The Russian Cake Switcheroo
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What is the main topic of this episode?
Check, check, check, check, check. All right. Are we doing an intro? I don't have an intro. No, I'm just, I can say, hi, Kay. Do you want me to do a whole thing or no? If you have somehow prepared a thing, you can always do a thing. Do you have a thing? You don't even know why you're here. How can you have a thing? Well, the thing about the podcast world, PJ, is it can be kind of competitive. It can be very exciting. And I don't know if you're aware of this, but that kind of competition can cause hurt feelings. Certainly. It can cause people to grow unhappy, resentful even. Are you feeling those feelings? No, but I appreciate the fact that although you have your own podcast that you're working on, you don't feel so competitive that you're not willing to invite the host of a competing podcast, Search Engine Engine.
The show that has been launched within my show and apparently is now competing with my show. That's right. This podcast Califah hosts, a competitor to Search Engine called Search Engine Engine does in fact exist. There's one episode so far published behind our paywall, which means it's only available to our incognito mode listeners. But that was not why Kay was here today. Kay knows more about music than anybody I know. He has a book called Major Labels that somehow covers the entire evolution of pop music in a fun and breezy way. If I have a question about music that I can't answer, he's the person I always go to. Okay, we got a listener question that I wanted to ask you about. I'm going to lead up to that question first to set a little bit of context.
I think I know the answer to this question, but just in case there's a random lacuna in your musical knowledge. Are you familiar with the band Cake? Yes, I am. How would you describe their music? Spritely indie rock with kind of talky vocals over the top. Do you like them or not like them? I like them a little bit. Sacramento, if I'm not mistaken. Is that where they're from? I think so, yeah. The big hit is Short Skirt, Long Jacket. Is that correct? Yeah. I remember in the early 2000s, I think there was crossover with this Brooklyn band called Chick Chick Chick. A guy who played in Chick Chick Chick, I think, had played with Cake and then actually later ended up playing with LCD Sound System.
There's a saying before GPS was widespread where they used to study the brains of London cabbies. And there was like a part of their brain that either lit up more or maybe had grown more. I'm sure that's wrong. But it was just sort of a scientific marvel how the human mind could expand to to contain knowledge, and when you talk about music in this way, I feel like I'm talking to a London cabbie in 1997. Isn't it possible that brains don't actually expand and that it's zero-sum? That you're deleting a lot of stuff? Yeah, that you'd be horrified by all the stuff that's not in my brain. Your kids' birthdays? Okay, are you familiar with the hip-hop artist, and I may have mispronounced this, Pollyanna Vetruh? No. Russian hip-hop. I don't know how well you know Russian hip-hop.
No, you could be making this up just to trick me and get me to say, like, oh, yeah, first album's great, and then it turns out it's fake. No, no, no, real band, real band, real, not an entirely popular group, but a group that does perform music. I have a certain linguistic prejudice when it comes to hip-hop, so my knowledge of non-Anglophone hip-hop is almost non-existent. Have you listened to any German hip-hop? Not voluntarily. Better than you'd think. Anyway, our listener is a Cake fan, and Cake, he knew, had not put out a new record in years, so he got excited when he saw this notification saying there's a new Cake song out, and also that it's a collaboration with this little-known Russian hip-hop artist. I just want to play you this song. It's called Bye Bye. Bye Bye.
What do you hear? I hear a flow that reminds me a little bit of Bone Thugs-N-Harmony.
The 808 Kicks and some production that, you know, sounds a little bit like chronic era, like West Coast hip-hop, right? It has those zap-derived synthesizers, maybe.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the main topic of this episode?
0:25–5:05
2
Why is there a new song by Cake on Spotify?
5:05–16:51
3
What is the role of distributors in music streaming?
16:51–21:20
4
How does Spotify manage artist identification?
21:20
5
What theories explain the Cake and Pulya Nevetru situation?
8:00–18:37
6
Is this a case of a hack or a mistake?
18:37–24:34
7
What insights did Glenn McDonald share about the music industry?
24:34–27:04
8
How do listeners react to unexpected music on streaming platforms?
27:04–38:27