In addition to weekly song reviews, Fingertips also features intermittent longer essays, typically tackling issues relevant to the evolving digital music scene. These essays have in the past been published under the name Fingertips Commentary; more recently they’re just presented as regular old blog posts. And more recently than that, some of them have been appearing off site. Links to each can be found below.
Essays will emerge whenever the muse strikes.
Essays to date:
Is There Any Hope For Eclectic Listening? [published on the Linn music blog]
(Your musical taste is more interesting and powerful than the internet wants to believe) 11 Nov 13
The Power of Repeated Listening [published on the Linn music blog]
(Sometimes it takes a bit of time to know what you like) 10 Jul 13
In Defense of Music [published on the Linn music blog]
(Remembering that the power of music is independent of technology) 29 Aug 12
Are Social Media Values Human Values?
(Some concrete reasons to mistrust social media enterprises) 30 May 12
There’s Always Someone Looking At You: The Two-Way Mirror of Music Industry Email
(In music industry, emails read you) 20 Feb 12
Everything Looks Like a Nail: The “Social Music” Fallacy
(Is music really “made to be shared”?) 7 Nov 11
It’s Called Viral For a Reason
(On the dubious achievement of “going viral”) 31 Oct 11
Does Genuine Curation Stand a Chance?
(Curating is great, but the web typically defeats it) 14 Oct 11
Forecast: Cloudy
(The underrated importance of music buyers) 16 Sept 11
The Fate of Music in the Age of No Effort
(Convenience isn’t all it’s cracked up to be) 2 June 11
The Tyranny of Novelty
(We encourage the novel over the good, sadly enough) 8 Apr 11
Spamalot (Or, New Adventures in BitTorrentland)
(Indie band invents the spam album; hilarity ensues) 24 Mar 11
Portishead, Twitter, and Resisting Digital Ideology
(Do we all want to be ideologues? Really?) 14 Jan 11
Free Is Not The End
(Why technology-induced chaos is meant to be tamed) 13 Sept 10
The Free Music Mirage
(Why some music but not all music will be free) 3 May 10
Playlist Nation: The Unbearable Lightness of Sharing
(Online playlist sharing is an exercise in collective expressive futility) 22 Mar 10
Farewell to the Casual Music Fan
(Why catering to so-called “true fans” could backfire on rock’n'roll) 9 Nov 09
Music is Not Like Water
(Exposing the idiocy of many of today’s “future of music” ideas) 29 Apr 09
Got to Do What You Should
(A Free and Legal MP3 Manifesto) 26 Jan 09
The Sound of a Brand New World
(What to make of Radiohead’s In Rainbows pay-as-you-will experiment) 10 Jan 08
The Future (or Not) of the Album
(How the CD, not the internet, slayed the album) 2 Aug 07
The Secret…Okay, a Different One
(Examining the reality of bad opinions) 24 Mar 07
Foulplay
(Why critics hating Coldplay reflects worse on them than the band) 16 Jul 05
14 Arguments for the Elimination of Pop Music Critics
(Self-explanatory) 10 Feb 05
Alarmed
(Getting a handle on 50+ years of rock’n'roll) 16 Mar 04
