Substack itself is an underlooked opportunity for sharing new music on a subscription basis. The potential is enormous. We're able to curate here not only music and video, but also combine that standard fare with narrative context (i.e. writing directly about the music) and photography as well: https://lydwine.substack.com/p/rosie
Substack is going all in on the individual, while Medium is purposely avoiding giving any single writer power or undue attention. There needs to be a middle ground between the two, there has to be a way to agglomerate individuals into a magazine or other form of cultural force. Following a bunch or random assortment of writers or creatives does not create the kind of dialogue or the group dynamics that create shared culture. Instead of 80s girls into Madonna and Cyndi Lauper and wearing their hair in a certain way you have a cult kind of structure around an individual like Taylor Swift. Culture has to be participatory on multiple levels.
Yes, exactly - think of something like Racket News, but also what we're trying to do in curating our own magazine (https://lydwine.substack.com/) via the platform. Not only do we have a house band, but also have the fluidity to include veteran writers like Stanley Booth, as well as up-and-coming writers, podcasts, videos, etc., - even an editorial voice of sorts. Aggregating content also allows a space for those writers who don't want to write a Substack two or three times a week, but want a place with an audience for their work to be highlighted. The technology is all there - at this point, it's just a matter of vision.
I‘m a musician and recording artist and I just started my Substack Sessions. I like Substack because it’s not only about my music but also my stories, hence the name of my Substack ‚My Songs & Stories‘.
I’m going to check it out, Kurt. I’m on my way to start my own (dreading and overwriting the very first post, obviously) and am even considering releasing an album or EP exclusively here. I’m tired of the whole shallow content-creation, pre-save, Spotify-pitching, who-cares stupid cicle. Maybe one of the “answers” is here.
Hey Andre, I started out with so many questions and I told myself - create and learn. The first posts were not that perfect, but it helped me to get in the flow. Just go for it!
When I started out on YouTube the conditions changed constantly.
I'd suggest working with the best practice articles Substack itself puts out - just think of your music as the primary content, rather than articles. Or better still, do both!
I now webtoons creators who later release physical versions of the comics (as it does take time to reformat the "one long line" format into "pages" format) either through publishers or through kickstarter.
Superfans may be willing to shell out the big bucks in stadium venues but not me. Bring back the small clubs for that intimate artist experience. I would rather listen to a local unknown musician playing his heart out to a crowd of twenty than put myself through a metal detector to watch a musician on a big screen.
Bandcamp provides some reason for optimism. The dystopian future big music has planned for us can only be averted by independent artists bypassing the system and those of us who value this buying albums and refusing to use streaming platforms. Virtually all of my music spending over the past several years has been on bandcamp and buying cds sold during life performances. And I try to attend live performances whenever I can.
Great article as always. I take issue with a few of these, most notably #8. (As music becomes more and more created by single artists with all the gadgets at their fingertips, and not beholden to any rules of track length or venue vibe massaging, music is likely to get -- weirder. And less likely to translation to live venues. )
But the biggest exception I take to this is the assumption that music will continue to be driven primarily by commerce. The idea of music as a commercial commodity - whether through big corporations or independent artists - should not be an assumption by any stretch. There are simply far too many talented people who would rather make their music and be listened to for a pittance or less. And while this paradigm shift is still in progress, I see it as inevitable.
Remember, music as a consumable, sellable product is relatively recent. For hundreds, thousands of years, most music was performed and consumed for free out of the sheer love of it. Only in the 20th century did music become a sellable product at any real volume. Nowadays it is just assumed to be so, as we've all forgotten how recent that development really is.
My prediction is that music will bifurcate into two separate things - the for-profit and the not-for-profit. They will bleed into each other of course, but the stagnation of the for-profit model that you laid out will continue to be profitable, just that its relevance to the advancement of the art will be minimal. The real action is going to take place among millions of us who do it for tiny audiences for each other for next to nothing. No one of us will have much "influence", but the art of music will continue to advance and evolve in an emergent manner, like a million ants unwittingly building a massive monument.
"As music becomes more and more created by single artists with all the gadgets at their fingertips, and not beholden to any rules of track length or venue vibe massaging, music is likely to get -- weirder. And less likely to translation to live venues."
I disagree that weird music is incompatible with live venues. I live in Baltimore and there are a LOT of small, often DIY, venues and even restaurants where VERY WIERD experimental musicians perform, often alone, to a few dozen people who are really into it. A lot like the small jazz and rock clubs where the now-very-famous musicians of yore got their start.
