The rise of the Grifter Industrial Complex in most areas of our lives coupled with the erosion of trust in just about everything have led us here. With music specifically, we've always been pretty good at turning on artists who fast-track the path from obscurity to mainstream success. "Psy-Op" is just the 2026 equivalent of "Sellout" in the 90s.
P.S. If every music writer is on the take, well, I guess I'd like to know when I can expect my checks to start rolling in...
Righteous stuff, and I appreciate you writing this! Like you, I've seen a flood of supposed industry 'commentators' appear, and to be quite truthful many of them are purely grifters. Reading though the bad faith / straw man arguments is simply tired. A sign of the times, perhaps!
"....no skin in the game. By that, I mean that they have no actual professional experience working within the music industry..."
I'd suggest that even those with actual 'professional' experience (though I'm unclear what is supposed to be meant by 'professional') are rarely entitled to comment unless their skin in the the game is actual cash money, and *their* own cash money at that.
Unless you are involved in the writing, recording, releasing and seeking to promote music day to day using your own talent and cash you can have zero idea of what is involved.
The number of lumbering non-beneficial intermediaries taking the vast majority of artist income both before and after it has reached them (sometime years after it has been 'earned') is almost equal to the excessive number of artists and bands creating and (regrettably) releasing to the public music of such average 'quality' that the general public is simply swamped by mediocrity and has lost (if most ever had it even 50 years ago) all interest in original contemporary music as anything other than background and vacuous 'noise'.
Whilst culling commentators can we please cull most of the artists and bands distributing their music into the world.
There are times when I miss some aspects of the gatekeeper business of the 70s and 80s and even 90s. Democratisation of distribution has resulted only in large dollops of slop infecting the musical pathways of life. AI music is simply the excessively sweet and unnatural chemical sprinkles on the top of the cake. I'm unconvinced AI is making music worse, just adding extra worse to the steaming pile of musical shite already there from the last two decades or so.
Oh I'd agree that we have a saturation problem. Absolutely no question. Too much of everything such that the signal/noise ratio is now painfully tilted in the direction of the latter.
The only DSP in the US showing vanity metrics to the public is Slopify.
Maybe Blake and others should stop using Botify to describe "streaming" the way some use "Kleenex" to mean "facial tissues". It is a habit that most music writers engage in. They have been programmed to think that Slopify is the only DSP out there and that people don't use anything else.
We need to encourage these people to use "streaming" as a general term, rather than a synonym for a company that is hostile to artists, uses fake bands, pushes slop, accuses artists of botted streams when they didn't do it, bundled audiobooks to deny royalties to songwriters, imposed a 1000 stream threshold per track per year before rights holders are paid anything, burned hundreds of millions on podcasts nobody listened to like Prince Spare, and then there's Ek's investments in the perpetual war machine. I'm sure there's other crimes I've forgotten about.
The other thing we should do is encourage listeners and artists to switch to other platforms. I love Qobuz and subscribe to it. Their weekly-updated Discovery section is human-curated, profiles all genres, and is better than any algorithm pushing the same slop over and over again. I mention it regularly in my Article writing and Notes comments.
When everything is based on cultural Marxism' this what happens. Look at the terms... Psy op. I spent from 1999 -2017 every active in the indie music game in U.K and U.S.A. This whole temporal synthetic digital drowning pool has created this. This social media You Tube TikTok culture where everyone believes what they say because they say it has credibility. Marketing has always been part of the music game. What do people think? You really have people that think songs happen because they are just amazing. I was very active in the indie music world in attempting to break an artist from scratch. Folks never been in the game. they never have done a promo tour. Never did a low budget tour. They never been to the radio station. They never promoted to radio. They never marketed and promoted a video. There has been this massive delusion taking place with people believing that the music industry is based on the political system and political ideology. The premise that the music industry is fair? what are these people talking about? Fair.... I just laugh. Silicon valley hood winked everyone and now this is what we have. Silicon Valley never paid anyone and A.I has done the same thing . Blatant theft over thirty years. Now people can't make a living based on their music at .004 cents per stream and folks have to do everything else but music. I remember when this all started. It was about the what were called the major label. At least the label gave cash to the artist. What have the tech platforms given an artist? please someone tell me! yes the labels had a bad contract but music has always been a math of one supports the ten. The many never got through. Just because everyone can make a song now how many get through. The math hasn't changed and in fact it is worse. No one wishes to confront this. Now Suno and Udio are making Al Capone blush with their level of disdain for the copyright. These people writing about music are in a utopian delusion. But so is the bigger public. This is such a wide convo but all of this politics in music needs to go.
I saw someone comment recently that there's almost more talk about the music industry and the methodology of marketing than there actually is about the music itself. Now, whilst in real terms I suspect that's unlikely, I definitely can understand how someone would draw that conclusion.
My premise is that Silicon Valley has lead the talk. The song has taken a backseat from my observation. I am not active since 2018 and then covid got in the way. However, i am about to activate myself and relaunch. Much of what I see is the algorithm. I look at Hypebot and see very little about artistry. Well I understand it is a new game now. But all of the utopian political B.S I just shake my head. This people are a train wreck creating train wrecks.
