A.I., Merlin, and the Existence of Power
Hello Everyone!
Welcome back to our regularly irregular newsletter. As always, we appreciate you reading. Have questions, thoughts, suggestions? Feel free to hit us up at money4nothingpodcast@gmail.com. And if you like what we do, please rate, review, and tell a friend!
Over our last two episodes, we’ve been (somewhat accidentally) working through some interlinked questions about technology, power, and change—albeit from relatively different angles. In the first, recorded live at the Water & Music Wavelengths festival, we tried (with help from some very useful audience questions) to understand how machine learning might impact the music industry. Having learned our lesson from the last…I dunno…15 years of tech-driven finance-funded bubble-economy, we’ve grown pretty wary of anyone who tries to tell us that a new technology will just “do” anything. New tech allows things to happen, sure. But it always has a history—and that history has (at least in our current society, and at least since the 1980s) been structured by capital and power. Any suggestions about what might happen next that don’t begin by identifying who has that capital and power, and how their hold over those resources (as fractured or contradictory or conflicted as it might be) is going to impact what comes next, probably isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on (or the hosting fees, whatever).
With that as our basic presupposition, we tried to identify how the very real possibilities that machine learning might provide could be integrated into our current landscape. Critical analytics? All-Drake-Everything? ChatGPTaylor? The options are fascinating.
You can listen to that episode hear (Spotify) hear (Itunes) or hear (Podbean)
At the same time, it’s important not to understate the ways in which a techno-social structure (say…the modern streaming economy) can shape the possibilities for the players forced to operate within it. That very much seems to be the case with Merlin, an industry group representing a network of independent labels in the legal, regulatory, and hard-nosed-business-negotiation realms of digital music. Yes, indy is usually good (although not always—check the history of Chess Records paying people for example). At the same time, should we really think about labels like XL records (biggest star: Adele) or Domino (Arctic Monkeys, Four Tet, Franz Ferdinand, etc.) the same as we consider 90’s stalwarts like Dischord (or even, I dunno… Fat Wreck Chords?)
Certainly, the culture has moved on from the sellout wars of the mid-to-late 90s. But even if millennial indy had already made its peace with making money, the basic structure of the internet-age-industry profoundly limits the possibilities. Merlin has won a seat at the table, but at the cost of replicating many of the major’s business strategies. That said, there may not have been much of a choice—the centralizing logic of the platforms through which modern music operates seems to demand acquiescence. One by one, the companies the kept their music off streaming have capitulated, as they saw themselves cut out of both aesthetic conversation and playlist cash. What to do with the historical memory and oppositional energy of the musical counter-culture remains an open question. On the other hand, maybe it was always this way, more or less. Fugazi toured over the interstates after all….
You can listen to that episode hear (Spotify) hear (Itunes) or hear (Podbean)
Department of Actual Music:
Sam: (Fievel is Glauque — Flaming Swords) I am delighted by this band. Contemporary UK Jazz meets Canterbury Scene miniatures, somehow structured around cocktail lounge coo. Apparently recorded in one night, which…boggles the mind. And the pedal steel!
Saxon: (DJ Paul & Juicy J — Da Exorcist) Stumbled across this deep cut, early tape-hissing cassette only horrorcore collab from Memphis’ finest to soundtrack my I-20 West ride home late last night
Sam and Saxon