and would you want only people with access to big budgets to be producing the culture? No way so they are out. Left with music and books, is one form able to fufill the role of the other? Music often has lyrics which can tell stories or instruct or pretty much say anything that would be in a book. Books can have sheet music... but in the world without music that would be just weird patterns. Books can't even really approximate most of the things about music so it's gotta be music!
4d ago
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been thinking about this a lot within the context of the industry I work in recently. specifically about how the current music industry, especially in the case of streaming, has commoditized music into being essentially worthless in and of itself. a song in a vacuum has no value if it isnāt attached to the ābrandā of the artist, which becomes a platform to sell merch, concerts, generate content, and all the other activities that actually generate money for the artist (and label). there is licensing revenue, but even then thatās assigning value to the right to exploit revenue from the song, not the art itself.
reading this book that takes place in the early 1800s and it mentions how music used to be just something that people did for themselves in their own homes, writing their own songs or purchasing sheet music to perform othersā songs. musicianship used to be a socially binding activity, as you would play for the gratification of those in your community. in most cases tho people performed for their and their immediate circleās own satisfaction, and there was no pressure to turn it into a product. today itās like people who want to be good at music have to attempt to be a professional to justify spending the time that isnāt generating money for them, squeezing it between their day jobs. if you want your music to be heard by others you have to heavily market yourself to vie for attention among the endless others on streaming platforms. thereās few places if any where people can come together and perform music themselves for any reason other than their own edification, and weāve lost any social practices that encouraged everyone to have some form of musicianship to be able to participate in these kinds of events. itās like something that was as common as riding a bike back in the day has been discredited as a socially valuable skill as it became unprofitable, same for dancing I suppose.
anyway, not really going anywhere with this, just hoping for a future world where all this AI coming up becomes something that alleviates the need for work and frees people up for art and community instead of becoming a competing force churning out music as a commodified product and drowning out the humans who produce at a human pace. the pessimist in me feels like the pressures of capitalism will mean that the opposite will happen, and AI will create the art so that the people have more time to dedicate to producing āvalueā
Mar 17, 2024
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Iām human so I love music and itās important to me but Iām not as curious and connected to the form as I am to writing or film, so the only way unfamiliar music enters my rotation is through listening to a radio show and discovering a song I love through that.
It might seem like an obvious one but just wanted to articulate for myself as itās interesting to me the way everyone has different relationships to various art forms. Iām not into theatre in a big way and Iām really interested in naming why that is.ā¦ i Sense something about theatre being too focused on the actor, without the presence of a camera etc, without the context of location, without landscapes and animals and buildings and magical objectsā¦ I know there must be something meaningful in this preference which at the moment just comes off as not being cultured or sensitive enoughā¦.which I also find funny so Iām kinda digging my heels in for jokes.
Nov 29, 2024
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Most of what I do for work is make music videos. a lot of people ask me to make one for them. Usually they offer me what I think is an embarrassingly small amount of money. Sometimes I want to reply to emails āmaybe you should ask a middle schooler to direct itā one of the justifications they use is that people donāt watch music videos that much. but,
- if you Spend less money you Make a lesser product
- when they spend less money on videos, videos become often mediocre
- videos as a whole become devalued, because they are often mediocre, and now less people are going to take the time to watch any video, since they are used to mediocrity when they do.
When you pay people well they work better. Dont give your best ideas away
Jan 30, 2024
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Changed my perspective on so much--namely money and history. It's shocking how so much of the mainstream story of where money came from is false conjecture. For instance, we are told that societies start out bartering for goods and then develop money to make trade easier... but actually Graeber shows in no society has bartering ever predated coinage. The actual ways societies have historically dealt with exchange of goods and services are diverse and often more humanistic. Could it be that the mainstream narrative is merely justification for the inevitability of the free market? š¤ Definitely want to re-read because there's lots more too
Mar 12, 2025
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I like that you called it a "short circuit"āI feel like you can just say "Woah sorry just short circuited" and move on. I think it would make you seem cool and comfortable with your flaws and put others at ease
Apr 5, 2024
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go to visit him in the sexy part of canada
Mar 13, 2025