« There’s a kind of quiet violence in how music is consumed today—flattened into background noise, sonic perfume fed into algorithms, sold as lifestyle. It’s entertainment as anesthesia. Sound without the weight. » - Agriculture

into a successful book, think about the review process in a productive way, and the unanticipated problems of second and subsequent books. This year, I also want to talk about the worrisome situation for scholarly publishing. Never financially solid, the situation has taken a sudden turn for ... 2/

My latest on social media platforms and logics of knowledge production in East Asian independent music, out in Convergence now:

doi.org/10.1177/1354...

Special thanks to @qianhuang.bsky.social for helping bring this out into the world!

Opinion | The Tech Fantasy That Powers A.I. Is Running on Fumes A.I. is just what we need in the post-fact era: less research and more predicting what we want to hear.

AI promises expertise without experts: « We all know it’s not going to work. But the fantasy compels risk-averse universities […] because it promises the power to control what learning does without paying the cost for how real learning happens”: www.nytimes.com/2025/03/29/o...

Un.Tomorrow: Hong Kong’s Newest Indie Record Label Musicians from David Boring, Wellsaid and An Id Signal have banded together to capture Hong Kong’s new musical ambitions with Un.Tomorrow

One of a few, growing, Do-It-Together initiatives in the HK indie scene: “There are more people putting on shows, there’s more music, the bands are more active and more ambitious.” zolimacitymag.com/un-tomorrow-...

Farewell to Jonathan Sterne We are very sad to learn of the death of communication scholar Jonathan Sterne, after a long battle with cancer. He was 54 years old. Sterne was James McGill Professor of Culture and Technology at …

Here's a more fulsome post from the Press. So sad.
Farewell to Jonathan Sterne dukeupress.wordpress.com/2025/03/21/f...

RIP Jonathan Sterne, a trail blazer and an inspiration to so many, in so many ways. I learned so much from him and his partner Carrie in my time McGill on how to become the kind of academic, and person, I want to be. I will continue to practice and share what he taught me.

Earlier today, a group of students received word that Jonathan Sterne entered hospice care yesterday following his ongoing battle with cancer. I think there's a few of his colleagues and former students that follow me on here (he's also currently my phd advisor), more info will be coming soon

41: Major labels are hoovering up what's left of independent music Can you be a truly independent artist anymore?

The old major/indie labels divide that keeps on giving up. Some interesting contemporary takes on it in this podcast episode: open.substack.com/pub/notagspo...

PopCon and popular music studies would like to have a WORD with this premise. Popular music criticism thrives outside the university and has for a long time, even as music journalism has too collapsed. The only thing we're missing is prestige and big salaries (oh is that what they mean by 'survive')

2025 Conference CfP: Peripheries, Margins, and Ambiguities across Borders in SouthEast Asian Popular Music  6-8 August 2025  | National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan submit a paper The tides of…

For those with interest in South East Asian/Asian popular music, deadline is on March 15th!: iaspm-sea.org/conference-2...

AFTER PROTOCOLS, the last issue of Revue Espace art Actuel # 139 is out!

Co-directed by @ncasemajor.bsky.social and myself, the bilingual issue (French-English) discuss all things related to art & blockchain.
Enjoy!
espaceartactuel.com/en/produit/1...

Cover image: @isthisa.bsky.social

Ta Da Toby Domzalski GIF ALT: Ta Da Toby Domzalski GIF

✨My contribution to the platform/platformization debate 🫣

Being a “Global Music Platform”: Platform Work in Light-Tech Capitalism

Out in Social media + Society

📚 Check it out here:

👇

journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

#PlatformEconomy #TechCapitalism #DigitalLabor #PlatformStudies

Meet the Bands Keeping Hong Kong’s Underground Rock Scene Alive Despite structural issues and pandemic problems, these artists are determined to keep guitar music a going concern in their hometown.

From 2021 and missing some key artists/groups, but pleased to say a majority of those important bands are still active in the Hong Kong underground: daily.bandcamp.com/lists/hong-k...

Worried about how long your favorite art, stories, videos, and other media will remain online? You can do something about it. Archive it, put it on a flash drive, share it. Digital things are fragile, but you don't need serious tech skills to protect the digital things you care about. 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈

The Routledge Companion to Diasporic Jazz Studies The Routledge Companion to Diasporic Jazz Studies recognizes the proliferation of jazz as global music in the 21st century. It illustrates the multi-vocality of contemporary jazz studies, combining lo...

Happy to be involved in this MASSIVE collection, with a chapter on the role of distribution infrastructures, afrological improvisation and whiteness in the Québec ‘Musique actuelle’ scene: www.routledge.com/The-Routledg...

I’d love to be added, thanks for the pack!

The Hong Kong music that mattered in 2024 Gigs, records and moments that we can't forget, for better or for worse

A nice little primer of notable activity in the ever under-the-radar Hong Kong indie music scenes (across multiple genres & community): open.substack.com/pub/passingn...

The ‘cassette comeback’: debunking a tenacious narrative Academic attention to cassette tapes has reached its first peak in 30 years. If anything, this focus demonstrates that the adoption of media is not as linear as has been commonly anticipated in the...

📚New year, new publication out in a #continuum special issue on Popular Music’s revival and renewal edited by the fantastic Lauren Istvandity, Mengyu Luo and John Tebutt.📚

In this article, I take on the annually regurgitated ‘cassette revival’ or ‘cassette comeback’.