I don’t see it as a likely “trend” though, as Gioia does. The idea flies in the face of the trending changes in other arenas. If live shopping, eating out, movies, etc are all going online, why would music trend in the opposite direction?
Let me clarify this. I am not saying that live music will replace streaming. I am saying that live music will be the main source of energy, excitement and profitability. The math makes this clear. If a Taylor Swift fan pays a penny to stream Swift’s songs, but a thousand dollars to see a Swift concert, even a small shift has a large economic effect.
These predictions are based on an assumption that new generations of listeners will authentically care about new / original / live music. Which might not be the case.
For the last 70 years, music was a compulsory part of youth culture. You could choose mainstream music or alternative music, but you had to choose something, as this was arguably the biggest building block of a young person's identity. Now, it seems like music is no longer compulsory, it becomes optional, like sports, computer games, comic books (or nowadays, sadly, books in general) or theater - you can be a fan of it, but it's also totally OK if you're not, and if you are, you belong to a subculture.
The record labels, media companies and streamers want to make everything that can be generated with AI - video, bland music, gaming, porn - the mainstream, compulsory part of youth culture, while stuff that requires genuine human skill and creativity - sports, good music, creative writing - an optional thing for subcultures, 'weird people', nerds. And this is where we - the creative and skilled ones - need to push and fight back.
I also predict that CD's will be a revenue stream for musicians again.
And not because of people like me - who still love them for their balance between convenience and quality - who keeps buying them... But because Gen Z is slowly discovering that physical ownership of things you cherish is not just something crusty old people used to do before phones, but actually something cool and fulfilling.
I never see any commentary on the used record business. Without any way to prove it, I believe more used records are sold than new. Young people discover old music thru music found at garage sales, used record stores, record fairs and their crazy uncles record collection than thru anywhere else.
Used music, like used books, may not be an industry favorite but both are thriving despite that. In our Oregon town of 36,000, there are two good used vinyl record stores alone. And a Platter party group that meets every few weeks to spin and gab. This group hosts a public vinyl record swap every year and it grows yearly with young people. My husband has over 10,000 vinyl 45s alone and frequents both. Plus he has been a customer since 1975 of the legendary Frank Merrill who sells 45s at auction worldwide. And believe it or not, in our same town lives John Tefteller, who sells the “world’s rarest records” (mostly blues) to a massive audience. So it is out there. It is good the industry doesn’t care about this. Otherwise they’d find a way to get money from a mere record swap.
Great article. I'm 62 and can remember when college radio was playing REM and the Smiths in the 80's before anybody noticed. I loved it. It was different and exciting. Music itself kept evolving...Devo to Nine Inch Nails Gil Scott-Heron to Public Enemy. I agree with the statement that the genres have been stagnant for a few years. I would love to be optimistic about the future of music because music transpires the best of humanity and to live in a world of regurgitated sounds would suck!
Regarding number eight, such a rosy picture could only be achieved if we dismantled Ticketmaster and Live Nation. Many people can’t afford to go to these shows for hundreds of dollars per ticket. Tours are getting scrapped for lack of sales. Resellers make the bulk of the profits. Even smaller venues are finding themselves pushed into these ticket networks that inflate their prices and reduce the ability for as many young people to participate, thus undermining the very fabric of local music scenes. And when it comes to artists, not all of them want to have to constantly tour in order to pay the bills. It’s not sustainable. They were pushed into 360 deals after the mp3 era hit and then when the streaming platforms took a bigger chunk of album revenue the labels doubled down on touring to get more ticket and merch money. But the only one working harder through all this is the artists.
In Australia, this stranglehold of Live Nation and Ticketmaster on the whole concert industry is starting to exercise the minds of those who know and who are known.
And the rebirth of vinyl! An artist or band makes more money selling just one album than a month of streaming revenue. That is why vinyl is returning. Owning a piece of the artist with an album cover, back cover and inner sleeve with photos and artist bios and song info. Can you get that on any streaming platform?
Me too. But I only buy CDs from artists I see at small live venues. I live close to Victoria Australia's most vibrant music hub, Castlemaine, so I get to see a lot of amazing artists from varying genres. I aim to support them directly by buying their CDs at the venue where I see them, often out of an old milk crate or the like.
