Still the Problem with Music

Spoiler alert: It's the money

Two of my favorite writers, Ted Gioia and Shawn Reynaldo, have recently published scathing essays about the dire state of the music business.

I suggest you read them, because it’s become really bad.

Now you could argue that the music industry has always been bad, as in: exploitative and extractive, and you wouldn’t be wrong.

Just check this 1993 article by Steve Albini, The Problem with Music (subhead: “Imagine a trench filled with decaying sh*t”).

That was 32 years ago. Same sh*t, different day.

Or listen to this short interlude from DJ Shadow’s classic album Endtroducing… called “Why Hip-Hop Sucks In ‘96”:

Sure, that is an extremely simplified view – but it’s not wrong either.

If you want to know how incredibly deep that “trench filled with decaying sh*t” has become under the technocracy, I recommend Liz Pelly’s brilliant, bleak book Mood Machine.

I’ve worked in the music industry for over 20 years. Aside from writing about music, I managed artists, ran an indie label and a publishing company. I’ve also consulted big brands and major record companies, and curated playlists for that exact streaming behemoth Pelly’s book is about.

Since leaving my last full-time music industry job some years ago, I’ve often asked myself if I still want to participate in this game.

There isn’t an easy answer.

Brandon King, an activist who was involved with the alternative streaming cooperative Resonate, says in an interview with Liz Pelly for the last chapter of Mood Machine:

“I’m not interested in trying to change the music industry. I believe in delinking from harmful systems. The industry is broken. How are we setting up amongst ourselves networks of mutual aid and support and also figuring out how to grow a genuine community? For me, in my horizontal principles, that seems like a much better infrastructure to try to create and build upon than trying to fix the music industry.”

Sounds harsh, right?

But he’s on to something here.

The existing system of major labels (and/or major-label-distributed “indies”), streaming and social media platforms is still important for some artists – mostly those who’ve already made it or are trying to make it on a global scale in a popular field of music.

Then again, not everything needs to grow and scale. In nature nothing does so unboundedly, except for cancerous cells.

In the field of experimental music, where I’ve always felt more at home than in the cultural mainstream, most artists are generally not in it for the fame or the money – that would be delusional.

In fact, most are just desperately trying to get by.

For these artists and their listeners, delinking from the dominant system might become an apt strategy.

Now how will this look in practice?

Thinking about this, I stumbled across this interview with electroacoustic composer Giuseppe Ielasi at

a closer listen

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Coming from a background in the hardcore/punk and free jazz/improv scenes, Ielasi naturally feels inspired by alternative DIY communities.

His down-to-earth approach is “trying to work and survive within a very low scale economy, doing it honestly and in the most non-competitive way.”

At the time of the interview, for him that meant staying away from all kinds of promotion and advertising, “social media hyper-exposure”, commercial or commissioned works, even grants or public funds. He mostly self-released his works, selling physical CDs, records and tapes directly to individual customers, skipping wholesale distribution.

It’s important to note that this interview was conducted in 2014 – that’s more than a decade ago. Streaming wasn’t the main mode of music consumption then. Tik Tok didn’t even exist.

To be honest, I don’t know if Ielasi’s approach can still be sustainable in 2025, when the huge majority of listeners doesn’t buy music and gets most of their cultural input from social media.

That’s why I don’t judge artists who decide that they still need to engage in the dominant system instead of delinking from it.

What I do believe though is that we, the listeners, finally need to stop supporting those parts of the music industry that aren’t helping our favourite artists, just because they’re ubiquitous or convenient.

Why invest into a system that has been nothing but harmful to everyone in our community, except a select few who have been moderately successful at gaming it?

I agree with Brandon King here – the way forward I see for the independent music community isn’t to save that “winner-take-all celebrity model that encourages an every-person-for-themselves competitiveness” (Pelly), but to support collectives and cooperatives built on principles of solidarity and sustainability.

As long as these alternative ecosystems aren’t in place, we can at least invest in what Ielasi calls a “low scale economy”.

In other words: We need to start putting our money where our mouth is.

Personally, I’ve already made a couple of decisions based on these ideas over the last few years:

• I’ve canceled my streaming subscription. Instead of routinely paying $10.99 per month for the world catalogue, I spend a generous monthly budget on music and culture directly by buying music, merch and going out to see shows.

• I’ve left most social media networks. Instead of letting the algorithm dictate the information I get, I follow artists and labels on Bandcamp and subscribe directly to their newsletters.

• I buy digital and physical media, not through tech corporations (like Apple or Amazon), but through independent retailers (like Bandcamp) or directly from artists (from merch tables at shows, or through their websites). I am actively seeking out further ways to support my favourite artists, for example by subscriptions, donations, or crowdfunding campaigns.

• I go out to see two to three concerts/performances weekly. I avoid commercial clubs and corporate-sponsored event halls. Instead I support non-profit microvenues and artist-run DIY spaces. I avoid ticketing agencies and digital payments. I pay in cash at the entrance. If the entrance fee is on a sliding scale, I routinely pay the maximum.

• I support independent artists whose work I enjoy by amplifying their voices in this newsletter. When covering active, living artists, I focus on female and/or queer and/or otherwise marginalized musicians from the so-called “underground”. I don’t engage in celebrity worship cult. I include links to buy the artists work directly instead of streaming it.

I want to make sure I don’t support an economy I’m not aligned with anymore, while still supporting the artists making the music I hold so dear to my heart.

I’m very aware my approach isn’t perfect. As we all know, there isn’t an ethical way of consuming (art) under capitalism.

But as Claire Rousay aptly said, we still have to make these messy decisions and stand by them, even if they feel strange and incoherent to others.

Passivity and ignorance aren’t helping anyone except the powers that be.