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   Adding to the nightmare, dead musicians are now coming back to life in   
   virtual form—via holograms and “deepfake” music—making it all the harder   
   for young, living artists to compete in the marketplace.   
   As record labels lose interest in new music, emerging performers   
   desperately search for other ways to get exposure. They hope to place   
   their self-produced tracks on a curated streaming playlist, or license   
   their songs for use in advertising or the closing credits of a TV show.   
   Those options might generate some royalty income, but they do little to   
   build name recognition. You might hear a cool song on a TV commercial, but   
   do you even know the name of the artist? You love your workout playlist at   
   the health club, but how many song titles and band names do you remember?   
   You stream a Spotify new-music playlist in the background while you work,   
   but did you bother to learn who’s singing the songs?   
      
   Decades ago, the composer Erik Satie warned of the arrival of “furniture   
   music,” a kind of song that would blend seamlessly into the background of   
   our lives. His vision seems closer to reality than ever.   
      
   Some people—especially Baby Boomers—tell me that this decline in the   
   popularity of new music is simply the result of lousy new songs. Music   
   used to be better, or so they say. The old songs had better melodies, more   
   interesting harmonies, and demonstrated genuine musicianship, not just   
   software loops, Auto-Tuned vocals, and regurgitated samples.   
      
   There will never be another Sondheim, they tell me. Or Joni Mitchell. Or   
   Bob Dylan. Or Cole Porter. Or Brian Wilson. I almost expect these   
   doomsayers to break out in a stirring rendition of “Old Time Rock and   
   Roll,” much like Tom Cruise in his underpants.   
      
   Just take those old records off the shelf   
      
   I’ll sit and listen to ’em by myself …   
      
   I can understand the frustrations of music lovers who get no satisfaction   
   from current mainstream songs, though they try and they try. I also lament   
   the lack of imagination on many modern hits. But I disagree with my Boomer   
   friends’ larger verdict. I listen to two to three hours of new music every   
   day, and I know that plenty of exceptional young musicians are out there   
   trying to make it. They exist. But the music industry has lost its ability   
   to discover and nurture their talents.   
      
   Music-industry bigwigs have plenty of excuses for their inability to   
   discover and adequately promote great new artists. The fear of copyright   
   lawsuits has made many in the industry deathly afraid of listening to   
   unsolicited demo recordings. If you hear a demo today, you might get sued   
   for stealing its melody—or maybe just its rhythmic groove—five years from   
   now. Try mailing a demo to a label or producer, and watch it return   
   unopened.   
      
   The people whose livelihood depends on discovering new musical talent face   
   legal risks if they take their job seriously. That’s only one of the   
   deleterious results of the music industry’s overreliance on lawyers and   
   litigation, a hard-ass approach they once hoped would cure all their   
   problems, but now does more harm than good. Everybody suffers in this   
   litigious environment except for the partners at the entertainment-law   
   firms, who enjoy the abundant fruits of all these lawsuits and legal   
   threats.   
      
   The problem goes deeper than just copyright concerns. The people running   
   the music industry have lost confidence in new music. They won’t admit it   
   publicly—that would be like the priests of Jupiter and Apollo in ancient   
   Rome admitting that their gods are dead. Even if they know it’s true,   
   their job titles won’t allow such a humble and abject confession. Yet that   
   is exactly what’s happening. The moguls have lost their faith in the   
   redemptive and life-changing power of new music. How sad is that? Of   
   course, the decision makers need to pretend that they still believe in the   
   future of their business, and want to discover the next revolutionary   
   talent. But that’s not what they really think. Their actions speak much   
   louder than their empty words.   
      
   In fact, nothing is less interesting to music executives than a completely   
   radical new kind of music. Who can blame them for feeling this way? The   
   radio stations will play only songs that fit the dominant formulas, which   
   haven’t changed much in decades. The algorithms curating so much of our   
   new music are even worse. Music algorithms are designed to be feedback   
   loops, ensuring that the promoted new songs are virtually identical to   
   your favorite old songs. Anything that genuinely breaks the mold is   
   excluded from consideration almost as a rule. That’s actually how the   
   current system has been designed to work.   
      
   Even the music genres famous for shaking up the world—rock or jazz or hip-   
   hop—face this same deadening industry mindset. I love jazz, but many of   
   the radio stations focused on that genre play songs that sound almost the   
   same as what they featured 10 or 20 years ago. In many instances, they   
   actually are the same songs.   
      
   Read: BTS’s ‘Dynamite’ could upend the music industry   
      
   This state of affairs is not inevitable. A lot of musicians around the   
   world—especially in Los Angeles and London—are conducting a bold dialogue   
   between jazz and other contemporary styles. They are even bringing jazz   
   back as dance music. But the songs they release sound dangerously   
   different from older jazz, and are thus excluded from many radio stations   
   for that same reason. The very boldness with which they embrace the future   
   becomes the reason they get rejected by the gatekeepers.   
      
   A country record needs to sound a certain way to get played on most   
   country radio stations or playlists, and the sound those DJs and   
   algorithms are looking for dates back to the prior century. And don’t even   
   get me started on the classical-music industry, which works hard to avoid   
   showcasing the creativity of the current generation. We are living in an   
   amazing era of classical composition, with one tiny problem: The   
   institutions controlling the genre don’t want you to hear it.   
      
   The problem isn’t a lack of good new music. It’s an institutional failure   
   to discover and nurture it.   
      
   I learned the danger of excessive caution long ago, when I consulted for   
   huge Fortune 500 companies. The single biggest problem I   
   encountered—shared by virtually every large company I analyzed—was   
   investing too much of their time and money into defending old ways of   
   doing business, rather than building new ones. We even had a proprietary   
   tool for quantifying this misallocation of resources that spelled out the   
   mistakes in precise dollars and cents.   
      
   Senior management hated hearing this, and always insisted that defending   
   the old business units was their safest bet. After I encountered this   
   embedded mindset again and again and saw its consequences, I reached the   
   painful conclusion that the safest path is usually the most dangerous. If   
   you pursue a strategy—whether in business or your personal life—that   
   avoids all risk, you might flourish in the short run, but you flounder   
   over the long term. That’s what is now happening in the music business.   
      
   Even so, I refuse to accept that we are in some grim endgame, witnessing   
   the death throes of new music. And I say that because I know how much   
   people crave something that sounds fresh and exciting and different. If   
   they don’t find it from a major record label or algorithm-driven playlist,   
   they will find it somewhere else. Songs can go viral nowadays without the   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)