Get the latest tech news

Cindy Lee might be the future of music

The buzziest indie album of the moment is a folder of files you can only get from a janky Geocities website. Drake is dropping new music on something called Krakenfiles.com. Chris Black wonders if the post-streaming era will look like Web 1.0.

The same week the album in question, Diamond Jubilee, by Cindy Lee, a 32-song left-of-center fever dream marathon that sounds like Velvet Underground, T. Rex, and VU, and the good Phil Spector projects combined with excellent production, synths, and feedback, received a score of 9.1 on Pitchfork, the first 9.0+ since 2020. “They’re begging for a penny a play, and it’s pitiful.” In that same interview, Flegel acknowledged that the hardest part of putting out a project without the backing of streaming platforms or a traditional record label is “getting anybody to give a shit.” The days when I could go to my local Virgin Megastore on a Thursday at midnight to pick up the new releases on CD aren’t coming back, but maybe things will calm down and course correct a little bit.

Get the Android app