The Honest Broker

Ted Gioia
A trustworthy guide to music, books, arts, and culture
Created 24 Feb 2021
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  • Spotify Shares Now Selling at Less Than the IPO Price 4 Years Ago
    01 May 2022 • 89 65
    This isn’t an investment advice column, but maybe it should be. After my recent gloomy—but accurate—prediction about Netflix, someone asked me if I had shorted the stock. No, I didn’t, but that would ...
  • The Most Unlikely Jazz Star of Them All
    29 Apr 2022 • 78 26
    If asked to pick the least likely jazz star in the music’s history, I wouldn’t need to mull it over for long. Even Toots Thielemans’s name is a jazz oddity. I’m not talking about his cumbersome birth ...
  • The Music Business Turns Into Groundhog Day
    26 Apr 2022 • 47 55
    A new report came out today on the state of contemporary music. But the only thing new is the report. When it comes to the actual music preferred by consumers, old songs are winning every battle. “The...
  • Count Basie and Me
    25 Apr 2022 • 80 20
    In 1983, I finished my graduate degree, and moved to a cheap upstairs apartment on Wellesley Street in Palo Alto, a couple hundred yards from the Stanford campus. To give you an idea of how different ...
  • The Netflix and CNN+ Disaster—and What's Next for Subscription Streaming
    22 Apr 2022 • 65 14
    A few weeks ago, I published an article under the provocative headline “Why Netflix Will Falter.” I laid out my skepticism about the company’s strategy—especially it’s desire to operate as a stand-alo...
  • The 30 Most Popular Articles on The Honest Broker
    21 Apr 2022 • 39 15
    I launched The Honest Broker one year ago today, with no idea what I was getting into—and it has been a whirlwind. When I originally considered launching on Substack, I thought I might write once or t...
  • Did the Blues Originate in New Orleans?
    18 Apr 2022 • 57 20
    In his new book The Blues, musician Chris Thomas King asserts that the “blues was invented in the 1890s by Black Creoles in New Orleans.” That’s an extraordinary claim, although not entirely unwarrant...
  • The Most Cynical Novel Ever Written
    15 Apr 2022 • 40 11
    If you labeled Louis-Ferdinand Céline on the basis of a quick perusal of his professional resume, the words that come to mind might include humanitarian, diplomat, and altruist. You would note that he...
  • The 14 Best Moments of Music Integrated Into a Movie Narrative
    12 Apr 2022 • 17 33
    There’s no shortage of outstanding film music—in fact, movie soundtracks just might be the most underrated genre of the last 100 years. But I’m excluding soundtrack music from consideration here, or e...
  • The Fake Artists Problem Is Much Worse Than You Realize
    09 Apr 2022 • 147 37
    The fake artist problem on streaming platforms is far more ominous than it seems at first glance. You might think this can’t be much different than a cover band, no? Or, at worst, maybe it’s just anot...
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