The Endless Refrain

A veteran music critic and record reviewer illustrates how digital culture has throttled and debased popular music

In The Endless Refrain, former Washington Post writer and editor David Rowell goes deep into the psychology of the average listener – as well as the algorithms that function as today’s tastemakers – to explore the devastating effects that technology has on musicians and fans alike.

Making an incisive analysis of the economic and technological forces behind the rise of Napster, Pandora, Spotify, and iTunes, Rowell examines how contemporary currents of music consumption and production shut the doors on the organic creation of new music and trapped us in a whirlpool of repetition and stale nostalgia.

Combining personal memoir, interviews, industry research, and good old-fashioned critical passion, Rowell’s book is a pungent indictment of a music culture gone awry, crippled by nostalgia and subverted by the sinister hive minds of the internet.