It's not the who, it's the what. Over the last decade, the overall quality of popular music has deteriorated to the point it's all but unlistenable. Unless we figure out away to make music real again, to kick auto-tuning and the other wishy-washy forms of sound manipulation to the curb, I'm not interested.
Yeah, I saw a Pitchfork post about who would be nominated for the Grammys and there was a photo with Sabrina Carpenter, Charli XCX, and Beyonce. Kids love this stuff but to my ears it’s all as bland as paste. As if the engineers were all using the same plugins (probably because they were).
There’s a ton of great new stuff out there but it’s just not what the kids are interested in. At least that’s the way it seems to me.
Interesting to see the pull of AI is affecting music as well as the visual arts. Animation and VFX roles are under pressure because of it - but I'm hoping they develop as video games companies have: a few mega publishers, with smaller independent studios making innovative work.
Funnily enough, there's an animated series in development which deals with these themes through the clash of Big Tech/pop music and a Jazz playing cow:
Thanks for the shout-out! MrChrisCox Although our first iteration of Jazz Cow was over 20 years ago, it’s all coming into sharper focus now. It has so much in common with the themes Ted talks about.
Well, we NEED the future of music to be different than the present. Rick Beato does a recurring show where he listens to the Top 10 on Spotify. "Is it even music?" he asked a few months ago. "What is happening?"
I agree with most of the points here except there is an issue on the growth of live music. Here in the UK, many smaller venues where artists cut their teeth as live acts have closed down and a recent stat showed that touring bands now play much fewer venues than they used to. The growth of live music can only happen if there are places for musicians to play……
Substack itself is an underlooked opportunity for sharing new music on a subscription basis. The potential is enormous. We're able to curate here not only music and video, but also combine that standard fare with narrative context (i.e. writing directly about the music) and photography as well: https://lydwine.substack.com/p/rosie
Substack is going all in on the individual, while Medium is purposely avoiding giving any single writer power or undue attention. There needs to be a middle ground between the two, there has to be a way to agglomerate individuals into a magazine or other form of cultural force. Following a bunch or random assortment of writers or creatives does not create the kind of dialogue or the group dynamics that create shared culture. Instead of 80s girls into Madonna and Cyndi Lauper and wearing their hair in a certain way you have a cult kind of structure around an individual like Taylor Swift. Culture has to be participatory on multiple levels.
Yes, exactly - think of something like Racket News, but also what we're trying to do in curating our own magazine (https://lydwine.substack.com/) via the platform. Not only do we have a house band, but also have the fluidity to include veteran writers like Stanley Booth, as well as up-and-coming writers, podcasts, videos, etc., - even an editorial voice of sorts. Aggregating content also allows a space for those writers who don't want to write a Substack two or three times a week, but want a place with an audience for their work to be highlighted. The technology is all there - at this point, it's just a matter of vision.
...and if Substack ever got around to facilitating the sale of physical merchandise, it would push things into the stratosphere.
Bandcamp is figuring it out on the fly. Physical media combined with digital downloads are available for many albums at reasonable prices.
If Substack dillutes its offering too much, it will kill what makes it a good proposition today.
Know of any good articles that explain how musicians can use substack?
I‘m a musician and recording artist and I just started my Substack Sessions. I like Substack because it’s not only about my music but also my stories, hence the name of my Substack ‚My Songs & Stories‘.
https://www.kurtackermann.substack.com
I’m going to check it out, Kurt. I’m on my way to start my own (dreading and overwriting the very first post, obviously) and am even considering releasing an album or EP exclusively here. I’m tired of the whole shallow content-creation, pre-save, Spotify-pitching, who-cares stupid cicle. Maybe one of the “answers” is here.
Hey Andre, I started out with so many questions and I told myself - create and learn. The first posts were not that perfect, but it helped me to get in the flow. Just go for it!
When I started out on YouTube the conditions changed constantly.
Yeah. I know all about overplanning for stuff and maybe missing the boat.
https://kurtackermann.substack.com/
here you go Kurt, this link works \(*_*)/
I'd suggest working with the best practice articles Substack itself puts out - just think of your music as the primary content, rather than articles. Or better still, do both!
Yes - I think comics and stories could develop further here too.
I now webtoons creators who later release physical versions of the comics (as it does take time to reformat the "one long line" format into "pages" format) either through publishers or through kickstarter.
