I don't know how it took me so long to notice this, but Spotify and Facebook, among other gigantic tech corporations, are using the IMF's playbook as their business model.
I’m 46. I consider myself roughly the same generation as Zuckerberg, and both of us really at least one ahead of my students.
Obviously “generation” is a massive oversimplification; what I really mean is that they don’t have to obey any of the rules we give them; they don’t have to follow our advice, or our footsteps. If their dad says they have to vote for the lesser evil they’re allowed to refuse. We’ve given them Spotify and told them to use Facebook. I think they should start by assuming all of this stuff is harmful to them, proceed to tear it down.
I have a lot of hope for my students, they are in general much more politically engaged and active than the students of 1998-2001 were. They haven’t got the answers, or even the questions, always, but they know something is wrong.
well we're certainly on the same page as far as the situation goes with big tech and the destruction of everything we hold dear, such as the independent music and arts economies that used to exist. but i maintain that when you say "we" you're talking about someone who is neither you nor me, unless you're a rapacious tech billionaire intent on destroying everything in order to make more billions. that isn't either of us tho, thankfully. there are enough of those people out there! you, i suspect, are just a good guy trying to do good work, who never started facebook or spotify.
I’m a music production lecturer in Manchester, and one of the things I find most terrifying is the way that my students, no matter how much I tell them that other things used to be/could be/are possible insist on believing it’s an absolute law of physics that for their music to achieve validity via commercial viability (which is the only kind of validity we perceive any more), they must pay the man £200 to bump their track up the TikTok algorithm. They can all see that the “Music Industry” (tm) is dying on its arse, they can see a lot of the mechanisms which will deny them a career but still they won’t jump ship.
As Karen says above, it’s payola, 30 years ago we could see that it was wrong, but thank you neoliberalism, we get to choose between evil and lesser evil, which both in the fullness of time lead to roughly the same amount of evil.
There is a ray of accelerationist hope in the fact that it’s dying, but yet refusing to adapt to that. The music industry was one of the first to be neoliberalised, ie, the widespread acceptance of the idea that it’s better to have businesses run by business goons than people who know and care about the thing; and the business goons have broken it, both the product and the market, and all of my students can see that.
They haven’t yet seen the way out; probably because it doesn’t exist yet. They will need to invent it. The best thing I think the likes of you and I (David) can do for the youth of today is to encourage them to destroy everything our generation built. I do this in every lecture.
I’m going to send your article to three of my MA students who are writing theses on this topic!
yeah, one of the things that's so discouraging is when there's not an intergenerational culture of resistance to neoliberalism, as you can find in many countries, the younger generations come less and less equipped to understand what's going on, and are more likely to accept the new reality. if you're not old enough to have prospered as an independent musician during the pre-spotify era -- as millions of us around the world did -- it seems like a pipe dream now.
i would refute your claim to this being a generational thing, however. it's clearly not. it has always been and continues to be a class conflict, that every generation has waged, on both sides of the conflict. the sooner we're clear on that, the better. it also didn't begin in living memory for anyone alive today. we were all born into it. i mean even if we're just talking about within the confines of the history of the corporate music industry, beginning with tin pan alley, sheet music, vinyl records and radio.
also, not to blame the youth for this dystopia, but how old is mark zuckerberg?
I’m 46. I consider myself roughly the same generation as Zuckerberg, and both of us really at least one ahead of my students.
Obviously “generation” is a massive oversimplification; what I really mean is that they don’t have to obey any of the rules we give them; they don’t have to follow our advice, or our footsteps. If their dad says they have to vote for the lesser evil they’re allowed to refuse. We’ve given them Spotify and told them to use Facebook. I think they should start by assuming all of this stuff is harmful to them, proceed to tear it down.
I have a lot of hope for my students, they are in general much more politically engaged and active than the students of 1998-2001 were. They haven’t got the answers, or even the questions, always, but they know something is wrong.
well we're certainly on the same page as far as the situation goes with big tech and the destruction of everything we hold dear, such as the independent music and arts economies that used to exist. but i maintain that when you say "we" you're talking about someone who is neither you nor me, unless you're a rapacious tech billionaire intent on destroying everything in order to make more billions. that isn't either of us tho, thankfully. there are enough of those people out there! you, i suspect, are just a good guy trying to do good work, who never started facebook or spotify.
I’m a music production lecturer in Manchester, and one of the things I find most terrifying is the way that my students, no matter how much I tell them that other things used to be/could be/are possible insist on believing it’s an absolute law of physics that for their music to achieve validity via commercial viability (which is the only kind of validity we perceive any more), they must pay the man £200 to bump their track up the TikTok algorithm. They can all see that the “Music Industry” (tm) is dying on its arse, they can see a lot of the mechanisms which will deny them a career but still they won’t jump ship.
As Karen says above, it’s payola, 30 years ago we could see that it was wrong, but thank you neoliberalism, we get to choose between evil and lesser evil, which both in the fullness of time lead to roughly the same amount of evil.
There is a ray of accelerationist hope in the fact that it’s dying, but yet refusing to adapt to that. The music industry was one of the first to be neoliberalised, ie, the widespread acceptance of the idea that it’s better to have businesses run by business goons than people who know and care about the thing; and the business goons have broken it, both the product and the market, and all of my students can see that.
They haven’t yet seen the way out; probably because it doesn’t exist yet. They will need to invent it. The best thing I think the likes of you and I (David) can do for the youth of today is to encourage them to destroy everything our generation built. I do this in every lecture.
I’m going to send your article to three of my MA students who are writing theses on this topic!
yeah, one of the things that's so discouraging is when there's not an intergenerational culture of resistance to neoliberalism, as you can find in many countries, the younger generations come less and less equipped to understand what's going on, and are more likely to accept the new reality. if you're not old enough to have prospered as an independent musician during the pre-spotify era -- as millions of us around the world did -- it seems like a pipe dream now.
i would refute your claim to this being a generational thing, however. it's clearly not. it has always been and continues to be a class conflict, that every generation has waged, on both sides of the conflict. the sooner we're clear on that, the better. it also didn't begin in living memory for anyone alive today. we were all born into it. i mean even if we're just talking about within the confines of the history of the corporate music industry, beginning with tin pan alley, sheet music, vinyl records and radio.
also, not to blame the youth for this dystopia, but how old is mark zuckerberg?
"Pay-to-play" had a name in the music industry in the past, and it was a bad word -- "payola." Now it's a business model! Hey -- progress!