been thinking about this a lot within the context of the industry I work in recently. specifically about how the current music industry, especially in the case of streaming, has commoditized music into being essentially worthless in and of itself. a song in a vacuum has no value if it isnāt attached to the ābrandā of the artist, which becomes a platform to sell merch, concerts, generate content, and all the other activities that actually generate money for the artist (and label). there is licensing revenue, but even then thatās assigning value to the right to exploit revenue from the song, not the art itself.
reading this book that takes place in the early 1800s and it mentions how music used to be just something that people did for themselves in their own homes, writing their own songs or purchasing sheet music to perform othersā songs. musicianship used to be a socially binding activity, as you would play for the gratification of those in your community. in most cases tho people performed for their and their immediate circleās own satisfaction, and there was no pressure to turn it into a product. today itās like people who want to be good at music have to attempt to be a professional to justify spending the time that isnāt generating money for them, squeezing it between their day jobs. if you want your music to be heard by others you have to heavily market yourself to vie for attention among the endless others on streaming platforms. thereās few places if any where people can come together and perform music themselves for any reason other than their own edification, and weāve lost any social practices that encouraged everyone to have some form of musicianship to be able to participate in these kinds of events. itās like something that was as common as riding a bike back in the day has been discredited as a socially valuable skill as it became unprofitable, same for dancing I suppose.
anyway, not really going anywhere with this, just hoping for a future world where all this AI coming up becomes something that alleviates the need for work and frees people up for art and community instead of becoming a competing force churning out music as a commodified product and drowning out the humans who produce at a human pace. the pessimist in me feels like the pressures of capitalism will mean that the opposite will happen, and AI will create the art so that the people have more time to dedicate to producing āvalueā
Mar 17, 2024
Related Recs
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my latest article for my music blog Fourth Best looks into the case of an artist that's putting out AI music and is taking the work very seriously. they prides themself in only using AI for the music making process and doing all of the marketing, graphics, video etc. himself. I don't feel good about it.
my recommendation for the day besides reading my post is to find opportunities to fit into a crew. you don't have to be a musician to have an impact on the music community if you've got writing, design, organising skills - it's true of most creative worlds. I don't think that like, everyone who makes bad genai music is going to transition to music journalism or whatever and feel good about it, but there's joy in being a background character sometimes. share the spotlight.
Feb 25, 2025
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Out of all the proverbial dicks to suck in your music career, none is more virulent and diseased than that of your ostensible āpeers.ā Wisdom says to be a good writer you must read, but to be a good artist or musician I think this advice is actually toxic and creativity destroying. Words written are like an instrument to be mastered, a writer more an instrumentalist than a composer. To be a composer is to arrange and order those instruments into harmonious totality. To be a producer is to create. Spotify is a poisonous psyop for producers that teaches sonic compliance and algorithmic servitude designed to place an artistās work āin conversation withā every other artist and flatten creative expression into that which can be easily understood and categorized.Ā
We are contemporaneously trapped in a nostalgic death spiral for producers that is driven by a desperate quest for influence and the merciless unyielding boot of software companies upon your neck hawking VST licensing so that you can sound like every other band. For what? So that nerds can argue where your sound sits in the tautology of electronic music production? Whenās the last time an abletonpilled serum enjoyer wrote a catchy song that was not simply an incremental deviation from the last one?
Your unique voice will die a painful and uncelebrated death in the trenches of influence, which is why I recommend steering as clear of it entirely. If you are a good producer you only listen to your own music, because thatās the music you want to hear.
Nov 15, 2023
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Throughout my whole life, I had awful music teachers. I had a piano teacher that made me sit on my hands because he was frustrated with the way I played scales and a music teacher in primary/middle school that gave me so many anxiety attacks that my doctor finally gave me a note so I didnāt have to go anymore.
I was told so many times throughout my life that I had no music talent, discouraged from going further than scales but all of those people (teachers!!!!) were wrong. They just couldnt fathom that I had a different musical brain than them.
When I was 23, I ended up having to move back home from LA after my job rescinded their promise to sponsor me for a visa. I was depressed and heartbroken and lonely. I went to school for writing but didnāt want to write anymore so I ended up opening GarageBand on my iPad.
I was inspired by all the things I could do on it. I suddenly felt like I was entering a new world. After making a couple beats, I started moving everything over to the laptop version of GarageBand. I bought big headphones, a cheap usb mic and a keyboard off of a guy from Craigslist and continued to tinker. One of my favorite things to do at the time was to download karaoke midi tracks of popular songs I loved, import them into GarageBand and change the instrument until I felt like I was making something new. I would then use my shitty mic to wail on top of it.
I used GarageBand for years after that to make tons of songs that I just uploaded to SoundCloud without thinking about it much. Eventually I got a controller/sampler and access to Ableton and thats when the fun really started.
