Pop Conference 2018

Norma Coates is Associate Professor with a joint appointment in the Don Wright Faculty of Music and the Faculty of Information and Media Studies at the University of Western Ontario. Her publications include articles about gender and popular music, sound studies, and transmedia engagements... Read More →

Glenn McDonald believes that music is the thing that humans do best, and that you don't have to understand people to want to hear them sing. At Spotify he variously attempts to quantify awe, turn arguments about counting into conversations about love, and extract new particles from... Read More →

Katherine Meizel is Associate Professor of Ethnomusicology at Bowling Green State University. Her book Idolized: Music, Media, and Identity in American Idol (IU Press) was published in 2011; she also wrote about Idol for the Slate.com from 2007 to 2011. She is currently co-editing... Read More →

Chris Molanphy is a pop-chart analyst and critic who writes about the intersection of culture and commerce in popular music. He writes the “Why Is This Song No. 1?” series for Slate and hosts the Panoply podcast Hit Parade. His work has appeared in Pitchfork, Vulture, NPR Music's... Read More →

Discover Weakly: Sexism On SpotifySpotify’s most popular playlists are noticeably male dominated. Spotify’s biggest playlists in rap (“Rap Caviar”), rock (“Rock This”) and electronic (“mint”) comprise some of the platform’s most visible real estate, and often include... Read More →