Some Thoughts on Technology, Artists, and Society, in the Past, Present and Future

We're at another one of those seismic moments in technological development as it applies to the arts and most other things.

We're at another one of those crossroads, it's very palpable.  Feels like a good time for a little rumination on the overview and background to this situation, specifically with regards to technology, society (or capitalism) and the arts.

Looking back at the past century, since the rise of radio in the 1920's, especially at this kind of distance in time, it's pretty easy to see that there have been pros and cons to the technology, and all the others that have come along as well.  More pros or more cons depending on how it's all used, but also just pros and cons of the technologies themselves.

Radio may have contributed to broadening the scope of music many listeners out there were exposed to, but for working musicians as well as for folks who liked to gather and play music together as a regular pastime, the introduction of radio into society was tremendously disruptive, and overwhelmingly negative.  Instead of playing music together, we listened to the stars on the radio do that.  Instead of having a live musician playing in a venue, we could turn on the radio.

The introduction of film and movie theaters, first silent and then with sound, had a similarly devastating impact on live theater.

Even without radio or film or TV being industries largely concentrated in a relative few gigantic corporate hands, the very nature of the mediums led to a more selective presentation of what was out there in the world.  Even without all the corporate consolidation, these technologies were having their socially isolating and  alienating effects, and their effects in terms of the loss of employment for so many people who used to be involved with one or another form of live entertainment, musical performance, theater, etc.

When radio and movies and record players all came around way back when, there were many eminent musicians and actors who were horrified by these developments and their implications, and who called for other artists not to participate in them.  In the end, radio and movies and all the rest were all here to stay and became completely ubiquitous, and record companies worked out a deal with the radio stations to get paid royalties for airplay.

Lots of people didn't like the new technologies at all.  They were seen as cheapening the experience of art, delivering bad quality sound and visuals, causing mass unemployment of so many artists, and having a generally alienating impact on society.  But in the end an arrangement was made, at least with radio airplay, that allowed for the wealth resulting from all of this to be shared among copyright-holders of the music, rather than all of the profits going to the broadcasting corporations, as had initially been the case.

Big record companies as well as independent musicians also adapted to the new reality by recording music and selling records, and later tapes and CDs.  Traveling vaudeville shows might have been long dead, the theaters didn't need orchestras anymore, and the bars didn't need pianists, but the musicians who could adapt to the new reality might at least sell recordings and perhaps compensate for their losses, or make some extra money, depending.

Live performance always continued, and continues, to happen, and for various reasons I'm sure it always will, as long as there are still people.  But each new technological development seems to lead to further concentration of wealth at the top, and to working artists generally facing more challenges than benefits from each new phase.

Cable TV, home video, and then the internet, and cell phones, all served to encourage people to stay in their little bubbles, and to engage in less collective, live activity out in the world.  They led altogether to more TV shows being filmed and actors and musicians and others being employed to create all that content, but for those artists who didn't move to Los Angeles or London, our worlds have just seemed in so many ways to continually shrink further over time, as the rents rise and the venues close.

With the dominance of music streaming platforms giving anyone with an internet connection free access to virtually all the world's recorded music, suddenly the basis for survival for millions of artists -- CD sales -- vanished, pretty much overnight for many, including for me.  According to what I've read about the available data, this period was seismic for the music industry, probably in much the same way as it was for working artists and so many others when radio stations starting cropping up all over the place a century ago.

But once again, as with the time when radio came around, the time of the music streaming platforms playing music entirely for free ended, and the platforms that became dominant were the ones that paid some nominal amount to the copyright-holders to play our music.

For so many years I felt nothing but resentful about how this process had taken place, how these companies could just stop charging a monthly fee for the content, and make it all free.  How they could only do this by lowering the payout amount dramatically as they grew more dominant.

But now, of course, for anyone much younger than me, selling hundreds of CDs in a given month is a thing of fantasy, and those of us making a few hundred dollars a month from streaming royalties are considered highly accomplished.

