A few years ago, during a conversation about the representation of Asian Americans in the U.S. entertainment industry, a non-Asian colleague casually responded with, “Well, there’s Kurosawa.” Akira Kurosawa was a Japanese film director. Jon M. Chu is an Asian American film director. The conflation of Asian and Asian American identity is a complicated topic,…
A decade can offer a lookback period, giving us a historical perspective of events which were mere possibilities when it first happened. In the words of Mr. Clark: “This is how we tried to alert people in 2016…Carl Fischer was to alert the dealers that the names were changing to mine. The Letter asked music…
Thank you to the many people who sent me comments about the AI-generated remixes, available on my Soundcloud “Artifacts from the Labyrinth Remixed” playlist (streaming for free): https://soundcloud.com/kyoko-kitamura/sets/artifacts-from-the-labyrinth The comments ranged from “AI music is bad and uninteresting” to “development is lightening fast, and AI is so powerful, we should all be aware of the…
For Phase Two of my recent project Artifacts from the Labyrinth, I uploaded tracks from the EP to the AI music generator Suno to create cover versions. The results were devastatingly convincing and extremely disturbing. The new mixes are compiled in my Soundcloud playlist but if you just want the highlights, listen to the Japanese Male Idol version and the Math Rock version. Had…
Just released on Bandcamp: Kitamura’s new solo EP Artifacts from the Labyrinth. Eight years after Protean Labyrinth (2018) and fifteen years since her solo debut Armadillo in Sunset Park (2011), Kyoko Kitamura returns with her new solo work Artifacts from the Labyrinth, an imaginary audio-capsule recovered from an underground labyrinth. Full album only on Bandcamp. The…
Students often asked me about the legitimacy of text messages they received from various “promoters”. I have yet to see one which looks legit. The music promotion landscape has undergone an enormous change since I first started working in media more than 35 years ago. Back then, there were powerful major labels collaborating with powerful…
This is the final post in the three-part series on music discovery methods. For previous posts, please visit How do we find music? and How do we find music? (2025 version). Every year in my Music Monetization class, we look at recorded music revenue growth by region. Available numbers for 2024 showed us that Latin…
(This is Part II of the three-part series on music discovery. Part I is How Do We Find Music? and Part III is How Do We Find Music? (Outside of the U.S. version).) Every year in my Musical Taste and Monetization class, we trace the evolution of our listening habits, observing ourselves and becoming more…
With the rollback of DEI efforts by the Trump administration, I thought it would be timely to revisit the case of Keiko Yamada, a.k.a. Larry Clark, which attracted attention among music educators back in 2019. Using AI as my assistant, I gathered information online and came away with a different perspective this time, surprising even…
Are AI-powered music-generating and streaming platforms from China part of the next disruption? If we consider 1995-2005 as the “resistance era” against streaming (i.e., major labels clinging to physical media profits through very creative methods, in yellow below), perhaps we can consider 2005-2025 to be the “simmering period” of streaming consolidation. We are now witnessing…