Superfans may be willing to shell out the big bucks in stadium venues but not me. Bring back the small clubs for that intimate artist experience. I would rather listen to a local unknown musician playing his heart out to a crowd of twenty than put myself through a metal detector to watch a musician on a big screen.
True
Bandcamp provides some reason for optimism. The dystopian future big music has planned for us can only be averted by independent artists bypassing the system and those of us who value this buying albums and refusing to use streaming platforms. Virtually all of my music spending over the past several years has been on bandcamp and buying cds sold during life performances. And I try to attend live performances whenever I can.
Yes, between Bandcamp and WFMU (which is always and forever sending me to Bandcamp), there’s really a lot of great stuff out there.
Great article as always. I take issue with a few of these, most notably #8. (As music becomes more and more created by single artists with all the gadgets at their fingertips, and not beholden to any rules of track length or venue vibe massaging, music is likely to get -- weirder. And less likely to translation to live venues. )
But the biggest exception I take to this is the assumption that music will continue to be driven primarily by commerce. The idea of music as a commercial commodity - whether through big corporations or independent artists - should not be an assumption by any stretch. There are simply far too many talented people who would rather make their music and be listened to for a pittance or less. And while this paradigm shift is still in progress, I see it as inevitable.
Remember, music as a consumable, sellable product is relatively recent. For hundreds, thousands of years, most music was performed and consumed for free out of the sheer love of it. Only in the 20th century did music become a sellable product at any real volume. Nowadays it is just assumed to be so, as we've all forgotten how recent that development really is.
My prediction is that music will bifurcate into two separate things - the for-profit and the not-for-profit. They will bleed into each other of course, but the stagnation of the for-profit model that you laid out will continue to be profitable, just that its relevance to the advancement of the art will be minimal. The real action is going to take place among millions of us who do it for tiny audiences for each other for next to nothing. No one of us will have much "influence", but the art of music will continue to advance and evolve in an emergent manner, like a million ants unwittingly building a massive monument.
"As music becomes more and more created by single artists with all the gadgets at their fingertips, and not beholden to any rules of track length or venue vibe massaging, music is likely to get -- weirder. And less likely to translation to live venues."
I disagree that weird music is incompatible with live venues. I live in Baltimore and there are a LOT of small, often DIY, venues and even restaurants where VERY WIERD experimental musicians perform, often alone, to a few dozen people who are really into it. A lot like the small jazz and rock clubs where the now-very-famous musicians of yore got their start.
I don’t see it as a likely “trend” though, as Gioia does. The idea flies in the face of the trending changes in other arenas. If live shopping, eating out, movies, etc are all going online, why would music trend in the opposite direction?
Let me clarify this. I am not saying that live music will replace streaming. I am saying that live music will be the main source of energy, excitement and profitability. The math makes this clear. If a Taylor Swift fan pays a penny to stream Swift’s songs, but a thousand dollars to see a Swift concert, even a small shift has a large economic effect.
These predictions are based on an assumption that new generations of listeners will authentically care about new / original / live music. Which might not be the case.
For the last 70 years, music was a compulsory part of youth culture. You could choose mainstream music or alternative music, but you had to choose something, as this was arguably the biggest building block of a young person's identity. Now, it seems like music is no longer compulsory, it becomes optional, like sports, computer games, comic books (or nowadays, sadly, books in general) or theater - you can be a fan of it, but it's also totally OK if you're not, and if you are, you belong to a subculture.
The record labels, media companies and streamers want to make everything that can be generated with AI - video, bland music, gaming, porn - the mainstream, compulsory part of youth culture, while stuff that requires genuine human skill and creativity - sports, good music, creative writing - an optional thing for subcultures, 'weird people', nerds. And this is where we - the creative and skilled ones - need to push and fight back.
I also predict that CD's will be a revenue stream for musicians again.
And not because of people like me - who still love them for their balance between convenience and quality - who keeps buying them... But because Gen Z is slowly discovering that physical ownership of things you cherish is not just something crusty old people used to do before phones, but actually something cool and fulfilling.
I hope you're right!
You mean because people keep having their digital “products” literally deleted.
That is part of it. But I describe some other, more esoteric reasons for it in this post I wrote some time ago:
https://backtobasic.substack.com/p/music-may-yet-save-our-humanity
I never see any commentary on the used record business. Without any way to prove it, I believe more used records are sold than new. Young people discover old music thru music found at garage sales, used record stores, record fairs and their crazy uncles record collection than thru anywhere else.
