It's probably not the one I wrote. It would be weird if my book were your favorite book. It's a geeky book about music-streaming and music and algorithms and technology and curiosity and morality and where we are right now, and your favorite book should probably be an immortal novel about how we always are, or something you have re-read every year since you were 12 because it reminds you what you love and believe.  

But my book about how streaming changes music is also kind of a book about loving and believing things, and the fears and joys that love and belief produce, because everything is if you really think about it, and I wrote a book about this stuff because I really think about it and didn't know how to stop.  

As a method of not thinking about something any more, writing the book seems to have been fairly ineffective. I have kept thinking and writing about music and algorithms and technology and humanity. My new job, which doesn't have music anywhere in the wording of the mission, is just as fundamentally about figuring out how to use math and machines to amplify humanity instead of phase-cancelling it.  

As an organized explanation of why I think streaming is good for music and music-streaming is good for humanity, though, I made it as coherent as I could. (And then a really good editor goaded me methodically into making it more coherent than that.) If you love music, you might like reading this book while you listen to whatever you are currently discovering or wondering or doubting. It's a book about discovery and wonder and productive doubt.  

And it was officially published today.  

You Have Not Yet Heard Your Favourite Song; Canbury Press, 2024.
US: bookshop.org or amazon.com or kindle
UK: uk.bookshop.org or amazon.co.uk or kindle UK  

In London: Waterstones or Blackwells or Foyles
In Montreal: featured at Librairie Résonance  

 
 

Some related links as I notice them:  

- Is this the 37th best book of 2024? An audacious claim from the Telegraph, November 17
- Read all the way to the end of this roundup of the best music books of 2024 in the Telegraph for a reminder that my book is optimistic and optimism is good, November 9
- The book and I feature in this Ars Technica story about a wave of junk music with real-artist names on Spotify, October 15
- An interview in the Chartmetric blog How Music Charts, October 9
- A review in The Quietus, September 28
- Carl Wilson and I talk about my book for the Popular Music Books in Process series, September 24
- A whole bonus episode of Your Morning Coffee Podcast, August 30.
- An appearance on the NZ podcast The Fold, August 28
- A article based on an interview with Radio New Zealand in advance of appearing at Going Global, August 28
- A mention on Your Morning Coffee Podcast, August 19 (from about 7:40-10:20) teasing an upcoming special episode with me
- A (second) appearance on Your Morning Coffee Podcast, August 5 (from about 19:09-27:45)
- An interview/feature in the Polish magazine Polityka, July 27
- An interview with Tom and Iveta at Stripe Partners for their Viewpoints series, July 25
- A book citation as part of my introduction into a story about algorithms and music discovery in Mission magazine, July 17 (with the excellent pull-quote "If you don’t want algorithms to feed you passive listening, get active.")
- A conversation with Mark Richardson for the Third Bridge Creative blog, July 9
- A print rendition of the interview from the earlier German radio piece in Die Tageszeitung, July 4
- A conversation with Walt Hickey on the Numlock Sunday podcast, June 30
- An appearance on The Ray D'Arcy Show on RTE Radio 1 Ireland, June 25 (from about 26:10-50:37; clip)
- An interview in the Dutch newsletter Weekly Wav, June 25
- An appearance on Your Morning Coffee Podcast, June 24 (from about 7:00-18:00)
- A conversation on the podcast The Gist, June 20
- A short interview on Newstalk in Ireland, June 19 (with a Cactus World News shout!)
- A radio piece in German on Deutschlandfunk Kultur, June 19 (with blasts of gothic metal and wisps of theremin!)
- A "new book" mention on Tinnitist, June 16
- A review in the Telegraph, June 4; also available via Yahoo News
- A conversation with Chris Dalla Riva in his newsletter Can't Get Much Higher, May 26
- An earlier appearance on Ari Herstand's The New Music Business podcast, April 10, with some book-anticipation towards the end
- The book's page on Goodreads