On today's show:
A Former Athlete Changes Course
(Starts at 7:45)
It’s not often that filmmakers get their start in the entertainment business after retiring at age 25 from their first career as an athlete, but that’s exactly what Matthew Cherry did. He talks with John Horn about reinventing himself in Hollywood after leaving the NFL, how he got into directing music videos and television, and what he hopes his upcoming short film, “Hair Love,” and its companion children’s book say about black dads.
Spotify Walks Back A Program For Indie Musicians
(Starts at :45)
Lucas Shaw of Bloomberg News talks about his reporting: "Spotify is shutting down a program that allowed independent artists to upload their music directly to the music streaming service, a win for record labels and smaller distributors ... While Spotify’s growth has buoyed the entire music industry, the push into additional services for artists has complicated its negotiations for continued access to songs from major labels, which viewed the effort as a way to cut their share of sales."
A Rare Voice In The Opera World
John Holiday is an up-and-coming counter-tenor in the opera world. Most of the repertoire for his vocal range was written in the early 1700s for singers who were known as Castrati — men deprived of their manhood so they could retain their boyish voices. While Holiday pays tribute to this older repertoire, he’s also pioneering radical new works for the operatic stage. He spoke with our producer Jonathan Shifflett about his one-man show, "The John Holiday Experience," and how he first became interested in opera.