Hey, it's Alan, and I just wanted to let you know that you can now listen to the ongoing

history of new music early and ad-free on Amazon music, included with Prime.

Hey, before we start the show today, I want to tell you about something brand new we're launching

with our friends at Apple Podcasts called The Ongoing History of New Music Unlimited.

For $3.49 a month, $3.49. Which is less than the price of your morning coffee,

you can now get access to the full archive of our shows ad-free. Plus, you'll get brand-new

episodes two days early and special bonus episodes. It's ongoing history unlimited, and it's

available right now, only on Apple Podcasts.

One of the worst insults you can throw at any artist is to accuse them of selling out.

The most basic definition of selling out is when the pursuit of money compromises corrupts or otherwise interrupts the pursuit

of truth and beauty and all the purity and goodness that is supposed to flow from art.

But that's an awfully broad definition, which can be applied in a billion different,

highly subjective ways. At one extreme, some people believe that taking money for

any kind of art is perverse and wrong. At the other, anything and everything has its price,

high or low, depending on the circumstances. And the world has changed. Making any kind of art

costs money. Lots of it. Competition for attention among artists has never been greater.

And we would like to think that great art inevitably and naturally rises to the top, but it just doesn't.

In a true meritocracy, it would, but we all know that's not true. And ever since the internet started shaping the way

we find and consume music, the value ascribed to music, that is how much we're willing to pay for it,

has dropped to near zero. Thanks to streaming in YouTube, almost all the music ever created

in the history of humankind is pretty much available for free.

But like I said, there are costs to making art, costs to making music.

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