The big labels cut foolish deals with streaming platforms, who are their natural enemies. Spotify will work to undermine labels by promoting passive listening. This is bad for the music business, because many listeners don't even know the names of the artists they're hearing.
The decades that are most popular right now are those with the most chords. It's hard to escape the obvious conclusion: By killing song form, the music industry destroyed its own future.
The entire music industry has embraced digital tech and streaming. But the music economy is going in the opposite direction—back to live music and in-the-flesh contact with the audience. As a result, the percent of consumer spending targeted at concert tickets is growing rapidly. Income generated by digital music has meanwhile collapsed, and shows no sign of rebounding.
We finally get a trillion dollars invested in the arts, and its sole purpose is to destroy the livelihood of artists. Count me old fashioned, but I prefer the old days when rich people were patrons of the arts, not parasites.
tech companies started raising millions of venture capital dollars and scraping my music without my consent. They now use his own work to generate 'shittier music with it that is inadvertently associated with my name—and then attempting to resell that in the same economy in which I make money from my music.'
The album covers have a persuasive vintage look, even with some evident wear-and-tear on the margins, as if they had been part of a record collector's personal archive for many years. Sometimes the musicians even look familiar.
And if AI scammers can steal royalties without consequences, this will metastasize like a cancer throughout the music economy. The fact that Spotify is encouraging listeners to check out these albums is especially troubling.
8mo ago
Underscored — save the words that stop you in your tracks.