My love for music making snowballed after that, I amassed more gear and skill and eventually made an album after a couple years. I was obsessed with making it and while I feel really whatever about it now, I donāt feel whatever about the experience.
Music has allowed me space to express parts of me that there are no words for. The best thing I can impart is to take advantage of this. There are some things that you can only explain with a kick drum or a sine wave or a really hard bassline.
Music is still a huge part of me! I made another album after that first and now Iām working on my next project. I recently reincarnated myself (everyone in the ~industry~ advised against this but Iām a different person now) and Iām excited to see whatās in store for me. I donāt expect to make money or become famous but music feeds my soul in a way nothing else can.
Have fun!!
May 4, 2024
Top Recs from @royallmonarch
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I consume a lot of music regularly, and a huge part of keeping a fresh diet of new listens going is having enough sources of recommendations that arenāt an algorithm that either 1) reinforces your existing listening patterns, keeping you stagnant in your tastes, or 2) platforms whoever paid enough to push their product to the top, serving you something that may not inherently be of inferior quality, but may not align with your tastes, may not be exciting beyond just being a new release, and realigns your current listening habits to be more in line with what the average user on the platform is also listening to ā which socially might have benefits but which creates a homogeneity of consumption that can become bland since youāre listening to something really just because itās the next product on the assembly line to have its public moment and not because anything about the music actually captured your attention. the current landscape of streaming is designed to keep you at an all you can eat buffet where you take whatās served to you, and as a result a lot of us have forgotten how to look at a menu and order.
so what does taking a more active role in your own music curation look like? for me, itās meant not using streaming as a primary listening platform. I mostly use my local Apple Music library on my phone that I curate with the vestigial iTunes Library framework thatās still a part of Apple Music on my laptop. probably going to find an alternative soon since apple seems to be cutting integration progressively. I like this method because it forces me to choose what to sync to the limited storage space I have, forcing me to take inventory of what I actually listen to and what I can offload. the files I get are mostly from Bandcamp or Soulseek depending on whether itās available for purchase or entirely unavailable online (as is the case for a lot of electronic music that was on vinyl only, which is where soulseek comes in clutch). I also have freedom here to change the ID3 tags to better sort and organize, rate, change track info, and track my own listening data.
Bandcamp and other music purchasing platforms are great because 1) it reshapes my relationship to music away from consumerism and back towards curation. I have to pay actual money for this thing now if I want to use it, so iām forced to consider its value (usually iāll stream a release first to gauge my interest). 2) having to spend money helps me to course out my meals so to speak, as iāll buy a few releases iāve accumulated in my cart over the month and cash out on Bandcamp Friday when 100% of my money is actually getting to the artist (TOMORROW IS BANDCAMP FRIDAY BTW!!!), and between purchases I can actually chew and savor and digest my last orders, they donāt get swept up in the deluge of new releases. my plate is full until iām done and then I order more. also for the times of the year like now when new music isnāt coming out as regularly I take time to find older music that I would normally overlook while keeping up with new drops. currently very into early 80s/late 70s music with early digital production, kinda stuff that would evolve into synthpop and dance music.
so how do you know what to order? for me, Iām getting recs through trusted curation platforms. whether itās bandcamp daily, yāall lovely folks here on PI.FYI, friends, or most importantly musicians who I follow on socials that share their tastes through posts, stories, playlists on steaming, interviews, etc. I like this last one especially because itās kind of like a musical game of telephone. if I like an artist and they share their interests and influences itās like every layer in this process is stretching my palate further from the sound that I was originally interested in and into a new territory that has some shared DNA but would never have been recommended to me by an algo because thereās no shared category or label between them, only the musical influence and interpretation of it made by the artist. as an example, I was a huge Skrillex stan, he signed KOAN Sound to his label, they collab with Asa who collabs with Sorrow, Sorrow takes huge influence from Burial, Burial makes some ambient adjacent stuff and takes huge influence from 90s rave music and drum and bass and 2000s rnb, now iām listening to Brandy - All in Me, William Basinski, Aphex Twin, none on whom would get recommended by Spotify to me from Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites.
LAST thing iāll say ā because in yappin about this iām realizing how actually passionate about this subject I am: MAKE LISTS! playlists are cool, but they can flatten your music into vague categories of āvibesā and āaestheticsā and encourage picking one-off songs from artists that you never form an active audience relationship with. I make a practice of making my own year end lists of top 25 albums (plus some honorable recs and top individual songs) and keeping them in a notes doc that I regularly update and rearrange over the course of the year. this forces me to consider the actual relationship iām forming with what iāve ordered for myself. did I like it in the moment but it didnāt have staying power? is it slowly growing on me? it also encourages taking albums as a whole. maybe I liked one or two tracks a lot but the rest wasn't resonating. thatās ok! maybe I rank it lower but now iāve actually taken time to consider it, itās in my library, and maybe (quite a few cases for me) something I ranked like bottom 5 albums becomes a retroactive favorite from that year as my tastes evolve. also 25 albums to take with me from each year is really more than you'd think, i struggle sometimes to even find 25 that I formed a true connection with. I think the biggest thing the itunes era ruined that led into now is the single-ification of music, the ability to separate the hits from the deep cuts. albums are meant to be taken as a whole, and then once you've really sat with the whole you can find what actually stuck. even then I like to keep the whole around because soooo often iāll write off a track that yeeeears later I come to love. trust the artist, they made it like they did for a reason.
