Kyle Devine, "Decomposed: The Political Ecolo...

Around 1830, opera houses stopped using castrati, and Rome and the Vatican became home to their glorious singing, engineered by surgery and intensive vocal training. Castrati were long mired in secrecy, obfuscations, and lies about their origin and conditions, not least the last ...  Show more

Sourced from over a hundred hours of interviews with musicians, producers, booking agents, label owners, writers, fans, employees, volunteers, friends and family, Elvis is Dead, I’m Still Alive: The Story of Asian Man Records tells the singular story of Asian Man Records. In its ...  Show more

The Slate Music Club is back, in a special edition of Hit Parade – “The Bridge”! Our year-end panel of critics—NPR Music’s Ann Powers, Hearing Things’ Julianne Escobedo Shepherd, Slate’s own Carl Wilson and Hit Parade host Chris Molanphy—discuss their favorite albums and singles ...  Show more

It’s been almost a year since the historic music outlet Pitchfork shrank considerably. On this week’s On the Media, why the distinctive voices in music journalism are worth saving. Plus, how AI music generators could upend the industry. 

[01:00]  Host Micah Loewinger, sp ...

Many of us remember the first portable music device we owned: a transistor radio, a boombox, a Walkman or perhaps an iPod. We might even recall the songs we played on it. But we might be less aware of how profoundly audio technology developments from the 1950s to 2000s changed th ...  Show more

Thanks to music streaming, many people now have millions of tunes at their fingertips. But are platforms like Spotify leading us to choose convenience over cultivating our own distinct musical taste? The ability to effortlessly skip a song by clicking 'next' onscreen devalues the ...  Show more