As a recording artist, I have witnessed first-hand how society’s perception of music has fundamentally changed over the last 20 years.
Social networks and streaming platforms have transformed music into a highly available and dirt-cheap commodity that is, with an enormous oversupply barking at you from every corner.
In the wake of this development, consumers’ perception of music as a cultural asset has shifted fundamentally. More and more people are losing sight of the fact that music is not simply ‘there’, but is created by people – not by elusive fantasy figureheads, but by potentially ordinary people with creativity, passion and skill.
Instead, music has degenerated into anonymous lala that spills out of some box. Lala that plays in the background for influencers or computer games, or that is provided by Spotify.
And even better: thanks to ‘AI’, you can now easily create your own lala without having to know anything. All it takes is a prompt and a little patience. A great party gag. ‘Hey, look, here’s my new song, I made it myself!’ OMG, cringe, LOL.
Mikey Shulman, CEO of Suno, a company whose product spits out “AI” songs at the touch of a button, claimed in 2025 (without batting an eyelid!) that his product would solve the problem that clearly no one enjoys making music.
So, as you can see, letting machines create the music has nothing but advantages, according to the tech bros. And of course, Spotify has already noticed this and is flooding people’s playlists with a lot of generic, AI-generated la-la, because Spotify doesn’t have to pay royalties for such music, and besides, artists are just a nuisance when it comes to making money.
As I said, I have experienced this development first-hand. Where it was once possible to find an audience and get people excited about something new, this has now become virtually impossible. If you want to survive as a musician on the internet in 2025, you have to outsmart the algorithms of Spotify, YouTube, Instagram and the like, make yourself look flashy and loud on social media, suck up to influencers or force yourself to do some other stupid shit that has nothing to do with art and culture.
(and before anyone cries out: “and what alternative platforms like Mastodon?” – they have their share of problems, too. the war for attention makes fools of us all. but that’s a whole other article)
Anyone who doesn’t want to participate in this cruel game must be prepared for their new production, lovingly crafted with great care and passion, to sink without trace in the relentless online war for attention. In the best case scenario, there will be a handful (i.e. 5) of “likes”, but even that is not certain – instead, there is guaranteed to be a healthy dose of incomprehension and ignorance from colleagues and acquaintances, because Lala is, after all, something that the beautiful people from the gossip columns create – and definitely not some guy from next door.
Yeah, I know, I sound pretty sorry for myself. And it’s true. But I am even more sorry for someone else – namely you.
You , the audience.
Because you are the ones who are losing out the most.
No, I’m not talking about my music, which is, after all, not that important. It’s about much more than that.
You are being robbed of the chance to experience an exciting and unique adventure, one in which you could discover not only new music but also new things about yourselves.
When I was young, people discovered new music either on the radio, on mixtapes from friends, or because it was played at their favourite club.
Then they would go to the local record shop and try to find out more about the artist – they would browse the display, see what else was available, and maybe even talk to the staff. Ordering that rare EP from overseas. Seeing if you could find that out-of-print album on a second-hand shelf. You had to invest time, bring curiosity, sometimes risk money – and that’s exactly how a bond was formed. Music wasn’t a by-product, an algorithmic suggestion, or Lala that came out of a black box, but something you had to work for. And that’s exactly why it lasted.
I will always remember how, after a trip to England, I proudly returned with an EP by Clock Dva that I had found in a small record shop in Camden, which was not available in Germany, and which I listened to over and over again as if hypnotised.
Or how I wrote to O.rang’s management to find out how I could get hold of their debut album.
Or that fateful day when I was standing in a record shop, browsing through the special offers and bought an LP just because I liked the cover so much – and then was enchanted by that one LP in a way that continues to this day.
All these things have been lost.
They have been replaced by uniformity.
Lala, blaring out from every corner and lasting exactly as long as the algorithm demands. Intros that give everything away immediately, because no one listens anymore unless something ‘happens’ in the first three seconds. And the creators of this Lala are perhaps some abstract, unattainable celebrities whose social media managers lie to you on Insta and TikTok about the lives of the rich and beautiful; or perhaps they are an AI that spits out Lala on command to fatten up the clueless and make corporate bosses rich.
Adventure has been replaced by profit optimisation – and, what’s worse, hardly anyone seems to notice, hardly anyone tries to fight back.
Well, not me. Because I’ve had enough, and I have nothing to lose.
One of the great promises of the early World Wide Web and the emergence of blogging and self-publishing on the internet was that suddenly people like me could reach an audience.
From the beginning of this millennium until the 2010s, creative people from all disciplines flocked to the so-called blogosphere and were able to find both an audience and like-minded people with relative ease.
Mark Zuckerberg and his fascist friends managed to reduce all of that to rubble in just a few years – and ensure that algorithms in a gigantic money-printing machine control what you get to read and hear.
I notice this not only in the number of hits on my blog and my music, but also in my daily interactions with people who have forgotten that music is culture to be discovered – with people who are increasingly losing their curiosity and openness. The world is already full and complicated enough, so it has become much more important (and easier!) to let yourself be thoroughly influenced by the beautiful, colourful world of advertisers – and statements like the following have become normal:
“Look, a funny video on Insta! Look, someone is outraged on Facebook! I have to share this! What do you have? A blog? Oh, um, uh, I don’t know how that works. Where can I see it? Is there an app for that? What do you mean, “just open it in your browser”? Umm… I’ll maybe take a look at it later. Aren’t you on Facebook? What, you make music? Hihihi, so, in a cover band? What do you cover? What, you write your own stuff? Oh, with AI, right? Oh, what, not with AI? You write your own songs? Um… er… I… sorry… I have to go… I’ll maybe listen to it later. Oh look, an article about cat-eating migrants, I definitely have to share that with my xenophobe friends!!11!”
I’ll be completely honest: I don’t have many listeners. Most of my friends and acquaintances either don’t care or don’t realise that I make music. And of the 50-60 people who still buy my albums online (most of them, surprisingly, from the UK), very few give me feedback; in fact, I can count them on one hand.
As far as I’m concerned, I work meticulously and intensively for an average of 10 months, putting everything I have and everything I can into a new album, which then gets mentioned by 4-5 people before disappearing into oblivion again.
So, as already established – I have nothing to lose.
So why shouldn’t I try to reclaim the adventure? At least for a small group of people?
There will be no convenient, optimised way to access this music. I will not throw it to the algorithms, and I will not make it available for the AI bros to harvest.
Instead, I want to reclaim the adventure for myself and my listeners. I want to get to know the creativity of my audience, just as the audience gets to know my creativity. I want to know that I am being heard by people.
If someone finds it, if someone finds me, then please let it be organic and personal and through human exchange.
Anyone who wants to experience this album has to embark on a journey and be creative. And to be honest, I don’t care if it ends up being only five people, because I’m basically already at that point.
And one thing I know for sure – for those five people and for me, the adventure will definitely be worth it!
