3 ms·

“what’s popular on the radio /TikTok/charts” being gutter tier hogwash is exactly what they’re talking about. Humans didn’t lose the ability to create good inte

“what’s popular on the radio /TikTok/charts” being gutter tier hogwash is exactly what they’re talking about. Humans didn’t lose the ability to create good interesting music, and nobody legitimately thinks that. The publishing industry prevents independent artists from reaching any kind of mainstream popularity. Indie artists need money and the publishers that decide the winners/losers by controlling all the traditional distribution networks have no incentive to signal boost independents.

Spivak 3y ago
You have TikTok completely backwards. It's giving a platform and virality to independent artists at a scale that was simply not possible before. If your only association with TikTok music culture is "TikTok charts" then you're just falling for the same Billboard top 40s but with a new coat of paint.
mmcdermott 3y ago
> Indie artists need money and the publishers that decide the winners/losers by controlling all the traditional distribution networks have no incentive to signal boost independents. A publisher may wish to control distribution, but the cost to distribute any media (music, text, video, software) is nearly zero. The internet allows all of us to have a slush pile, to delve as deep for raw ore as we want. Some people want to go mining. Most don't and the traditional distribution networks ultimately market to such a person - and one way or another, we can't all delve through every slush pile. If you spend hours on SoundCloud or Bandcamp looking for music, you have less time to crawl for independent films or writing. Any attempt to narrow the slush pile has the effect of marginalizing less mainstream efforts. If you read reviews or blogs to find things that seem worthy, then you are seeing what made it through someone else's slush pile. If you let the YouTube algorithm do it through recommendations, you are allowing Google to work through the slush pile.

Spivak 3y ago

You have TikTok completely backwards. It's giving a platform and virality to independent artists at a scale that was simply not possible before. If your only association with TikTok music culture is "TikTok charts" then you're just falling for the same Billboard top 40s but with a new coat of paint.

mmcdermott 3y ago

> Indie artists need money and the publishers that decide the winners/losers by controlling all the traditional distribution networks have no incentive to signal boost independents. A publisher may wish to control distribution, but the cost to distribute any media (music, text, video, software) is nearly zero. The internet allows all of us to have a slush pile, to delve as deep for raw ore as we want. Some people want to go mining. Most don't and the traditional distribution networks ultimately market to such a person - and one way or another, we can't all delve through every slush pile. If you spend hours on SoundCloud or Bandcamp looking for music, you have less time to crawl for independent films or writing. Any attempt to narrow the slush pile has the effect of marginalizing less mainstream efforts. If you read reviews or blogs to find things that seem worthy, then you are seeing what made it through someone else's slush pile. If you let the YouTube algorithm do it through recommendations, you are allowing Google to work through the slush pile.