nasty P. | "The Rising." | single | The rich and the poor are most easily reconciled by making more things free. |
| 70 | Emma | "INIZIAMO DALLA FINE" | single | The moral response to power is its dispersal. |
| 71 | Giordana Angi | "Photo" | single | The future we think we yearn for |
| 72 | Xoel López | "Elevarte Caer" | single | is a description of our present pain. |
| 73 | Lisasinson | "Se Me Ha Muerto Una Flor" | single | Lucian Grainge looks at the white-noise loops getting money for nothing and says that ain't working, |
| 74 | Luukas Oja | "Koko kansa" | single | but this only tells us that he's afraid of another new video killing a new older radio star. |
| 75 | SÄÄDÖT | "Kesä ja marraskuu" | single | But the future he fears isn't one in which there are no more Florence and the Machine albums because every middle-school cellist grew up to earn $2.08/year from Garageband songs, |
| 76 | Child of Night | "The Fool" | The Fool +1 | it's one in which everybody named Florence realizes they can afford to tell him to go fuck himself. |
| 77 | Violent Vickie | "Brighten Up My Life" | single | The eventual downfall of the major labels won't come from having misunderstand Napster and then iTunes so badly |
| 78 | NINA | "Causeway" | single | that they're stuck with YouTube and Spotify and TikTok now, |
| 79 | Fonz Tramontano | "California" | single | it will come from having relied on portraying making and streaming music as antagonisms |
| 80 | death's dynamic shroud | "What? to be human" | single | in order to justify a self-righteous mediation. |
| 81 | Labelle | "Ciel" | single | We won't find out for a while yet whether Spotify is this wave's Alta Vista or its Google, |
| 82 | Killorbeezbeatz | "Ngilele E Hotel" | single | but if you're any younger than me you never used Gopher, |
| 83 | Mzee wa Bwax | "Chumvi" | single | and if you're alive right now we aren't using it to order poké bowls. |
| 84 | Black Motion | "Abangoma - Cave Mix" | Rebirth Of The Drum | We're not going back to only selling CDs, |
| 85 | Gadla Nxumalo | "Emtholampilo" | Emtholampilo +2 | but even more importantly, we're not going back to only recording in expensive studios, |
| 86 | Injuze | "Isitha Esidumile" | Nehlukanelani | or only writing music for Austrian court orchestras, |
| 87 | SIKOLEZINJA | "BAYOZE BAVUME" | single | or hoping the tigers are scared to come this deep into the caves. |
| 88 | Amabhungu Amasha | "Uz' Ungibhale Nami" | Uz'usikhumbule | We're not that good at money or foresight, |
| 89 | Thobani Myeni | "Nhliziyo Yami" | EMAHOSTELA | and maybe ultimately "money" is the distracting word for not being that great at collective existence, |
| 90 | Sdala B | "Camagu (feat. Lunga Dima)" | The Return of Sdala B 5 | and "foresight" is the retrospective word for the regrets we survive, |
| 91 | Kamza SA | "Mokone" | single | but we're good at music, |
| 92 | Charle Blue Wa Africa | "Ndo Dzhia Tsheo, Charle BlueWa Africa & Fortunator x Makhadzi" | single | and abject failures at withholding it in negotiation for better terms. |
| 93 | Shebeshxt | "No Wahala" | single | Maybe we should let this tell us something, |
| 94 | Pleasure Tsa Manyalo | "Romelang Invoice" | single | instead of arguing over 1% changes in how we write the invoices. |
| 95 | Mzansi Youth Choir | "O Bawo" | single | If I had been in middle school now, maybe I could go hear what I sounded like. |
| 96 | Teni | "Lanke" | single | These songs all say whatever they're saying, |
| 97 | Tuggawar | "I Am Who I Am" | single | and then secretly whisper that Belgium is that way, and maybe when we get to the water we'll have some other idea about what to do next. |
| 98 | Bad Rabbits | "Garden Of Eden" | single | It's not helpful to walk 1% farther into the sea. |
| 99 | Akil Elijah | "Da Prettiest Gangsta" | Da Prettiest Gangsta | For $2.08 I can't even afford the dingy trip to the yachts anchored out in the harbor, |
| 100 | Gabriele Chi | "ORI" | single | none of which are built to carry us all. |
| 101 | Saåad | "Stay" | single | All conspicuous exceptionalism, from smug munificence to Taylor's plane, |
| 102 | Rainforest Spiritual Enslavement | "Grown In The Shade Of The Glacier" | Killer Whale Atmospheres | is sludge leaking out of a street, |
| 103 | Emma Hewitt | "FALLEN" | FALLEN +1 | not due to anything the street did wrong, |
| 104 | Bastille | "Pompeii MMXXIII" | single | and the street will have to get torn up to fix the actual problem, |
| 105 | New Model Army | "Winter (Orchestral Version) [Single Edit] - Live" | Winter (Orchestral Version) 2 | but while we're tearing it up, we might as well put in some bike lanes. |
| 106 | Amanda Palmer | "The Last Day of Our Acquaintance" | single | Entrenched power reliably produces wealth, |
| 107 | Anna Ternheim | "Dancing With Tears In My Eyes" | Dancing With Tears In My Eyes +2 | but wealth and power also breed complacency. |
| 108 | MUNA | "My Heart Will Go On - triple j Like a Version" | single | Entropy comes for us all, entirely unimpressed by our distinctions. |
| 109 | Lauren Babic | "If It Means A Lot To You" | Duets 5 | It swirls against the castle walls, inviting us out to dance. |
| 110 | CHiCO | "Angel Night～天使のいる場所～" | single | We are always ready to dance. |
| 111 | Ravenna Golden | "Fireflies" | single | You don't have to be good at it. We can all afford the free things. |
| 112 | Mackenzie Carpenter | "Country Girls (Just Wanna Have Fun)" | single | It's the people who rely on the expensive things who are trapped. |
| 113 | Invictus | "Love Story" | The Bedroom Jams Vol. 1 5 | You and me, we can believe in the future because there are infinite futures filled with songs and dancing, |
| 114 | Amber Lawrence | "Live A Country Song" | single | and any one will be amazing and we will still be us. |
| 115 | Josh Abbott Band | "Barstool Boys" | single | If you need one where you're still in charge of something, |
| 116 | PJ North | "We Still Talk" | single | we're running out of those. |
| 117 | Alexandra Kay | "Easy" | single | In some of those better futures Taylor doesn't have a plane and Ed doesn't have a castle on a hill, |
| 118 | Karen Zoid | "Hold You" | single | and probably in some of them they still do. |
| 119 | CLEWS | "Can't Be Real" | single | Things can get better without becoming perfect. |
| 120 | Lydia Loveless | "Sex and Money" | single | Maybe you've noticed? |
| 121 | Kirsten Adamson | "Take Me As I Am" | single | Some things can't be fixed, they just have to be outlived; |
| 122 | Lauren Mayberry | "Are You Awake?" | single | out, in, everywhere, dancing, swaying, something. |