There have been many artists who have pulled their catalogs from Spotify for one reason or another, generally very good ones.  In protest against Spotify's low payout rate, in protest against Spotify's unilateral decision to pull the rug out from under the music industry overnight with the introduction of their free tier, in protest against Spotify's spending priorities.  I have never seriously entertained the idea of taking my content off of Spotify.  After already having my career dramatically undermined by their corporate practices 12 years ago, the idea of abdicating the money they send me every month and thus punishing myself further in order to make a point just doesn't make enough sense.

Now we're at another one of those seismic moments along the lines of moments like the advent of radio, or of the internet, or of Spotify's free tier.  Of the few working artists who survived all of that and are still on the tax rolls, a whole bunch of them are writing and recording jingles for commercials and soundtracks for TV shows, or they're licensing their music for such purposes.

It seems very obvious that the rise of the AI-driven music generation platforms will drastically reduce the numbers of artists involved with any of that content creation.  The ranks of session musicians will shrink to a relative handful.  If it seemed very few people were taking up the project of learning how to play a musical instrument before, that tendency more and more in the direction of karaoke or whatever we're calling it these days will grow.

We live in a very dystopic situation, under the rule of massive corporations that have a stranglehold on both of our ruling parties here in the US.  These corporations are not being effectively regulated, to say the least.  In any case, over time, although radio devastated live performance a century ago, at least the broadcasters eventually had to start paying some royalties.  Later, although the free corporate streaming platforms similarly devastated the way so many independent musicians around the world had previously survived, eventually they started paying streaming royalties, to sort of make up for some of the losses for some of the musicians.

At this juncture I feel compelled to say very earnestly that if there were a way to somehow banish the AI music generating platforms from existence, this should be done.  I would also like to see all the music streaming platforms be legally required to pay 1 cent per song streamed, which would immediately cause them all to re-erect those paywalls that came down 12 years ago.

What at least might be realistic, because it would serve various corporate interests, would be for the music streaming platforms as well as the music generating platforms to pay more for the content they're using.  But to consider that any kind of victory for artists would be very sad.  Because what these AI music generating platforms are going to do to the arts at every level seems really impossible to get my head around, but it will be absolutely devastating.  It's going to be huge, like as huge as ChatGPT has been in the world of business, programming, or academia.  

The idea of making any of this technology go back in the bottle seems very impossible.  What seems possible, at least, if we lived in a functional democracy or had a big enough social movement to make such demands, is regulating the technology, controlling who profits from it, and having a system in place for making it feasible for a society to have musicians, journalists, and painters in it, even if they're all doing things that could otherwise be replaced by AI.

In the absence of such a regulatory framework, in the context of the current Big Tech free-for-all, artists are faced with the choice of using these new AI tools, or not using them.  There are lots of good reasons not to use them.  But I know so many people out there in the world who aren't artists, and for so many of them, using ChatGPT in order to be more productive is becoming the norm, and very much a required norm.  I'm appalled to be saying it, but I have no doubt that this same phenomenon will soon apply to the arts as well with platforms like Suno, across the board, especially in relatively non-regulated environments like the US.

This latest development once more underscores the necessity of establishing a society where profits from such technologies are shared equitably, rather than hoarded among the trillionaires.  These technologies are increasingly derived from the basic elements of what makes humans human, such as music, art, and reasoning.  Their existence in their current form, with Big Tech calling the shots and making the money, represents an ongoing theft in progress.

If you might be among those inclined to harbor resentment towards artists who don't pull their material from Spotify, or artists that use AI music generation tools, you'd certainly be part of a long and vibrant tradition of sensible people wanting to stop the horrors of what some call progress, by attacking its victims.  I would submit, however, that it is the rules of the game that need to change, and the rules won't change whether you're among the decreasing numbers of people who are avoiding the use of these technologies, or resenting anyone else for using them, but only through a whole lot of collective action.

In the meantime, I don't know about you, but I'm going to learn how to be a better prompt engineer.