The other day, I was reading an excellent article written by someone who quit streaming in favor of cassette tapes¹. The author made some interesting points, particularly about how the never ending drive for “frictionless” content delivery systems destroys the agency of music consumers as active participants in their own tastes, and how tapes are dirt cheap and infinitely rerecordable and duplicatable (and thus practical).

I’m no tape deck evangelist, and while I’m clearly against streaming (hence the title), lately I’ve been considering the ways in which it extends beyond just the obvious and pressing exploitation of artists and into the definitional. On the way, I’ve also began to consider the role of popular music as a medium more broadly in facilitating the sort of alienation that underlies much of the modern streaming ecosystem. To show you what I mean, I feel it’s best to start with a brief tangent to a Reddit thread about Roman parking lots.

On The Dangers of Using the Present as a Guide for the Past

In this post², redditor u/ProfessorBarium asks historians on r/AskHistorians what a Roman Parking lot would look like. The answer of course is that basically no one used a horse or other vehicle of the time to get to the Coliseum. While others may find the minutiae of the answer interesting, the real interest is in why someone would think to ask this.

Evidently, if you’ve been to a sporting event in the US, the question of traffic and parking has probably been at the forefront of your mind. Maybe the question seems intuitive to you as a result. Cars are such a normative part of the modern experience of American life that it does make some sense to project a “primitive” car (i.e. a horse or charriot) onto revelers in antiquity. It feels like common sense that people would structure their society in a way that loosely resembles our own, especially in the context of our seemingly all-encompassing globalized culture.

Since most people lack any kind of substantive exposure to different ways of being, these sorts of questions are typical. I bring all this up because it occurs to me that I had a question exactly along these lines: “How did people listen to music before the radio was invented? Did they go to concert halls?” Even after reading Pete Seeger’s book Chopping Wood³, a book where Seeger mentions explicitly that in his pre-radio childhood his experience with song and music was that it was something his family did together, I failed to realize that was how the vast majority of people experienced music⁴. They sang folk music to each other and with each other.

Before realizing this, I had some notion that the experience of music was gated on class lines – that only the well-to-do who could afford a night at the opera really got to experience music as I know it. On these lines, I think it’s worth considering both the role of popular music more broadly in the everyday experience of life, alongside the ways in which AI slop machine seeks to upend that flawed (but human) system.

The Mass Production Of Culture

Popular music at exists now can be understood along typically developmental lines: once technology existed to allow for the monetization of music skill at the large scale (the radio), people found their niche, specialized, and everyone is better off as a result. I’m not sure I feel that “everyone is better off” is entirely accurate, but it’s undeniable that the sheer volume of consumable music even before streaming is something that have given a lot of people something they genuinely enjoy (myself included).

The only issue I have with this set up⁵ is that it serves – in a typically captialist development way – to alienate people from some fundamental part of themselves. In this case, that alienation is from singing and producing music as a social activity. Outside the narrow contexts of the church (rapidly declining in social importance) and the karaoke bar (a beautiful institution, but not exactly making up for the decline of the church⁶), there are few socially acceptable situations where singing is done.

Of course, the concert venue exists as well. But in a concert situation, the literal pedestal of the artist on the stage can detract from the singing in a group feeling. This is highly dependent on the specific concert though, and often the best part of any concert is when the audience sings along to a song they all know and love. But this is all to say that the process of alienating people from their fundamental nature of music production is a long and varied one. Even the streaming economy of the 2010s did little to alter the fundamental relationship of the older mass music movement. It’s only with the rise of algorithmically generated playlists that a shift in the way people generally experience music should be considered.

But before we get into that, it’s worth saying that the streaming platforms of my early adulthood only made finding new music seem easier. I spent many a long hour trying to find new music on Spotify myself during undergrad, and while this was usually moderately successful, the vast majority of music I associate from that time in my life is still just stuff Clark liked. Finding music you like is easiest through trusted friends and random chance.

Going to a physical store exposes you to a wide array of random music you may not have looked at otherwise. Yes, Spotify had the ability do that too, but in my experience that kind of thing was rare. It was mostly “here’s music you’ve already played”. After all, the algorithm “knows” that you like that stuff, and since the purpose of all modern algorithms tends to be to keep you in the platform, that’s a safe bet for keeping you around.

Still, to really get at the quagmire we’re in now, we need to get back to the dark heart of the issue: algorithmically generated slop.

The Foundations of AI Slop

The fundamental transformation algorithmically curated music consumption causes is to alienate the listener from the process of determining what music they like. While all algorithms like this incorporate user preferences in some way, in my experience this has a negative impact on my ability to differentiate my tastes. That is something I alone have the power to do, and any system which makes that more difficult will be one where I find myself with the feeling of “water water everywhere but not a drop to drink”.

