EP/04: CREATOR ECONOMICS

Creator Economics with musician and rights activist Damon Krukowski

LISTEN ON: APPLE SPOTIFY STITCHER

How can musicians make a living in the age of streaming when they earn fractions of a penny per Spotify play? In this episode we talk about the changing economics of making music with musician, poet and writer Damon Krukowski.

Streaming platforms have been a great innovation for consumers but this invention is not universally loved by musicians.  We speak to Damon about what it was like to make a living in the pre-digital era and how challenging it is to live off royalties in the age of streaming. We also discuss his work with the Union of Musicians and Allied Workers (UMAW) which aims to organize music workers to fight for a more just music industry. He suggests some alternative models that might be more friendly for many artists going forward.

Find Damon’s books, music and other work at http://www.daddrummer.com

About DAMON KRUKOWSKI
Damon Krukowski is the writer and host of Ways of Hearing, a six-episode podcast about the switch from analog to digital audio produced by Radiotopia's Showcase that was later published as a book by the MIT Press (2019). He is also the author of The New Analog: Listening and Reconnecting in a Digital World (The New Press, 2017). A longtime musician, he was in the indie rock band Galaxie 500 and now plays in the acoustic duo Damon & Naomi. His articles about sound have been published in outlets such as Pitchfork, Artforum, the New Yorker, and Wire. He was educated at Harvard where he studied social theory as an undergraduate, and earned an AM in English and American literature. He has taught writing, sound, and writing about sound in Harvard's Writing Program, and studio art department (visual and environmental studies).