F or Benoit Carré, the future revealed itself in six notes. In 2015, Carré, a cerebral, bespectacled songwriter then in his mid-forties, became the artist-in-residence at Sony’s Paris-based Computer Science Laboratory, headed by his friend Francois Paçhet, a composer and leading artificial-intelligence researcher. Paçhet was developing some of the world’s …
Read More »RZA on How Afrobeats Will Reshape Hip-Hop
The Future of Music Interview is a Q&A in which our favorite artists and producers share their visions of what’s next, weighing in on everything from AI to emerging scenes to the artists inspiring them the most. When RZA, then known as Prince Rakeem, got dropped from Tommy Boy after …
Read More »Unhearable Music: A Sci-Fi Tale
W hen she wakes up in the recovery room, Maurice hears nothing. It’s not like hiking in the redwoods, where the lack of city sounds creates an illusion of silence. This is a complete audio void. Still groggy from the drugs, she closes her eyes and dreams of the tiny …
Read More »Mike Will Made-It Still Believes in Atlanta's Future
The Future of Music Interview is a Q&A in which our favorite artists and producers share their vision of what’s next, weighing in on everything from AI to emerging scenes to the artists inspiring them the most. It’s hard to overstate the impact of the five-year run hip-hop producer Michael …
Read More »U.S. Girls' Meg Remy Isn't Sure About the Future
THE FUTURE OFMusic Interviewis a Q&A in which our favorite artists and producers share their vision of what’s next, weighing in on everything from AI to emerging scenes to the artists inspiring them the most. Meg Remy has been imagining radical new futures in her music for more than a …
Read More »After Writing for Pop's Biggest Stars, Bonnie McKee Wants People to Step Into Her Own World
Bonnie McKee was at one of the lowest, darkest moments of her life when she had a validating experience with Lana Del Rey. The singer approached her at a party in 2019 and held up her phone to show what she had been listening to on her way there: McKee’s …
Read More »Independent Venues Have Found New Ways to Survive — They Hope
Things were supposed to be looking up. It was the fall of 2021, and live music was finally coming back after 18 months of a pandemic death spiral. Indie venues had banded together to secure a historic federal funding package. Musicians were racing to schedule shows and fans were once …
Read More »Nashville's Radical Reinvention
Tennessee’s cosmopolitan capital has been going through seismic changes, both musically and demographically. As new personalities flock to Nashville, fresh sounds and surprising trends are emerging, providing clues for what the city could look like in 10 years. Here are the musical, cultural, and even political developments we’re watching as …
Read More »Tequila Toasts and Manicures: The Wild New Landscape of Music VIP Packages
It’s 3.44 a.m. in the Strait of Dover and I’m lying awake on the top bunk of a tour bus parked on a ferry headed from France to the U.K. It’s been a day my 16-year-old Backstreet Boys-loving self could only have dreamed of — lunching with Howie Dorough, watching …
Read More »Is This $2 Billion Orb the Future of Live Music?
Ever since the Beatles first crossed the Atlantic, in 1964, major concerts have largely taken place at venues built for sports, even though that often means poor sight lines for many fans, and less-than-optimal sound for most everybody. But a new era of live entertainment begins in late September, when …
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