When Music Stopped Mattering
linernotesxr.substack.com
linernotesxr.substack.com
It's rather the music itself which became a commodity, and it's not mainly background noise, but is reduced to a function (support certain moods, etc.). This becomes obvious when looking at the evolving statistics. More and more people just select and listen to anonymous playlists and don't care who played, composed or produced the music thei're listening to. They buy and consume music like water or potatoes.
> The financial reality for modern musicians is grim
That's it, and this development started at least thirty years ago. I remember well that the opening acts at our concerts were increasingly being replaced by DJs, and within a short time, more and more live gigs were being replaced entirely by DJs (people didn't care much). Studio gigs had long been hard to come by at that point. Today, more and more stars are going on stage without a band or even their “singing” is a playback. Spotify and the like have also wiped out the middle class, so that today it's mostly only the big stars who are known by name.
> AI Accelerates Everything
The market in which musicians could earn money was already broken long before AI. The record monopolists, who repeatedly claim to represent the interests of musicians, were at the forefront of filling their own pockets with services such as Spotify, and their actions against AI companies are also more than flimsy, as it is more likely that they want to use this technology to improve their own pensions and increase their margins even further by no longer needing composers or studios. According to the well-known Deezer study, 97% of people can no longer distinguish AI from human music anyway. And still we will continue to make music, and as before, barely anyone will notice.
Also, maybe solo singing by shepherd boys and cow-herders, while roaming vast grass lands in hot summer. There were some great singers who wrote fantastic lyrics that go for hours with hardly any instrumental music. I knew they did it for their own pleasure.
The shepherd can afford to sing for hours because he has a job herding sheep. The modern musician, by contrast, is often told to "get a real job" so they can afford to make art (fortunately, I followed this advice twenty years ago and now only make music as a hobby). Your argument also implies that the "purest" form of music is one generated by people who have no choice but to work in the fields; it suggests that if musicians want to find "pleasure" in their art again, they should perhaps accept poverty and obscurity as the price of admission; ironically, that's the reality of a majority of musicians today.
The U.S. doesn't have enough of a cohesive entertainment culture anymore to really have even a weak notion of national pop music. The Internet keeps everyone in their bubbles. So if you're looking for U.S. Top 40, it's gone-that's what no one cares about except people who want to write articles about music.
It's the sunset of a long process of fragmentation in pop that's at least been there since the rock-vs-disco in the 70s.
I wouldn't say it's bad unless you don't use YouTube and/or Bandcamp. That's where I find most of my new stuff these days.
Ahh, that makes sense. I'm in the "don't care about Top 40" camp. I've never cared about that, even when it was still culturally relevant, and never listened to music much on the radio.
> I wouldn't say it's bad unless you don't use YouTube and/or Bandcamp.
I don't use YouTube for music. I buy music from Bandcamp, but don't use it for discovery. I do music discovery the same way I've done it my whole life: recommendations from friends who share my tastes, searching out works by the other people who contributed to an album (not just the musicians), and going to live musical performances.
I guess that fully explains why the music scene doesn't really look any less vibrant to me now than it used to.
when someone bought a CD in 1995, the artist earned roughly $2 from that single sale after label splits. Today, to earn that same $2, around 50 people need to stream the entire album front-to-back.
No. To earn that same $2, the guy who played the CD 50 times would today need to stream it... 50 times.
In a standard record deal, the number is much higher than 50. Usually, the artist only keeps $0.0006 per song (15% of the payout). To earn $2.00, you would need ~280 full album listens.
In 1995, if you bought a CD for $15, the artist got their $2.00 even if you only listened once. In 2025, if you listen once, the artist gets $0.007.
I dreamt so much about unlimited streaming access back then. 30 years later I realize it was a chimera that broke a lot of my will to dig into music and spend time on more rewarding albums. I’m just sick of the non stop novelty.
MP3 era was the best for this. Because a lot of music was then easy to get, and communities on the Internet were great. Streaming is just mass consumption, or I just don’t have the discipline to restrain.
Well, I’m now back to my very own library, supporting bands by buying their stuff on bandcamp or spending time on random old records I slept too much time on.