Zack O'Malley Greenburg's Blog, page 8

Safety Nets For Safety Nets

This is the latest installment of my book  We Are All Musicians Now . To make sure you don’t miss future serializations, subscribe here. Below you’ll find the third part of the book’s coda. Enjoy!

PREVIOUS CHAPTER TABLE OF CONTENTS || >> NEXT CHAPTER >>

Liz Hopkins is best known as one of the lead singers in Delta Rae, a bluesy folk-rock outfit known for hits like spooky anthem “Bottom of the River.” But even when she would take a break from touring, she’d often find herself on the road.

Like many i...

“You Should Do A Podcast”

Your weekly dose of music, media & money. Click here for a full subscription.

“I’ve got a great idea for you,” so many acquaintances have told me in recent years. “You should do a podcast!”

It’s well-intentioned remark, but—unless it’s coming from someone who works at a place like Spotify—it’s also a deeply annoying one. There’s an implication that podcasting hasn’t actually occurred to me, that it’s both easy to do and light on the schedule. Nothing could be further from the truth. It’s sort of l...

Why Policymakers Must Understand Musicians

This is the latest installment of my book  We Are All Musicians Now . To make sure you don’t miss future serializations, subscribe here. Below you’ll find the second part of the book’s coda. Enjoy!

PREVIOUS CHAPTER TABLE OF CONTENTS || >> NEXT CHAPTER >>

In our last installment, I started to lay out some broad concluding thoughts for We Are All Musicians Now. Today I’m going to dig a little deeper. And although I don’t often delve into “politics,” some of you may be tempted to view today’s words as ...

What Happens When We're All Musicians?

This is your weekly installment of my book  We Are All Musicians Now . To make sure you don’t miss future serializations, subscribe here. Below you’ll find the first part of the book’s coda. Enjoy!

PREVIOUS CHAPTER TABLE OF CONTENTS || >> NEXT CHAPTER >>

If we are all musicians now, that makes me one, too. And in the case of this particular book, we’re getting towards the end of the show. 

We’ve talked about everything from the value of intellectual property to the creation of superfans over the past...

Vinyl Records Are Sneakers Now

Your weekly dose of music, media & money. Click here for a full subscription.

Taylor Swift has shilled everything from CapitalOne credit cards to Keds sneakers over the years. Her commercial appeal helped her earn $80 million in 2021, making her the highest-paid woman in music. Amid the pandemic, though, Swift’s top product is something that seems to have taken a back seat in the music business of late: music. 

Swift moved 2.4 million albums in the U.S. last year, more than any other artist. Incre...

From The Vault: Earl Simmons, 1970-2021

Your weekly dose of music, media & money. Click here for a full subscription.

I wrote the below reminiscence the day DMX passed away in April 2021, a couple months before I launched this newsletter via Substack. Today I’d like to finally share it with the full Zogblog audience.

My first and only interview with Earl Simmons lasted no more than five minutes. And—like his all-too-short life—what it lacked in length, it made up for with intensity. Indeed, for about 18 months in the late 1990s, DMX bur...

Everything Is A Remix

This is your weekly installment of my new book,  We Are All Musicians Now . To make sure you don’t miss future serializations, subscribe here. Below you’ll find Chapter 4: The Accidental Musicians (Part 8). Enjoy!

PREVIOUS CHAPTER TABLE OF CONTENTS || >> NEXT CHAPTER >>

It’s a bright and cold afternoon, and I’ve been talking with hip-hop trailblazer Fab 5 Freddy for nearly an hour about my book’s thesis. As we wind down, he offers a something of a corollary that basically boils down to this: if we a...

Country Music's Highest-Paid Artists 2021

Your weekly dose of music, media & money. Click here for a full subscription.

Over the past decade, Blake Shelton’s career has looked more like rock star’s than a country crooner’s: he joined The Voice opposite Adam Levine, appeared in a Hollywood flick based on a video game, and even married alt-rocker Gwen Stefani.

He’s also earning like a rock star these days. Shelton raked in $83 million in 2021, thanks mostly to a catalog sale worth more than $50 million. That number puts him in the same ball...

Baseball Players Are Musicians Now [WAAMN Chapter 4.7]

This is your weekly installment of my new book,  We Are All Musicians Now . To make sure you don’t miss future serializations, subscribe here. Below you’ll find Chapter 4: The Accidental Musicians (Part 7). Enjoy!

PREVIOUS CHAPTER TABLE OF CONTENTS || >> NEXT CHAPTER >>

The beginning of baseball season should be a national holiday. So I always treat it as such, whether sneaking out of high school in 2003 to see Hideki Matsui launch his first MLB homer through the freezing rain at the old Yankee Stad...

Baseball Players Are Musicians Now

This is your weekly installment of my new book,  We Are All Musicians Now . To make sure you don’t miss future serializations, subscribe here. Below you’ll find Chapter 4: The Accidental Musicians (Part 7). Enjoy!

PREVIOUS CHAPTER TABLE OF CONTENTS || >> NEXT CHAPTER >>

The beginning of baseball season should be a national holiday. So I always treat it as such, whether sneaking out of high school in 2003 to see Hideki Matsui launch his first MLB homer through the freezing rain at the old Yankee Stad...