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If someone already resurrected the state of the music biz thread, I can take this down.

Anyway, Matt Bruenig has this post on music and post-scarcity, written solely from a consumer perspective:

https://mattbruenig.com/2021/05/12/what ... -scarcity/

For a publicly avowed socialist, he skates real quick over this "if", which is doing soooo much work:

If you brought these services into public ownership, eliminated the small monthly fee, and ensured that middling artists got more money from the whole thing, then you’d arguably have fully automated luxury music communism.

I do take the central point about progress/creation and destruction being two sides of the same coin. It's not insubstantial. Religions are built around that concept.
There are some questionable assertions in there that raise my hackles a little, but that's probably because music is so deeply woven into my life and that doesn't seem to be the kind of music listener he's describing.
I think it's a little glib to dismiss corporate greed motivations like monopoly and payola-style algorithmic suggestions in favor of the "root cause" of post-scarcity, though I get it makes a snappier blog post. These things can work together. Human systems are complex; singular motivations are hard to come by. Liz Pelly's work in the Baffler still towers over most others for me on this topic. (One of her articles is linked in one of those quoted sections.)

I think Steve or someone else said it best back in V1 about how people have only been paid for recorded music since the invention of sound recording. Music is fine, always will be, the business and culture involved will change.

No one is gonna miss a bunch a music nerds on a message board in 100 years. No one will know we existed. Music will still exist and people will enjoy it.

Vinyl sales have been growing for 16+ years straight.

As for Spotify and the culture shift it sort of clandestinely but also right-under-your-nose is creating. I disagree. I grew up in the US-70s and 80s on FM radio. I listened to classic rock and whatever related station until I heard the college station, KFSR, Fresno State Radio, and there was a classical station that had a hardcore show one night a week at 11pm or something, the entire rest of the time was classical, and maybe some NPR sprinkled in. Once I heard college radio, that was it, a light bulb went off and I actively sought music, different music. I'm not the only one this happened to, and the kids I see at record stores today won't be the last. Some kids I knew never went to record stores, didn't care, they just listened to radio. Those kids were not the last to listen to whatever was pushed at them.

Spotify has not changed how I listen to music, except that I do listen through Spotify sometimes. The algorithm sucks, IMHO, and constantly shows me shit I have already heard. I don't want that. But Spotify doesn't know that.

Is Spotify pressing records yet?

brephophagist wrote: Thu Jul 08, 2021 8:37 pm Liz Pelly's work in the Baffler still towers over most others for me on this topic. (One of her articles is linked in one of those quoted sections.)

One of those article quotes Holly Herndon, who IMO is one of the most thoughtful people in music on the subject. I love reading her words as much as hearing her music.

brephophagist wrote: Thu Jul 08, 2021 8:37 pm For a publicly avowed socialist, he skates real quick over this "if", which is doing soooo much work:

If you brought these services into public ownership, eliminated the small monthly fee, and ensured that middling artists got more money from the whole thing, then you’d arguably have fully automated luxury music communism.

I do take the central point about progress/creation and destruction being two sides of the same coin. It's not insubstantial. Religions are built around that concept.
There are some questionable assertions in there that raise my hackles a little, but that's probably because music is so deeply woven into my life and that doesn't seem to be the kind of music listener he's describing.
I think it's a little glib to dismiss corporate greed motivations like monopoly and payola-style algorithmic suggestions in favor of the "root cause" of post-scarcity, though I get it makes a snappier blog post. These things can work together. Human systems are complex; singular motivations are hard to come by. Liz Pelly's work in the Baffler still towers over most others for me on this topic. (One of her articles is linked in one of those quoted sections.)

Thanks for the LP tip!