Music isn’t a saddle or an automobile
Stop me if you’ve heard this cliche, the definitive example about change:
“Well change is inevitable: Look at the saddle making industry after the automobiles industry took off!”
When I mention to people the difficulty of navigating the digital landscapes for musicians and songwriters, I’m bound to hear that statement.
Yes, I get it–the facts about inevitable change–but here’s why that analogy doesn’t work for me: Music isn’t a saddle. Music isn’t an automobile.
It was music back then, and it’s still music now.
Yes, the products and platforms change–scarcity has been unlocked–but people are spending more time than ever before listening to music. Music is valued by the time people spend with it, yet the systems we are told to embrace seem to devalue music more and more each year of this new decade.
Spotify has shifted the value to not only pay-per-stream rates of less than a penny, but also a system where a fan has to spend an insane amount of time of consumption to equal any value returned.
Facebook changes their algorithm, figuratively demanding you upload your videos directly (which pays nothing); and if you share a Youtube link on your newsfeed, it won’t get any impressions as of 2016.
Quincy Jones said last year, “Honey, there is no music industry.”
Seth Godin posted a thoughtful piece today about living with your “frustrum” today:
The good news is that it’s entirely possibly you don’t need the peak of the pyramid. The leverage that comes from digital tools means that it’s entirely possible to do just fine (and have a powerful, positive life) without being David Bowie. Once you know that this is it, perhaps this might be enough.
However, I’d like to point out a hole in his statement. The corporations who own the digital tools don’t care about music. They don’t share the same interests as the creative classes. This technology boom isn’t trickling down into a creative class boom anymore.
There is little to leverage left.
Here’s another cliche: History repeats itself, and maybe the songwriter is a canary in the coal mine.
History repeats itself…We are stepping back into the 1800s.
We are stepping back into the 1800s, one that might resemble what Howard Zinn describes as the other civil war, the one of the working class people; historical facts that’s not taught much in the textbooks, but is mirroring the data: The middle class is erroding; the income inequality is obscene. And dissatisfaction is bubbling up beyond the creative class.
And artists, I don’t think we need to just accept living with our frustrum.
Comments are closed.