History of digital publishing: from podcasts to audiobooks?

The current Walrus has a profile of the indigenous Canadian broadcaster Connie Walker, who broke out with the very successful CBC podcast "Missing and Murdered," from 2016 and then moved to Spotify for a series called "Stolen," that earned both a Pulitzer Prize and a Peabody Broadcasting Award in 2023. Spotify subsequently told her she was being cancelled. As the story says, "Walker, whose success represented a beacon of hope for despairing journalists, was now a symbol of the profession’s alarming, inescapable collapse."

There has been a spate of stories about the cancellation of podcasts, particularly the complicated, deeply researched ones in which Walker made her reputation. The pennies that digital advertising brings in don't often cover the overheads of that kind of work, it seems, not when there are a million people trying to break into podcasting, some with off-the-top-of-the-head chatty content that makes Top-40 Radio seem like Shakespeare.  Maybe a great retrenchment in podcasting is on the horizon, at least for those that aren't subsidized or feature a celebrity.

Meanwhile, I've been listening to "Miracle and Wonder: Conversations With Paul Simon" by Malcolm Gladwell and Bruce Headlam, produced by Gladwell's podcasting enterprise Pushkin Industries. It's a podcast except that it isn't. It's presented as and offered for sale as an audiobook instead. I can't help thinking that this may be Malcolm Gladwell observing the dismal economics of podcasting and seeing if audiobook publishing enables a different pricing regime more aligned with the real costs of production. Though since it seems that Spotify and Amazon already have some kind of monopoly control of audiobooks now (and everyone I know gets audiobooks free from the library app Libby), I'm not sure how that's going to work out. But "Miracle and Wonder" may be a sign or symptom of change working out in digital 'casting.

What started me on this post, however, was not thoughts on the evolving history of digital audio marketing. (That's just to justify putting this in a history blog, perhaps). It was how much I'm enjoying "Miracle and Wonder." 

Gladwell's team recorded thirty hours for a five hour audiobook, Paul Simon is fully engaged, and it all becomes a wonderful exploration of one musician and his music. There is a lovely balance of music  -- old Simon recordings, new Simon live demonstrations, clips of music that inspired him, whatever --  all fitted into a structured conversation about the shape and meaning of Simon's career. It would be a waste of paper, almost, to print this audiobook -- the music is absolutely central to it. Gladwell gladwellizes elaborate theories from sociology texts and musicological theorists to interpret how Paul Simon got to be Paul Simon,  and these deep-think dives actually work pretty well. But Simon hardly engages with those parts -- he's just talking and thinking and riffing on all the music in his head.

If you are a bit jaded with what you are finding in podcasts, or you have any interest at all in Paul Simon, take a listen. Malcolm Gladwell probably hopes you will purchase it here for US$14.99.  You have your own sources for audiobooks/podcasts.

These are the days of miracle and wonder.  Don't cry, baby, don't cry.

History of Jackie Shane and the Minutes

Historica, the foundation launched by the Bronfman estate and Red Wilson's Nortel fortune, gets public funding for some of its endeavours, and this hasn't always been of the no-strings arts council sort.  During the Harper years, it seemed every single new Heritage Minute Historica launched was about either war or hockey or the Fathers of Confederation. 

That's changed. I don't know who's making the choices now, but recent Minutes are a lot more diverse. But a Heritage Minute on pioneering transgender soul singer Jackie Shane -- amazing. And it comes in at 59 seconds, too.  "Got a new way of lovin' [history], baby"  

History of John Prine

Midst all the tributes to the late musician John Prine, and all the "ten best of" lists of his songs posted here and there, no one seemed to include the one I was thinking of.

Can't help thinking this is the one John Prine might have thought of if they told him he was about to die of a global disease no one had ever heard of a couple of months previously.

"Oooh-eee baby. It's a big old goofy world."  Words for the times.

History of Sgt Pepper at Fifty

For the fiftieth anniversary of the release of "Sgt Pepper\s Lonely Hearts Club Band," (and the inevitable release of an overblown multi-album remastering, etc; promo above), this guy has come up with a ranking, from #213 to #1, of every recorded Beatles song.

And nearly every song title sparks an "I know that one" response -- not only, I suspect, from those who remember where they were when they first heard "Sgt Pepper" on the car radio. I think the compiler is too susceptible to MacCartney's cheese over Lennon's toughness, and inevitably the whole list is highly contestable.  But fun how the suspense builds ("Rain" made the top 10?), and with lots of videos attached.

