What’s a Zogblog?

It’s a newsletter on the intersection of music, media and money. One day you might see an interview with a hip-hop legend such as RZA or DJ Khaled; the next, perhaps an indie star like Hanson or Amanda Palmer; the next, an Olympic athlete or a professional clown or a future NFL Hall of Famer. Paid subscribers get all that plus a weekly installment of Zack’s new book, We Are All Musicians Now. The premise: artists have been the canaries in the coal mine of modern business for decades, experiencing nearly every major disruption—the end of physical retail, the birth of streaming, NFTs—long before the rest of the world. Follow the musicians, and you can see the future.

What’s a Zog?

Zack O'Malley Greenburg has covered the business of media & entertainment for over a decade, most recently as a Forbes senior editor. His latest book, A-List Angels, was published in 2020 by Little, Brown. Previously, he penned 3 Kings, Michael Jackson, Inc. and the Jay-Z biography Empire State of Mind, now on its “Billionaire Edition” fourth printing (here’s his latest Jay-Z net worth estimate). Zack has also written for the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, Vibe, Variety, McSweeney’s and the Library of Congress; he's been a source for BBC, NPR, and 60 Minutes, and a speaker at SXSW, CES, TEDx, Princeton and Harvard.

In his first job, Zack played the title role in the 1992 film Lorenzo's Oil; he started his writing career at age 14 as video game reviewer for Boys’ Life. Zack graduated Yale in 2007 with an American Studies degree and joined Forbes, where he penned over 1,000 stories, including a dozen-plus covers on subjects from Kanye West to Katy Perry to Richard Branson. His work has spanned everything from hedge fund schemes to the Wu-Tang Clan's secret album, pioneering Forbes’ hip-hop coverage and helping launch the 30 Under 30 franchise along the way. He lives in New York with his wife, daughter, cats and too many bobblehead dolls.