Mark Foley

Market forces have made it hard for musical innovators to succeed. And then there are The Flaming Lips, who have been able to thrive in the post-digital landscape while creating and delivering music completely on their own terms.

Street music has probably been around as long as there have been streets.

Igor Stravinsky’s revolutionary ballet The Rite of Spring was premiered 100 years ago this May.

The drum machine is the most culturally important new musical instrument since the electric guitar.

Electronic drums have been around for generations, and the early ones sounded like the cheesy rhythm attachments on home organs.

“Shave and a Haircut” is a ditty that has been a part of American culture for more than a hundred years; a sort of musical meme that worked its way deeply into our collective brain. You’ve heard it a million times.

Its ubiquity comes partly from its characteristic rhythm, which is related to the famous clave or “Bo Diddley beat” from the Caribbean by way of New Orleans.

You might not have heard of John Hammond, but in terms of cultural significance he was arguably the world’s most influential record producer.

At the beginning of his career in the 1930s, largely because of his deep convictions about racial equality and civil rights, Hammond helped shape the the jazz scene.

Makers of pop music have always engineered their songs to sound big and loud. Motown records, for instance, have a legendary, huge sound. Sometimes, though, loudness can be overdone, and this problem seems to be getting worse.

The technology behind this is a device called a compressor. Its job is to keep a volume level consistent. This is great when you want, say, a vocalist to remain audible above the other instruments.

“Happy Birthday to You” is one of the best known songs in the world, but one rarely hears it in a movie or on TV.

There is a monetary reason for this: “Happy Birthday To You” is copyright protected, and to use it can cost a producer as much as $30,000.

It is incredible to me that the song is not in the public domain, but this is one of those strange stories born at the intersection of popular music and copyright law.

The tune was written for a song "Good Morning to All" in 1893 by Louisville kindergarten teachers Patty and Mildred Hill.

Now that CDs aren’t making money, more of a musician's income is from selling "merch" - merchandise: T-shirts, stickers, guitar picks, etc.

Merch might not be the main part of a band’s revenue stream, but I think it has become a bigger part of the musical experience since the beginning of the digital age.

Merch is essential for the true fan. An MP3 is a transitory and abstract thing; a concert T-shirt on the other hand is tangible and enduring.