The Pop Corporation

Everything is not as good as it used to be, music is worse, music journalism is doomed, the radio is bad, there’s nothing on TV, whatever happened to that good ol’ rock ‘n’ roll?, it’s all autotune, the DJs don’t even beat match, its all Tik Tok dances and blah, blah, blah, yadda, yadda, yadda, thrrrrrrrrrrp!

Right? Wrong. See, we’ve never had it so good. Pretty much every person on the planet right now has more access to good stuff they like than ever before, be it old music you haven’t heard yet, or new stuff that sounds like the stuff you’ve always listened to, or brand new interesting stuff that’s pushing the envelope, and indeed, that good ol’ rock ‘n’ roll and everything else besides. The fact is, convenience has turned a bunch of people who ought to know better into lazy consumers.

Let us explain.

Once upon a time, we listened to the radio. The radio had to be a broad church because we had fewer channels. In the UK, for example, Radio 1 would have the John Peel show playing whatever the hell he wanted, alongside The Evening Session which played indie, and in the daytime, a rake of pop and soul, and the weekend would ramp up with house and trance sets by big ticket DJs. Variety was a necessity and music fans pre-streaming and catch-up services would have to remember when to tune in, and if they were so inclined, hover over the record button with a blank cassette poised, so they could listen back to their new favourite songs and mixes.

Elsewhere, people would have to go down the shops and pick up a copy of their favourite music magazine, be it the NME or Smash Hits or Mixmag or… you get the picture. Maybe you’d get up early on a Saturday morning and tune into The Chart Show or wait for your favourite alternative rock show on MTV? You’d then hang out with your friends and say those immortal words “Have you heard this song?“

It is now 2024 and a lot of those things seem to have gone… or have they?

See, with all this convenience, it sure seems like a lot of music fans are passively sitting around and waiting for the good stuff to land in their laps and are wondering why it just isn’t happening. Music and pop culture was never a passive hobby and it still isn’t now. Expecting good music to just happen to a person is silly behaviour, because basically what we’d be saying is that we hope that Silicon Valley Tech Bros would have done the right thing and worked out what we like and just offered it to us on a plate. Tech Bros – a group of people who famously spend all their time inside hunched over monitors and working out how to smoothly insert advertisements under your eyelids and hope you don’t notice.

We know that the algorithm has made a lot of things homogenous and that AI will only continue to iron out all the interesting creases and kinks in culture – that’s what software does. If you’re not happy with that, then you have to tickle that bit of your brain that used to get you off your backside to find out what’s going on. This being 2024 and us all having all the information in the world at our fingertips, you don’t even have to leave the house to do it. We’ve never had it so good, if we’re willing to do a fraction of the work you once did.

We know that Instagram doesn’t show you your friends’ photography as much as it used to. We know that Spotify is going to err on the side of artists with huge marketing budgets and teams that can fudge the binary code to try and trick you into listening to them. We’re no longer living in Web 2.0 with MySpace friends and finding new bands with a few simple clicks. Those days are gone. People may very well be tipping everyone off about new records and bands, but social media isn’t rewarding them unless they’re making reaction videos on YouTube and you’re not watching them. The internet is fucked if you let it turn its own cogs.

However, there’s a cavalcade of brilliant DJs and radio shows from all over the world on Mixcloud and Soundcloud who aren’t sponsored by anyone and playing exactly what they want. What you want. Like jazz? We’ve been listening to Mondo Jazz who have a local radio show in New York. Like 303s in your house music that chugs along like it’s the ’90s again? We’ve been listening to this mix which Love Will Save The Day uploaded. All those cool DJs and radio shows, all uploading interesting bits and that are easy to find and it is completely free to use – and people have the gall to say they’re finding it hard to listen to music that they like. It barely counts as digging for treasure – it’s right there.

And lets say you want to listen to Spotify because you’d prefer to listen to music without anyone talking at you in your ear; fine. One of the best ways of sidestepping the algorithmic thinking of Big Tech is to make your own playlists. No suggestions – just you, acting as your own DJ. You can make a million ultra specific playlists AND if you want some new tip-offs, Spotify will suggest songs similar to what is in your playlist at the foot of it. It might be a bunch of stuff you’ve heard already, but chances are, there’s a few new gems in there. That’s very much a case of the algorithm working as it should. Also, have you looked for any user generated playlists on Spotify? You never know, Steve from Basingstoke who has a killer record collection but never told anyone might just have made the best Argentinian ’70s Psychedelic Funk playlist you’ve ever heard. The thing is, is that you have to actively press some buttons and look.