Speaking of anniversaries, it was Eric Hobsbawn's hundredth birthday the other day, and it turns out he has the same birthday as me  (though quite a lot of years earlier!).  Here's an appreciation.

History of Chuck Berry

A minor classic, in which the lyrics are all Cajun, but here somehow the beat starts to go all Mexicali. Chuck is paying the white-boy backup band minimum wage, no doubt.

You might prefer Johnny B. Goode with Bruce and the E-Street Band.  Vas-y, Johnny, vas-y.

An appreciation by Bill Wyman, who turns out NOT to be the Stones' bassist.  It goes to show you never can tell.

History and the Hip

Must have been a generational mismatch or something, but I never was too close a follower of the Tragically Hip. Never saw them play, which seems to have been the key. Confession: I have tended to associate them with the Superman Song of the Crash Test Dummies, and somehow never really associated them with "Ahead by a Century.") If you were more connected that I was, I'm sorry for your (impending) loss

True thing: the Canadian historical content in their lyrics is remarkable; move over Gordon Lightfoot and Stompin' Tom. Millhaven, Milgaard, Bobcaygeon (even I know that lyric), Bill Barilko, the '72 Series, the Horseshoe Tavern, and no end of small town placename-checking.  Here's one list of "most Canadian" lyrics, and an essentials playlist from CBC Music.

Image: cbc.ca

Hating Lightfoot

Sometimes I think Canadian historians are bland and non-confrontational and reluctant to kill the sacred cows.  Then there is Karen Dubinsky:

I recently re-encountered Gordon Lightfoot’s “Canadian Railroad Trilogy” and better appreciated what a testament it is to the progress narrative of settler colonialism. That “green dark forest” “too silent to be real” awaiting the improving gaze (and apparatus) of Europeans; it’s hard to imagine a more fitting soundtrack to Canadian imperial dreams. I always hated that song, now I better understand why.

History of Classic Folk: Sun over Darkness Prevail

Richard White teaches urban history at UT Mississauga. But in an earlier incarnation as an Edmonton musician doing a little heritage consulting on the side, he became acquainted with Stephan G. Stephansson (1853-1927), the Icelandic pioneer of central Alberta and a legendary Icelandic poet. (See what Canadian Encyclopedia says about White/Stephansson here.)

In 1985 White, leading most of Edmonton's best musicians, set some of Stephansson's translated lyrics to music in an album called Sun Over Darkness Prevail. It has been selling nicely ever since at the preserved Stephansson House near Markerville, Alta. But vinyl has become sort of historic itself over the years.

Now White's album is available to sample, as a CD, as a download, and yes, even as vinyl via Bandcamp here: Sun Over Darkness Prevail.

Death of a historian: Stomping Tom Connors 1936-2013

Who else wrote so much and so well about

• the social history of mining communities ("Sudbury Saturday Night")
• labour and technology in the tobacco industry ("Tillsonburg")
• Maritime-Ontario interprovincial trade  ("Bud the Spud")
• marketing in the Canadian music industry ("Bus Tour to Nashville," "Luke's Guitar")
• cross-cultural folklore traditions of the Ottawa valley ("Big Joe Mufferaw")
• survival ethics in Arctic aviation ("The Martin Hartwell Story")
• placename geography of Highway 17  ("I've Been Everywhere")
• Canadian dialects ("Gumboot Cloggeroo")
• and much more

Dr. Connors' research was recognized with Ph.Ds from St Thomas University, the University of Prince Edward Island, and the University of Toronto.

History and Music at Symphony Nova Scotia

Haligonian history followers might want to catch this upcoming Symphony Nova Scotia event, Sunday, March 18.

Guest conductor Ivars Taurins from the baroque ensemble Tafelmusik has selected an array of French and European music from the first half of the eighteenth century (Lully, Delalande, Rameau, Philador, Handel...).  Then he has linked each piece to aspects of life and history in eighteenth century Louisbourg. The symphony will play and Taurins will both conduct and narrate.

Who knew Philador wrote a march to salute the Treaty of Utrecht, which led to Louisbourg's foundation in 1713?  Who knew Handel's "Music for the Royal Fireworks" was composed to accompany a spectacle mostly intended to mute Londoners' discontent with the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, by which France recovered Louisbourg in 1749?  Who knew Rameau wrote an opera in 1752 to commemorate the birth of French royal heir the Duc de Bourgogne, an event marked at Louisbourg by, amongst other things, the firing off of four tons of black power in artillery salutes?

Ivan Taurins knew, and he was telling me about it this afternoon.  It's intensely researched (by him, not me!) and it is going to sound terrific. Halifax -- be there.