Past and future of the music industry… la, la.

In order to get a better understanding of what I am dealing with, I am taking a course on the history of music business and legal practices related to it, and one thing is completely mind-blowing. No, the course doesn’t deal with what I am about to talk about, it’s just fascinating to trace the roots.

If we take today, and rewind to a very long time ago, we will get to a time and a group of people who abandoned complex traditions and schools of knowledge in favor of their proto-hipster ideas that they thought were the most precious thing on Earth because they came up with them. Enter monotheism. As time goes by, people without old traditions forget what’s what and forget how to respect nature (and why, importantly). It is not intellectual knowledge, you can’t just explain it. Then a group of entrepreneurially inclined people figure out that if they claim ownership on parts of nature and then lend or sell those pieces of nature to others, they can get rich. They feel very smart, and they do just that. And since they don’t remember respect, they often murder and steal in the process. Enter colonization.

Then technology appears that allows third-party monetization of artistic gift. Quickly, the publishing industry shows up, entrepreneurially inclined people amass rights to works of art created by others in the same way old feudal lords amassed rights to the land. A different expression of nature, same principle. To the entrepreneurial folks without inner depth, anything that is alive from nature, is potential food. Enter internet. Today’s aggregators are nothing new. Just like in the old days, many of them don’t remember respect, that is all. They are not bad people necessarily, just limited in their perception and powered by their simplified outlook.

Moral of the story: People without respect are only as strong as they are allowed. Nobody is a fucking victim. Which was a very complex way for me to explain why on a sunny Sunday afternoon, I joined a crowd of people bringing public attention to business models that lack respect. Nobody is going to change business models because of altruism, and sales people have gotten too comfortable in their disrespect of the world. Love is underneath it all, and somebody has to scream in their ear and impact their wallet because their ears are located in their wallet.

You can now go back to your Tuesday.