95
The enshittification of music, by Rick Beato
(www.youtube.com)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 26 Jun 2024
95 points (92.0% liked)
Enshittification
1577 readers
1 users here now
What is enshittification?
The phenomenon of online platforms gradually degrading the quality of their services, often by promoting advertisements and sponsored content, in order to increase profits. (Cory Doctorow, 2022, extracted from Wikitionary) source
The lifecycle of Big Internet
We discuss how predatory big tech platforms live and die by luring people in and then decaying for profit.
Embrace, extend and extinguish
We also discuss how naturally open technologies like the Fediverse can be susceptible to corporate takeovers, rugpulls and subsequent enshittification.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Did you watch the video? Because that’s not really what he was saying. He was talking about how we consume music and how the studios and basically capitalism have “streamlined” and bastardized what is meant to be art. He’s talking almost exclusively about how capitalism has robbed us of human connection, how vampiric companies stopped paying to make things that cost more using human musicians in order to sterilize the music for broader appeal and to maximize profits.
Is that…something you disagree with? This is enshittification. Right here. This is a 100% match for the community you’re in. Don’t like that concept? Don’t interact with this community, basically.
To the consumption part, I have given more money directly to more artists via discovering them on Spotify then attending their shows and buying their merch than I ever even came close to back in the record buying days when record companies were screwing their artists anyway.
I know quite a few bands personally who will never attain Taylor Swift levels of wealth, but they've got a business model of touring and merch down to a science that affords them a nice living doing what they love. This also includes tons of accessibility and fan interaction that very much didn't use to be a thing.
The savvy DIYers are sidestepping the entire record company schematic and using streaming services as effectively free marketing.
If you think you are helping artists by listening to them on spotify, you might be wrong. Check out Cory Doctorow on Spotify
Did you read my comment at all?
Haha seems I did not comprehend it. Thanks.
Okay, I watched the whole video and I have to disagree. The first half of the video is about how music is too easy to create, and only part of it is really about how corporations are using their catalogue to train AI, which I agree is scummy. However, the rest is about how the barrier of entry is lower, and he doesn't really articulate why that's a bad thing. Yeah you can make really sterile stuff at a fast rate, but you can also put work in and create something unique even with cheap tools. It kinda feels like saying every artist who uses MSPaint just copies and pastes Clipart, ignoring the few who make visually stunning pixel art. If anything, we've trended a bitaway of the stranglehold of companies in the last decade due to independent creation being much more viable.
He also says that modern music is subject to trends, which I think is a weird distinction to make. Old music is full of trends, because people would try to replicate what was popular on the radio. How many parents tried to make the next Jackson 5? I'm sure some followers of trends put out great stuff, but a lot of it was trash, same as ever.
Likewise, I find the second part overly steeped in "wrong generation kids these days" emotion. If he made more of a point of how streaming services rake artists over the coals, or the value of listening to full albums from artists you want to support, or about how cheap streaming services cannot financially support the large number of artists they carry, then I would agree. But he makes a big point of saving up and buying an album with his allowance which is purely a nostalgic feeling that is still felt by kids today. I also feel that we're just a lot more cautious of integrating artists into our personality just due to the fear of them turning out to be terrible people.
So, enshitification of streaming services? Yes. Enshitification of the entire industry? Not so much. Also nothing is going to make him sound more out of touch than calling phones "thought deletion devices."
Same shit new day. Radio, tape decks, electronic generated music, Napster. They all are just spins on "music is shitty or dead and not worthwhile". It's been going on for ages.
There has always been shit, and there has always been indie and lesser known potentially more interesting music you have to look for.
No. You’re missing the point of what was said. It’s not “new technology will destroy integrity.” All of the tech he’s talking about he talks about from experience. He’s discussing how companies are bastardizing technological advancements for profit. And selling the soul of what’s meant to be human expression for a more guaranteed return. This isn’t an old guy vs the youth thing. It’s a music guy speaking on what is happening with late stage capitalism in the music industry.
Now, a legitimate criticism is his whole thing about how it was better to have to work for money to save up to buy records. I mean, sure, there is a marked difference in the way people consume music nowadays and it has (again, thanks to capitalism) morphed into what is most likely to catch people’s attention, what can be the most TikTok friendly, etc.
It’s the focus on catchy singles in an attention economy instead of cohesive albums. But the upside that he missed to both of these is that while, yes, the democratization of pro-quality tools does make music easier to make and thus is done to homogenize a lot of music—but this can also be a good thing. In commercial music, it’s a big downside because pop music is now basically engineered to be as earwormy as possible. But it’s also a huge upside because now anyone, regardless of privilege, can create. That does flood us all with endless subpar bullshit, but it also allows small artists to be heard without some corporate fuckin record label holding those keys. He doesn’t go into that, and he overlooks the upsides to this. But the video was “what’s wrong with music,” so maybe he’d agree, but he doesn’t mention it and that’s a big failure on his part.
No, I'm not. It's a new form of an old argument. The same crap about singles was said about the radio and singles.