THE BIZ
Stay on top of the ongoing Music Wars between the corporate Media Cartel vs. artists, audiences and creative expression.
INDEPENDENT MUSICL
There is life out there beyond Ricky, Britney, the Barbies and the Kens.
HIP HOP
HipHop is to Today what rock & roll was to the 50's and 60's. It's a global cultural nerve end that speaks to the best and the worst of us. You can be rocked with its vitality or hide under the covers. Ignore it and be ignorant.
agitPOP
popCULT and MediaChannel attempt to put a jukebox on every breakfast table stocked with anti-media tunes for dining, dancing and revolution.

Polarity/1 HAS COME OUT OF THE STUDIO AND WILL START PERFORMING LIVE
After 3 years infiltrating Pacifica Radio and indie music journalism with musical political statements like "News Goo," "The Blood" and post 9/11 collaboration with Pakistani super-group JUNOON, polarity/1 has been dragged out of the studio and will be thrust into the world at GEMS on March 2.

The band will take a decidedly activist direction and continue its musical and political collaborations with Salman Ahmad and Junoon.

NATIONAL RECORDING REGISTRY SELECTS ITS FIRST FIFTY ENTRIES January 27, 2003
The Library of Congress has set up the Registry to to serve as a sort of hall of fame of sound recordings dedicated the "richness and variety," as opposed to the popularity, of recordings from any time or place. Fifty recordings will be added to the list annually. Library of Congress
VIEW THE FIRST 50 ENTRIES

BBC AND MILES COPELAND ARE BEGINNING TO SEE THE LIGHT January 16, 2003
The Dutch counterpart to New York's GEMS, Noorderslag/EuroSonic 2003, hosted its own unique cast of Euro music industry regulars and irregulars. Veteran indie musicBIZnocrat Miles Copeland and BBC reps revealed that they're seeing the future as light with no tunnel. MusicDish

COMMERCIAL MEGA-RAVES HAVE DRIVEN OLD SCHOOL RAVERS UNDERGROUND January 4, 2003
The bloated hyper-commercial rave scene has generated nostalgia for the simpler, freer ad hoc affairs of the past. San Francisco Chronicle

THE POLITICS OF THE MUSIC OF POLITICS December 23, 2002
Ann Powers interviews a powerful handful of politically involved musicians to explore the state of activism in today's pop music scene. The Nation

ROGER MCGUINN AND THE CREATIVE COMMONS December 16, 2002
Musician, Roger McGuinn, has yet to see royalties from the millions of records by the band he fronted -- The Byrds. He's found an alternative route for making a living off his recordings. Wired

CHECK THE CREATIVE COMMONS WEBLOG

For more see the MUSIC ARCHIVES

"Looking back in 20 years, it'll be very obvious that computer music had a particular flavor, just like music of the 1960s with the wah-wah pedal," he continued. It will have the sound of its technology: "unfunky, overfussy and dead as stone." -- Brian Eno

popCULT turns its walls, its speakers and its podium over to you.

We want to know about your personal relationships to media -- corporate media, underground media (college radio, etc), guerilla media (napster, pirate radio, etc.), the struggles to express and survive. What's your stand on the issues covered on this site? How is the coming war effecting you and your creative impulses? Some artists are up all night creating works that address Bloody Tuesday. We know some who are having crises of relevance -- "My stuff is so trivial compared to what's now happening. Why bother?"

The house of cards that make up our culture are now floating in the air. Nobody knows what structures will appear when they land. Congress has more important things on its hands than the whining of recording industry execs, etc.
WE CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE.

CONTACT US.