RE: the music industry is broken (by drew gooden)
here's the video, if you want to watch it yourself.
as someone who makes music for fun (psst!), and makes music videos for other musicians for a living (psst! x2), i want to give my thoughts on this video in a better format than a youtube comment section would allow. so, where do i start?
yes, drew gooden is right. the music industry IS broken. and yes, most of it is spotify's fault. this platform has pretty much reshaped every aspect of how we listen to music. no longer do most listeners see music as "art", but "content": something to put in the background while you do chores or homework or whatnot. that's where you get stuff like "lo-fi beats to study/relax to", pop songs barely 2-3 minutes long, and 1-minute long ambient songs designed to be played in an endless loop. the fact that anyone can upload music to spotify means we are drowning in an endless sea of noise trying to find our next favorite songs. (and generative AI sure isn't helping.)
but it's not just spotify's fault; the major record labels have always been to blame for the awful way they treat artists, through their contracts, unfair royalties splits, and control of every corner of the music industry. and the less said about ticketmaster and live nation's monopoly on live concerts (oh yeah, and that one time the live nation crew called their customers stupid), the better.
and all of this is made worse by the fact that the richest people in the music industry have never, EVER made a song in their entire lives. daniel ek, the CEO of spotify, is richer than taylor freaking swift. if that's not an insult to the arts, i don't know what is.
but drew brings up a good point at the end about supporting local acts. the bands and artists playing in your town at open mic nights and local venues may never be world-famous, but they are readily accessible to you; you can support them by buying their CDs/records/tapes/merchandise, watching their performances, and heck, you can even become friends with them. if you live in a community with such a music scene, please support it. you are doing far more for the musicians than any major record label or streaming service ever could.
the music industry is broken, but we still have the community strength to bring the fun back to making music. and we don't need to rely on massive corporations to help us do that.