aaannyyyywayy TLDR: get recs organically, be more active in deciding your listening patterns, fr*cken pay artists yall, trust the artist embrace the album, really consider what you consume
Feb 29, 2024
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iām not gonna go into the state of politics in this country, frankly I enjoy that this site has been a politics free space for the most part. with that being said, resigning to despair and the feeling of powerlessness serves only the status quo. inaction is not the solution, nor is waiting for the government to be what you want it to be. politics over: hereās the rec
be the change you want to see
as much of a cliche as this saying is, iāve grown to believe in it with my full being as iāve gotten older. for the things you have control over, for the practical needs that you can meet within your community, for the little things you can do every day to ease someoneās burden or generally be a pleasant interaction in someoneās life: bring to the world what you feel it lacks.
where you live there are likely already communities that are arising to support each other and call for change. seek those out if thatās a motivating notion for you. participate as much as you are able and as little as you please, every bit counts. being a visible and tangible example of how the agency we all have can create something better will motivate others to find their voice. a lot of people feel like you, but even a few in action is better than multitudes in despair.
community is so key, and the world we live in has created a situation where isolation is the default so that individuals are forced to rely on the market or the state to meet their needs. how much better would it be to have neighbors and friends as a support network, mutually exchanging their time and resources to strengthen the communtiy and invest in relationships that benefit the whole. the moment we all realize that we can do for each other what the world tells us we need to do ourselves, the stronger we will be and the more we can come together and enact real change from the bottom up, rather than being divided in pleading for a top down approach.
this may sound revolutionary because we have become so detached from community that we cannot envision the changes in our model of living that would have to be made, but itās sooo not that deep, and it feels more like investing in the good in others than sacrificing personal comforts. it can look like:
- shopping at a local business vs a corporate chain, get to know the staff, get to know your fellow patrons
- spending time with friends, there doesn't need to be a reason or occasion. make meals together, drive together to go do something, maybe literally just be in each others presence as you do daily life, share each others sacred presence amidst the mundane
- give things you donāt need to a friend who does, exchange clothes, exchange favors, share knowledge and resources, lend a skill or a craft, donate things if you donāt know someone who can use it, exchange things and experiences without the need for monetary incentive
- create things together, make art together, share and exchange media, try things for the joy of experiencing them without the need to be āgoodā at it,
- grieve together, worry together, talk out negative feelings, commiserate, support, encourage, motivate, share your accomplishments, celebrate together
- get to know your neighbors, why is everyone in isolation while in such proximity?
- get off that damn phone if it makes you feel bad, you wont miss out, the world happens outside of it, unlearn FOMO
- enjoy nature, go on walks, get outside, sweat and run and jump and see the sky
- remind yourself that life is about what happens right now, donāt be concerned with what could be or what was if you are unable to affect it in the present.
- go to a concert at a small venue for an artist youāve never heard of, bring friends, donāt preclude experience for the perceived necessity of entertainment
- unlearn grindset, but also unlearn bainrot. donāt fester in your down time. rest can be active, activity can be restorative. your time is precious and you will meet your need for purpose and direction by literally choosing to pursue a āmeaninglessā hobby in even what little time you may have vs scrolling and taking psychic damage.
- learn to enjoy the abundance of freely available joy in this world, we have been tricked to believe that money is the sole provider of a happy life
idk iām just becoming mindful of what brings me life in this world and so much of it is available to me solely by seeking it out instead of idleness in my free time under the guise of ārest.ā so much if it comes from seeing the divine in others and creating bonds and relationships and support networks. so much of it comes from enjoying beauty and art, and moderating and savoring that experience vs endless consumption and media gluttony.
the world through a screen is bleak, the world in front of your eyes can be beautiful, the system is broken but you and everyone you know has some untapped agency. anyway imma get off my soapbox, go catch a firefly or sit around a campfire with the homies. youāll be glad you did.
Jun 29, 2024
šŖ
not because you met someone or anything but because you take psychic damage every time you doom swipe on there and you probably never liked being on there in the first place and why does everyone seem to have a wack helen keller take and feel the need to put that on their profile like itās cute??
time to do it the old fashioned way and mix and mingle at the sock hop or however our grandparents did it. after all, you just being around and living life is gonna be a better pitch for why someone should date you than those same 5 photos and your two-truths-and-a-lie prompt.
Feb 22, 2024