Here finally follows the promised episode on the topic of “Reading the Music Crisis with Karl Marx”.
On behalf of the thought travel agency “Parole Brandi”, I would like to take you on a journey on communist waters through today’s music business. And play around with it a bit for general entertainment.
Let’s go.
We remember that Marx predicted everything: that the capitalist must create added value, which unfortunately can only be created through exploitation and therefore capital always needs someone to exploit.
What does that mean for music now?
Karl Marx above Taylor Swift
Someone has to want to listen to music that is supposed to make money. So one question is: what wants the people? There is a nice quote from Marx on this: “The thoughts of the ruling class are the dominant thoughts in every epoch.” Means: The people want what they want should.
If today’s capitalism protects itself from subversive criticism with heteronormative gender roles, friction and shallow entertainment, this explains, for example, the entire Taylor Swift.
Those in power always spread the ideology with which they can legitimize themselves. It used to be said that the king was chosen by God. Today the motto is: Anyone can do it. Both are equally wrong. I don’t want to waste any time here about the kings, but one thing is clear: not anyone can do it. No, only the capitalists can do “it”. And only if they consistently generate growth, i.e. if they exploit someone for it. But not every person on this planet is a capitalist by profession. For example, some make art – in an exploitative system.
“A capitalist kills many.” (Karl Marx)
We remember Spotify. The platform pays around 0.003 euros per stream in this country. To earn €1,000, a song would have to be streamed approximately 333,333 times. A product that would be fairly paid for would be created if, for example, I spit into my microphone twice in a very original way. But if I pay musicians and producers to record something, I cannot generate a surplus under these conditions and, according to Marx, I am not a material capitalist, but rather something like one failed small producer. This means that all musicians who do not make a living from the distribution of their music and cannot reinvest their profits have failed in the capitalist sense.
Spotify’s appeal is that the platform makes the artists’ music known because, theoretically, everyone can hear it there. With this collection of well over 100 million tracks, that would be nonsense even if Spotify itself wasn’t the gatekeeper of its most-listened-to playlists, which are becoming more and more popular “Ghost Artists” are populated, i.e. fictitious musicians often end up in playlists with AI-generated tracks in order to feed algorithms and artificially increase streaming numbers. In reality, only the stars (and now the AI) provide and accumulate the capital, the rest are more or less left empty-handed and are involuntarily exploited – like in every other goddamn industry.
Everything has an end
According to Marx, the end of the song looks like this: The capitalist is forced to generate more and more capital must systemically increase its prices and make its means of production cheaper because otherwise it will be left behind by the competition. “The
Capitalism creates its own negation with the necessity of a natural law.”
Let’s remember: stagnation in capitalism is the beginning of bankruptcy! Growth is the maxim! The rich-poor scissors must therefore continue to divergeuntil no one has the necessary change for consumer goods anymore, not even for a Spotify subscription, and even Elon Musk is stuck with everything he has ever produced. A scary scenario, but according to Marx it is unavoidable.
At least in the area of music we could speed up the process a little. I’m in favor of simply disappearing from the platforms completely and soon only being able to listen to AI-generated music on Spotify, which should be really nice. If this company is already ignoring so many musicians financially, it should replace us completely with the machine. If Marx was right, Spotify, along with the other companies, will eventually die because of its own logic.
“Proletarians of all countries, unite!” (Karl Marx)
But before everything implodes on its own in a global catastrophe, Marx suggests revolt.
The way out of our misery would be a reversal of the phrase “everyone can do it”: No: only “everyone can do it together”. This would be the case if the majority of musicians would come together and work together for a common cause. If we fought to decentralize our distribution without becoming undemocratic towards our recipients. It is not for nothing that Marx has the workers of all countries called for unification because there has to be some oomph behind it if such a fat system is to falter.
On the plus side, we musicians have so much that is needed for a proletarian association: concern, imagination, persuasiveness, a sense of mission and the ability to show solidarity. To be successful, we probably just need an alternative, sustainable business model and the determination to put everything on the line. But I can’t give you that model off the top of my head right now; we’ll soon hand this specific problem over to a few eager economists.
If only we would finally understand that we are being shamelessly ignored in this chain and that our work, which requires countless hours of care, research, craftsmanship and dedication, is given to corporations like Spotify almost as a giftthis could result in long overdue outrage. A demo made up of sweaty stars in the streets of New York, London, Berlin… I’ll probably still be able to dream.
Follow-up note
Former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis, like many others, is already going one step further and saying that we are already stuck in something new, in a so-called “techno-feudalism”, since everything has been replaced by digital “cloud capital”, which rules us through the hands of a few. Nevertheless, the basic principles of capitalism, as Marx understood it, are still applicable to our world today.