kokorodoko wrote: Thu Dec 14, 2023 12:43 pm I'm getting doomer overload. If you want a better future you have to be able to imagine it!

You assume free will isn’t an illusion

I apologize for dumping this in multiple threads but this article has been on my mind all week, because releasing music on the internet and promoting it is weird and hard. Also I partly think Bethany from Best Coast should be mocked for this, and partly I think I am a little bit Bethany.

https://www.stereogum.com/2245286/betha ... unch/news/

Geiginni wrote: DIY'ers will still learn music outside of any formal disciplined setting believing it will lead them to originality, while producing derivative music that's pretty much whatever their favorite stuff was at the moment they decided to try it for themselves.

I don't think that's how art works.

Every artist worth a damn is DIY at heart. You pick a starting point wherever works for you, and do your thing, and keep doing it, until eventually your main influence is yourself, and whatever you do is what you do. It might be big or it might be small but whatever, it's yours. Worrying about how original it is is likely to engage the inner critic and spoil everything.

There's a fine line between originality and gimmick anyway. Imagine if every band pushed the boundaries of music... it would be exhausting. Not everybody wants to make fancy music. There's nothing wrong with simple things, modest work, traditional forms, whatever resonates. Possibly a more Buddhist approach to art than the western ideal of continual innovation and that whole value hierarchy. I'm no expert on Buddhist art so pardon my bullshit but I do know the European value system has always had a massive stick up its arse.

Just be natural. If you can feel it then it's working. It's all inconsequential, anyway.

The future will be looking for things that haven't been corrupted by capitalism.

losthighway wrote: Thu Dec 14, 2023 7:20 pm Also I partly think Bethany from Best Coast should be mocked for this, and partly I think I am a little bit Bethany.

https://www.stereogum.com/2245286/betha ... unch/news/

The irony of these type of statements is how many people will spend 5-10 minutes reading this and 0 minutes looking the album up and listening to it. (guilty..)

10+ years ago I was pretty optimistic about all of this. "Nearly global distribution with no gatekeepers!" Of course it's clear there are still gatekeepers, but the bigger problem might be the cheapening effect of having everything ever available at all times, and the current, relentless battle for your attention.

Less people will get to be musicians as a career, but more people will be heard complaining about it

I think file-sharing/streaming has people thoroughly convinced music isn't worth paying for. I think tik-tok is going to decimate kids ability to listen to actual, full-length songs, if that has happened already. [I can't remember who it is but] there was a guitar-teaching youtube guy that said when he started teaching, kids would have their favorite bands/albums/songs that they loved and wanted to learn and that has largely gone away.

If the medium is the message, the message pretty much sucks.

Anthony Flack wrote: I don't think that's how art works.

You're right. I was just being reductivist and cynical. I hear formula and mimicry in almost everything. What made it worse was no longer being able to give credit or weight to the minutiae that seems to differentiate music for those when enjoy splitting genre-hairs. But it was something I enjoyed doing and did often in my youth.

Anthony Flack wrote: Just be natural. If you can feel it then it's working. It's all inconsequential, anyway.

The future will be looking for things that haven't been corrupted by capitalism.

Agreed there. Perhaps that's part of where I've landed, interest wise, where I'm at today.

marty wrote: I think file-sharing/streaming has people thoroughly convinced music isn't worth paying for.

It think it's convinced most of us that recordings aren't worth paying for. When the commodity no longer involves a material asset, the economies of that commodity favor self-promotion rather than revenue stream. The revenue stream is in drawing people to see live performance - which I think most people are willing to pay for. I don't buy recordings and I don't seek to provide a direct living for those who work in recording. I do pay, and am willing to pay well, to see live performances though.

I've always made the argument that the moment you expect to make a living from music, it is no longer just art or recreation, it's a business. And if you refuse to manage that activity in the same way you'd manage any business - even a part-time DIY gig or sole-prop, you're going to get taken or a ride or lose out. Art is no excuse for recklessness or naivete. If art is a pursuit that need be unbound from any economic consideration, then live like Vivian Maier and expect you're going to need to find other ways to make a living and make your art non-transactional.

marty wrote:I think tik-tok is going to decimate kids ability to listen to actual, full-length songs, if that has happened already. [I can't remember who it is but] there was a guitar-teaching youtube guy that said when he started teaching, kids would have their favorite bands/albums/songs that they loved and wanted to learn and that has largely gone away.

Our modern world is full of spuds. The same argument could be made about sketch comedy and punk rock making kids unable to sit though Pink Floyd's Echoes, A Midsummer Nights Dream, or Gotterdammerung. There are plenty of kids with patience, dedication, and talent working towards excellence, despite the majority being a bunch of social-media bound spuds swiping through endless clips of nonsense.

Perhaps it will begin to go extinct if it hasn't already started. Will humanity even need music? It started as a natural reaction to the world, a way for humans to interact with a world, an existence they couldn't fully comprehend. Would a more evolved human have a desire to create a soundtrack for existence? We've gone from fertility songs to sacred hymns to jazz to rock and the avant-garde. It will go wherever we go, which is scary.

What we have is clearly not a problem of restricted access to music. It's never been easier to find and listen to music.

What we have is a cultural problem. Back in the Sixties, when you had classic albums coming out every month or so, access was restricted yet by means of those very restrictions, a premium was placed on ensuring that what got released was high quality.

So you had a mystique that built up around classic albums that you just don't get as much these days, except with the biggest of artists. The last artist to do this was Beyonce, IMO. Lemonade was a cultural touchstone. And that great album was released seven years ago. In the Sixties, seven years was a fuckin cultural eon.

I don't know how you fix this problem of cultural atomization. It's sad and I hope something turns it around. In the meantime as someone who grew up in the album era as a haunter of record stores, I'm loving the access of the streaming platforms. Guess it's just not that healthy for the Gen Zers among us.

I don't mean to say there aren't great bands. I'd put Deerhoof, for one, up against anyone from a previous era. But Deerhoof isn't a cultural touchstone band. They're a hidden diamond in the ruff. And they're struggling.