This is a brilliant article which really eloquently worded points, and I'm a big fan of your point of view. I agree — everyone is musical and music is for everyone, and there's so many ways to express this inherit musicality. No way is more or less valid than the other, it's just the active and conscious participation and interaction with music that counts.
Loved this!! Would love to hear more about what you mean when you say "playlisting is thesis-driven..." been thinking about where play listing sits in the musical landscape lately, and was surprised to see it be to the left of DJ'ing - totally agree, and well said!!
Love it. I feel a strong undercurrent of "democratizing music" in here that deeply resonates with me. I often get into long convos with folks who say "i don't have a musical bone in my body" and 99% of the time by the end they go "yeah I guess I'm somewhat musical" — this takes that a step further, crossing an important threshold between passive listening and spontaneous joyful creation 👏👏👏👏
Always multiple takeaways in these but this moment really stood out to me.
"participation is the only scarce resource left. This matters more now than ever, because we’re living through a moment where the artifact has become so cheap it’s almost meaningless. Anyone can generate a song."
Absolutely true for music as a verb as you've described here but I think equally true for music as a noun in the sense of recored music sold as a product.
Increasingly, the perceived value of an album (and songs, but slightly less imo) will be the time spent by the artist (scarce resource) to create the album. The actual participation that the Artist had in the creation of the music is just as valuable as the music itself... and in the future maybe more valuable than the music itself. (Olivia Dean only has so much time she can make music and we all only have so much time to enjoy it.)
Functional music accelerates to commodity but music as a verb and music as an artifact of the verb start to separate as art and the act of interacting with art.
This is a brilliant article which really eloquently worded points, and I'm a big fan of your point of view. I agree — everyone is musical and music is for everyone, and there's so many ways to express this inherit musicality. No way is more or less valid than the other, it's just the active and conscious participation and interaction with music that counts.
so well put, and thank you ! 🙏🏽
Loved this!! Would love to hear more about what you mean when you say "playlisting is thesis-driven..." been thinking about where play listing sits in the musical landscape lately, and was surprised to see it be to the left of DJ'ing - totally agree, and well said!!
thank you! 🙏🏽
another banger
tysm king
Love it. I feel a strong undercurrent of "democratizing music" in here that deeply resonates with me. I often get into long convos with folks who say "i don't have a musical bone in my body" and 99% of the time by the end they go "yeah I guess I'm somewhat musical" — this takes that a step further, crossing an important threshold between passive listening and spontaneous joyful creation 👏👏👏👏
PERIOD
Always multiple takeaways in these but this moment really stood out to me.
"participation is the only scarce resource left. This matters more now than ever, because we’re living through a moment where the artifact has become so cheap it’s almost meaningless. Anyone can generate a song."
Absolutely true for music as a verb as you've described here but I think equally true for music as a noun in the sense of recored music sold as a product.
Increasingly, the perceived value of an album (and songs, but slightly less imo) will be the time spent by the artist (scarce resource) to create the album. The actual participation that the Artist had in the creation of the music is just as valuable as the music itself... and in the future maybe more valuable than the music itself. (Olivia Dean only has so much time she can make music and we all only have so much time to enjoy it.)
Functional music accelerates to commodity but music as a verb and music as an artifact of the verb start to separate as art and the act of interacting with art.