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Jamie Brooks: “Streaming Services”

Great reflections from Jamie Brooks on the current state of music:

Furthermore, the qualities you like about streaming services––the convenience, the selection–– were only offered to you in the first place because the record business was forced to compete with piracy. They had to offer you a better user experience than piracy. We collectively negotiated those benefits by threatening to leave their entire business model, as listeners, en masse. You had leverage then. You have none now.

And on what music can (and should) be:

I want people to have the opportunity to learn to love music and play music with other people at school. I want more people to understand and experience all the things I love about it that have nothing to do with making money or going to parties or becoming famous. Music can just be about learning to be more comfortable with your body, or about having a way to make new friends as you get older, or about finding ways to connect with our predecessors when they’re no longer around to guide us themselves. A song can be like a storage container for memory that begs you with its very essence to find something truly spectacular to fill it with. We can do these things for each other. That is so wonderful to me.

Jamie is responsible for main pop girl 2019, one of my all-time favorite Bandcamp finds.

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2019 In Review: Movies

I had promised myself I was going to restore my habit of doing end-of-year media lists for 2019. This is one of what was supposed to be four posts in the series but became only two: movies, music, television, and games. Spoilers ahead.

When I think back on the movies of 2019, here are the moments that stand out:

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The Fifteenth

Fifteen years ago today, I married the love of my life. (More inside.)