The rise of the Grifter Industrial Complex in most areas of our lives coupled with the erosion of trust in just about everything have led us here. With music specifically, we've always been pretty good at turning on artists who fast-track the path from obscurity to mainstream success. "Psy-Op" is just the 2026 equivalent of "Sellout" in the 90s.
P.S. If every music writer is on the take, well, I guess I'd like to know when I can expect my checks to start rolling in...
Righteous stuff, and I appreciate you writing this! Like you, I've seen a flood of supposed industry 'commentators' appear, and to be quite truthful many of them are purely grifters. Reading though the bad faith / straw man arguments is simply tired. A sign of the times, perhaps!
"....no skin in the game. By that, I mean that they have no actual professional experience working within the music industry..."
I'd suggest that even those with actual 'professional' experience (though I'm unclear what is supposed to be meant by 'professional') are rarely entitled to comment unless their skin in the the game is actual cash money, and *their* own cash money at that.
Unless you are involved in the writing, recording, releasing and seeking to promote music day to day using your own talent and cash you can have zero idea of what is involved.
The number of lumbering non-beneficial intermediaries taking the vast majority of artist income both before and after it has reached them (sometime years after it has been 'earned') is almost equal to the excessive number of artists and bands creating and (regrettably) releasing to the public music of such average 'quality' that the general public is simply swamped by mediocrity and has lost (if most ever had it even 50 years ago) all interest in original contemporary music as anything other than background and vacuous 'noise'.
Whilst culling commentators can we please cull most of the artists and bands distributing their music into the world.
There are times when I miss some aspects of the gatekeeper business of the 70s and 80s and even 90s. Democratisation of distribution has resulted only in large dollops of slop infecting the musical pathways of life. AI music is simply the excessively sweet and unnatural chemical sprinkles on the top of the cake. I'm unconvinced AI is making music worse, just adding extra worse to the steaming pile of musical shite already there from the last two decades or so.
Oh I'd agree that we have a saturation problem. Absolutely no question. Too much of everything such that the signal/noise ratio is now painfully tilted in the direction of the latter.
The only DSP in the US showing vanity metrics to the public is Slopify.
Maybe Blake and others should stop using Botify to describe "streaming" the way some use "Kleenex" to mean "facial tissues". It is a habit that most music writers engage in. They have been programmed to think that Slopify is the only DSP out there and that people don't use anything else.
We need to encourage these people to use "streaming" as a general term, rather than a synonym for a company that is hostile to artists, uses fake bands, pushes slop, accuses artists of botted streams when they didn't do it, bundled audiobooks to deny royalties to songwriters, imposed a 1000 stream threshold per track per year before rights holders are paid anything, burned hundreds of millions on podcasts nobody listened to like Prince Spare, and then there's Ek's investments in the perpetual war machine. I'm sure there's other crimes I've forgotten about.
The other thing we should do is encourage listeners and artists to switch to other platforms. I love Qobuz and subscribe to it. Their weekly-updated Discovery section is human-curated, profiles all genres, and is better than any algorithm pushing the same slop over and over again. I mention it regularly in my Article writing and Notes comments.
When everything is based on cultural Marxism' this what happens. Look at the terms... Psy op. I spent from 1999 -2017 every active in the indie music game in U.K and U.S.A. This whole temporal synthetic digital drowning pool has created this. This social media You Tube TikTok culture where everyone believes what they say because they say it has credibility. Marketing has always been part of the music game. What do people think? You really have people that think songs happen because they are just amazing. I was very active in the indie music world in attempting to break an artist from scratch. Folks never been in the game. they never have done a promo tour. Never did a low budget tour. They never been to the radio station. They never promoted to radio. They never marketed and promoted a video. There has been this massive delusion taking place with people believing that the music industry is based on the political system and political ideology. The premise that the music industry is fair? what are these people talking about? Fair.... I just laugh. Silicon valley hood winked everyone and now this is what we have. Silicon Valley never paid anyone and A.I has done the same thing . Blatant theft over thirty years. Now people can't make a living based on their music at .004 cents per stream and folks have to do everything else but music. I remember when this all started. It was about the what were called the major label. At least the label gave cash to the artist. What have the tech platforms given an artist? please someone tell me! yes the labels had a bad contract but music has always been a math of one supports the ten. The many never got through. Just because everyone can make a song now how many get through. The math hasn't changed and in fact it is worse. No one wishes to confront this. Now Suno and Udio are making Al Capone blush with their level of disdain for the copyright. These people writing about music are in a utopian delusion. But so is the bigger public. This is such a wide convo but all of this politics in music needs to go.
I saw someone comment recently that there's almost more talk about the music industry and the methodology of marketing than there actually is about the music itself. Now, whilst in real terms I suspect that's unlikely, I definitely can understand how someone would draw that conclusion.
My premise is that Silicon Valley has lead the talk. The song has taken a backseat from my observation. I am not active since 2018 and then covid got in the way. However, i am about to activate myself and relaunch. Much of what I see is the algorithm. I look at Hypebot and see very little about artistry. Well I understand it is a new game now. But all of the utopian political B.S I just shake my head. This people are a train wreck creating train wrecks.