Used music, like used books, may not be an industry favorite but both are thriving despite that. In our Oregon town of 36,000, there are two good used vinyl record stores alone. And a Platter party group that meets every few weeks to spin and gab. This group hosts a public vinyl record swap every year and it grows yearly with young people. My husband has over 10,000 vinyl 45s alone and frequents both. Plus he has been a customer since 1975 of the legendary Frank Merrill who sells 45s at auction worldwide. And believe it or not, in our same town lives John Tefteller, who sells the “world’s rarest records” (mostly blues) to a massive audience. So it is out there. It is good the industry doesn’t care about this. Otherwise they’d find a way to get money from a mere record swap.
Great article. I'm 62 and can remember when college radio was playing REM and the Smiths in the 80's before anybody noticed. I loved it. It was different and exciting. Music itself kept evolving...Devo to Nine Inch Nails Gil Scott-Heron to Public Enemy. I agree with the statement that the genres have been stagnant for a few years. I would love to be optimistic about the future of music because music transpires the best of humanity and to live in a world of regurgitated sounds would suck!
Regarding number eight, such a rosy picture could only be achieved if we dismantled Ticketmaster and Live Nation. Many people can’t afford to go to these shows for hundreds of dollars per ticket. Tours are getting scrapped for lack of sales. Resellers make the bulk of the profits. Even smaller venues are finding themselves pushed into these ticket networks that inflate their prices and reduce the ability for as many young people to participate, thus undermining the very fabric of local music scenes. And when it comes to artists, not all of them want to have to constantly tour in order to pay the bills. It’s not sustainable. They were pushed into 360 deals after the mp3 era hit and then when the streaming platforms took a bigger chunk of album revenue the labels doubled down on touring to get more ticket and merch money. But the only one working harder through all this is the artists.
In Australia, this stranglehold of Live Nation and Ticketmaster on the whole concert industry is starting to exercise the minds of those who know and who are known.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-10-14/music-for-sale/104471980
I wonder what will come of it.
And the rebirth of vinyl! An artist or band makes more money selling just one album than a month of streaming revenue. That is why vinyl is returning. Owning a piece of the artist with an album cover, back cover and inner sleeve with photos and artist bios and song info. Can you get that on any streaming platform?
I'm still buying CDs. The permanence of vinyl without the pops and skips.
Me too. But I only buy CDs from artists I see at small live venues. I live close to Victoria Australia's most vibrant music hub, Castlemaine, so I get to see a lot of amazing artists from varying genres. I aim to support them directly by buying their CDs at the venue where I see them, often out of an old milk crate or the like.
It's not the who, it's the what. Over the last decade, the overall quality of popular music has deteriorated to the point it's all but unlistenable. Unless we figure out away to make music real again, to kick auto-tuning and the other wishy-washy forms of sound manipulation to the curb, I'm not interested.
Yeah, I saw a Pitchfork post about who would be nominated for the Grammys and there was a photo with Sabrina Carpenter, Charli XCX, and Beyonce. Kids love this stuff but to my ears it’s all as bland as paste. As if the engineers were all using the same plugins (probably because they were).
There’s a ton of great new stuff out there but it’s just not what the kids are interested in. At least that’s the way it seems to me.
Musicians on Substack! Artists are leaders! Let's go!
Interesting to see the pull of AI is affecting music as well as the visual arts. Animation and VFX roles are under pressure because of it - but I'm hoping they develop as video games companies have: a few mega publishers, with smaller independent studios making innovative work.
Funnily enough, there's an animated series in development which deals with these themes through the clash of Big Tech/pop music and a Jazz playing cow:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/johnlumgair/jazz-cow-animated-sitcom-22-min-pilot
https://jazzcow.substack.com
Thanks for the shout-out! MrChrisCox Although our first iteration of Jazz Cow was over 20 years ago, it’s all coming into sharper focus now. It has so much in common with the themes Ted talks about.
Well, we NEED the future of music to be different than the present. Rick Beato does a recurring show where he listens to the Top 10 on Spotify. "Is it even music?" he asked a few months ago. "What is happening?"
I can't agree more.
I agree with most of the points here except there is an issue on the growth of live music. Here in the UK, many smaller venues where artists cut their teeth as live acts have closed down and a recent stat showed that touring bands now play much fewer venues than they used to. The growth of live music can only happen if there are places for musicians to play……
Elevator music. Muzak. That’s really the market for AI generated music.