The 100 Best Songs of 2025
Listening through these songs while starting to write this, it felt like something shifted this year. The best music of 2025 didn’t just sound, it sounded present, corporal, made by hands and breath and bodies in rooms. Theon Cross hammering sounds out of a tuba at Blue Note that seem to emerge from somewhere primordial. Nils Petter Molvær’s band captured in the fervor of live improvisation. Justin Vernon stripping Bon Iver down to a single voice picking through the wreckage of a relationship...
The 100 Best Songs of 2025
Listening through these songs while starting to write this, it felt like something shifted this year. The best music of 2025 didn’t just sound, it sounded present, corporal, made by hands and breath and bodies in rooms. Theon Cross hammering sounds out of a tuba at Blue Note that seem to emerge from somewhere primordial. Nils Petter Molvær’s band captured in the fervor of live improvisation. Justin Vernon stripping Bon Iver down to a single voice picking through the wreckage of a relationship...
On Miracles and the Making Of Things
Many years ago I sat behind a mixing desk at the end of a long day and night recording session. I sat across from the artist who I’d been producing, an artist whose life was inextricably linked to elusive musical ideas. It had been a heavy day recording through a song that hadn’t been finished before the studio sessions started and was failing to connect during the recording sessions. If I remember correctly, by this stage we’d consumed various stimulants. “It’s like,” I remember him saying, ...
On Miracles and the Making Of Things
Many years ago I sat behind a mixing desk at the end of a long day and night recording session. I sat across from the artist who I’d been producing, an artist whose life was inextricably linked to elusive musical ideas. It had been a heavy day recording through a song that hadn’t been finished before the studio sessions started and was failing to connect during the recording sessions. If I remember correctly, by this stage we’d consumed various stimulants. “It’s like,” I remember him saying, ...
Remastering Royalties: The Future of Music Industry Finance
The digital age has brought unprecedented disruption to the music industry, upending traditional distribution models and empowering independent artists in new ways. Something I’ve been thinking about for 10+ years is what innovation looks like on the financial side of the industry. The financial infrastructure underpinning this ecosystem is tethered to legacy systems, characterized by friction, inefficiency, and inequitable distribution of value. Since I first read about Ethereum and the pote...
Remastering Royalties: The Future of Music Industry Finance
The digital age has brought unprecedented disruption to the music industry, upending traditional distribution models and empowering independent artists in new ways. Something I’ve been thinking about for 10+ years is what innovation looks like on the financial side of the industry. The financial infrastructure underpinning this ecosystem is tethered to legacy systems, characterized by friction, inefficiency, and inequitable distribution of value. Since I first read about Ethereum and the pote...
Thinking through agentic social network with nosocial.me
The design of nosocial started with many threads that came together very slowly at first and then suddenly formulated in a rush. This project deviates from traditional social media paradigms that aligns with the emerging agenctic AI era. There’s a philosophical point-of-view in early design choices as I think about how a network like this captures value for its users.Philosophical and Technological FoundationTraditional social networks are predicated on human interaction and user interfaces. ...
Thinking through agentic social network with nosocial.me
The design of nosocial started with many threads that came together very slowly at first and then suddenly formulated in a rush. This project deviates from traditional social media paradigms that aligns with the emerging agenctic AI era. There’s a philosophical point-of-view in early design choices as I think about how a network like this captures value for its users.Philosophical and Technological FoundationTraditional social networks are predicated on human interaction and user interfaces. ...
The 100 Best Songs of 2024
It was an interesting year for the economics of the independent music industry. Non-major labels and independent distributors accounted for nearly 50% of the recorded music revenue, the independent sector’s highest ever market share. This was knee-capped by the late news of Universal Music Group acquiring Downtown Music Group and its subsidiaries, who collectively would represent a significant chunk of this independent revenue. While independent releases account for many of the best new songs...
The 100 Best Songs of 2024
It was an interesting year for the economics of the independent music industry. Non-major labels and independent distributors accounted for nearly 50% of the recorded music revenue, the independent sector’s highest ever market share. This was knee-capped by the late news of Universal Music Group acquiring Downtown Music Group and its subsidiaries, who collectively would represent a significant chunk of this independent revenue. While independent releases account for many of the best new songs...