We should understand this to be nothing less than a radical new way of existence. Gone away are the days of asking your friends, reading a review, or thoughtfully consuming the things you think you’ll like. Here to stay are the days of being plugged into a vibes-based playlist tacitly controlled by industry elites⁷.

It’s this situation – where industry elites have direct control over the music you listen to – where we turn. While this kind of set up is more or less endemic to popular music (just think about the relationship between record labels and radio stations), the method and veracity with which it exists now is of note. And the shift in means of ownership plays a role.

In the bygone days of yore⁸, even if you heard a song on the radio you liked, if you wanted to hear it again you still had to engage in a purchase for a physical copy of that song. Even well into the digital age, this kind of ownership relationship to mass media was normative. Since labels and streaming corporations have direct control over both the means in which you listen to music and the physical media⁹ itself.

It should be obvious that this makes AI generated music (or AI slop) a much more appealing business case for record labels. Since they have functional control over what music is pushed onto algorithmically generated playlists, they have control over what you listen to. If we posses the technical capability to make music that passes the vibe check, which we unfortunately seem to¹⁰, then of course loser C-suite types you have always had a holier-than-thou approach to the mass consumption of art as tastemakers and gatekeepers will attempt to cut out the middle man in their quest for endless profits.

Finding a Path Forward

Ultimately, it’s this structural relationship between consumer, platforms, labels, and artists that makes me uneasy about streaming at a conceptual level. I want to be able to find music I like listening to with a medium amount of effort. I’d prefer to have some kind of portable way to listen to the artists I’ve found on my own accord, and listen to their music in a broadly ethical way. If streaming can’t offer this, it’s not so much a moral/ethical choice to not use a streaming platform as it is a practical one.

I can’t make a decision like that for you. But I know if you like music that doesn’t fit neatly into the narrow mold of what a streaming executive thinks will be profitable, you may have that choice made for you. In a future where AI slop machines and record labels¹¹ partner to bring you the latest tune from Glup Shitto right onto your algorithmically generated playlist titled “funkadelic cottagecore witchy vibes”, you won’t be able to find new records that fundamentally alter your ideas about the world.

Luckily, there’s no one forcing you to be tied at the hip to a streaming service run by a wannabe war criminal¹². There are so many meaningful ways to engage in the fundamental human experience of music. CDs, while partially back in vogue, are still dirt cheap. Maybe you’ve still got an old iTunes library on an old computer. And it’s still just as easy now as it was in 2007 to download music from the internet¹³. You don’t even need to get an iPod to do this, you can add the same old mp3 files to your phone.

And you can sing, even if you aren’t very good at it. This has been a rewarding part of my life lately, even if singing mostly means just singing along to the folk music I listen to. Even if it may seem like the headlines are pushing us towards some inexorable technofascist future where the worst people you’ve ever heard of dictate the entirety of industrial, cultural, and fiscal policy for the country, they can never take away what it means to be a human being. They can never stop me from crying to Casmir Pulaski Day, and they can never stop me from asking the karaoke guy if they have Bella Ciao. The economy they seek to build will do nothing other than

Music, like all forms of art, has vastly different meanings to different people. But to me, all the AI slop music machines are doomed to fail the minute they are forced to label their slop as such. No matter how good a song may sound, no matter how beautiful a painting may be, and no matter how well written something may be, if I cannot discern the meaning of a real author it holds no value. Remember: “Only a steel man can be a lover if he has hands to tremble all over”. I’ve never seen a large language model with hands.

Thanks for reading, ’til next time.

Footnotes

1. The article in question ↩︎
2. This one here ↩︎
3. Which is definitely worth a read by the way (link to Thriftbooks) ↩︎
4. In my defense, I figured maybe the upbringing of a famous musician whose father was a prominent ethnomusicologist was unusual. ↩︎
5. Okay, the only issue with the idea of mass music being disseminated in a broadly capitalist society. The music industry itself is deeply, maybe fatally flawed. ↩︎
6. Citation needed. ↩︎
7. While this kind of scheme (pay to play or payola) is generally mildly illegal, but something Spotify has long been suspected of and accused of. ↩︎
8. You know, like 2012. ↩︎
9. By “physical media” here, I really meant the song itself. Record labels and streaming services can and do alter music after release, selectively enforce censorship, and a host of other activities. These activities themselves are not the topic of discussion, I just am bringing them up as evidence of the fact that they own the means of production as it were. ↩︎
10. A bit of reading on the topic if you’re inclined. ↩︎
11. They are actively pursuing this too! So now is a good a time as any to cancel that Spotify subscription. ↩︎
12. Yes, another reference to how you really shouldn’t give Spotify more money. Sorry, it’s my blog and I’ll proselytize if I want to. ↩︎
13. Maybe even easier, considering that internet speeds are way faster and music files are about the same size. ↩︎