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The current social media + streaming meta is so hostile to musicians in so many fucking ways and I'd love to write about it in lenght but I don't really have a platform because I'd like it to be a bit more than just me shouting to the void of the twitter/FB TL
And ultimately maybe this is just it, maybe there really is an oversaturation of what it is on offer, burning out the listeners and artists alike, the promise of global reach dangled before us but never really realized because all the fancy toys don't really work as intended
And in some ways the problem might be that certain things like serious ad microtargeting isn't advanced enough, or then The Good Shit is restricted to people with substantially larger budgets and influence than the rest of us...
And maybe the situation is just barely good enough that things will keep on plodding like this forwards, with ever diminishing streaming money, every year one new weird Bitcoing Soundcloud aspirant untill some new Carrington Event/Giant Meteor hits us
And you know, all of this just reflects larger problems in society, which might just reflect basic design flaws (from the perspective of whatever vague utopias we have in our head) of humanity itself and IDK if there is really fucking anything that can be done
And maybe in the end we should just not care about the streaming income or graphs going up or down but it's hard not to. We are built to care. I applaud anybody who can not care about the streams and the money and the attention and whatnot.
I make music because I'm *obsessed*, I'm *possessed* with ideas, even 5½ years of extreme stress pressure cooker existen in university didn't squash it out of me and I don't think anything will, but I also want to be seen, I want to be heard, I want to find people who care
Maybe this all has fucked over with my horizon of expectations and maybe I've gotten more of anything I wanted than I would have gotten 10 or 20 years ago, but there is something decidedly very hollow about it all and it's hard to articulate.
It's probably the kind of gamification of making music through stat grinding
Anyway, I usually just channel these sentiments into pursuits with music, but I had a really hard day at work followed by a frustrating night of doing the most unpleasant parts of this hobby and the news about Spotify wanting to pay with exposure just brought my piss to boil
And if anyone wants to give me a soapbox I can write a coherent, analytical article about all of this. I have some experience in writing articles back in my uni days.
