Music for Consumerism

Music has changed — like a lot of things — since its creation. With growth comes new innovations, and this directly affects branches of innovation. The topic I want to discuss is money and music. Tying together music and profit is often a goal nowadays (well, to some extent it always has been). A lot of current music projects tend to focus on profit over the “arts”. Making money over a unique form of expression. This honestly is saddening.

With the rise of Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, and the bajillion other music streaming platforms, it’s never about the creative expression anymore. With Taylor Swift’s 9 vinyl record variants, or the 5 different versions of SM Entertainment’s aespa’s latest comeback, music is just for the profit. Now that’s not to say that artistic music doesn’t exist, but it’s definitely rarer. Artists are trying to appeal to such a large audience using TikTok that songs are shorter. Shorter means more streams, and more streams means more profit.

That’s simply the name of the game nowadays and it leaves me wondering about why this shift even happened in the first place. If Mozart wrote music without the goal of streams — maybe because Spotify was around —, then why can’t modern artists do the same? Is it the industry? Economy? Both? We can all agree music is changing as a whole and is what draws new listeners in.

I mean, for me personally, my interest in music has skyrocketed ever since I became a teenager (so stereotypical…). But what does this mean for our future? Unfortunately, albums keep getting shorter in certain genres along with songs. In the past year, NewJeans’ latest mini albums had songs less than 2 minutes, with one being literally 36 seconds. 😭 It’s scary to think what’s to come next with AI having an increase in our day-to-day lives. Will AI make the next global superhit with 27 vinyl versions each with a new track? Who’s to say it won’t?

This post was kind of just a rant about my recent thoughts on the subject, but I hope this resonated with you even a little… even if it makes no sense… I also kind of wanted to just write a post for the fun of it! As always — for the second time haha — thank you for reading this! I guess one thing I want to ask is: What do you see happening with the music industry in the future? And also, do you partake in music consumerism — i.e., collecting albums, or even purchasing songs on iTunes?