The state of music journalism is always a thing that seems to be in constant peril, but again, where you once had to be an active participant, that’s never been as true as it is now. Waiting for the algorithm to land the good stuff on you is folly. You have to remember to check that website that wrote that thing you liked – do it daily, do it weekly, whatever – you have to remember things and seek them out, just like you used to. Again, if you’re getting bone idle (aren’t we all?), then does that site have a weekly or monthly newsletter where they’ll send stuff directly to your inbox so you can read a thinkpiece about payola or The Best Band You Never Heard Of or the future of music while sat on the toilet.

It seems this is a problem that’s on the minds of a lot of people presently. Over on YouTube, Digging The Greats (a fun channel – check it out – there’s a tip-off to participate with) has made a four-part video about The Algorithm and the problems of new tech when it comes to music, making stuff, and generally being too distracted to focus on the things you actually like.

Now, we’ve only embedded the fourth part of his thoughts (do check all four) and some of the story along the way will have you wondering how much money you’ll have to cough up if you want to opt-out of the algorithm, but rest assure, there’s some fun ideas in there. And there’s always cheaper options if you want to do things your own way coughtorrentingcough coughyoutuberipscoughcough.

You see, something quite sad has happened in recent years where we’ve seen an erosion of the ecosystem of music, pop culture and everything else besides. Music isn’t just pressing play on a song and deciding whether you like it or not, and it never has been. It’s a microclimate filled with independent writers, fanzines, DIY merch, learning your favourite songs on the guitar badly, telling your friends about this hot new song and everything between. It’s a shared love and it’s sticking your neck out and saying you love something.

See, social media rewards boring hot-takes and negative reviews. It’s already called Rage Bait and we all fall for it, be it reading up about politicians we hate more than we do anything for the grass-roots movements we love. Social media rewards people for engagement, and sadly, social media doesn’t really care what the content of the engagement is, as long as you’re engaging with it. What are we to do? Keep gamely sharing cool new stuff we like in the hope that at least one of our friends gets turned onto something? It’s a start. Forget ‘engagement’ numbers. You’re not an influencer. Use social media to be social and it doesn’t matter what traffic you’re pulling in. We’ve been told it’s a popularity contest and it isn’t. See a fanzine in person? Buy it. See one online? Hit the share button because fanzines don’t have a marketing budget and every little things helps them out. Same for bands, merch makers, small record labels, websites etc etc.

You don’t have to completely detach yourself from the internet – and why would you? It is so often a handy and useful thing. We all know that thanks to AI generated content and Search Engine Optimising (SEO) it will get worse. We’ve already seen that Google search results aren’t what they once were because you have to wade through countless placed adverts and thumbnails that keep you on the search page rather than click through to the website that has more of what you might like on it. And don’t think this is just Google either – they’re all at it, TikTok, Instagram, Apple, Facebook, Spotify, Tidal, Amazon, YouTube and everyone else. With that in mind, you have to actively participate in giving your attention – however brief that may be – to people and places you enjoy.

If big sites can’t afford to pay staff and rely on AI generated articles, then stop giving them your business. Google and the like will reward the use of AI because they have a vested interest in it. AI generated things will also be SEO ready, and feature higher up the search engine rankings. Human-made things will almost certainly suffer, which means you have to remember where you’ve read things or suffer the beigeification of the things you put in your head.

You’ve managed to do this before, so it’s not like it’s a huge leap. Think about the Old Internet. Or Web 2.0 if you remember its government name. Far from perfect, but the things it was good at were great – talking to existing and new friends, finding new music, giving tip offs of what you were watching and buying… that’s just not a thing now. So if getting down to shows isn’t possible, or you don’t have a local record store, then how you curate your online life is pretty important to you. If you can remember to check your favoured newspaper every day, you can remember to check your favourite cultural blog or zine too, right? Tech Bros won’t help you.

For example, we could run a tool in this very piece which would suggest words which would be more lucrative for us – a way of effectively hiding advertising within the words of our pieces which will pull traffic in from people looking for specific products. They’d inevitably arrive here, find that we’re not selling anything, and leave unfulfilled. The winner would be the search engine, not us, not the reader and not the person necessarily trying to flog say, a piece of audio kit. AI has bled into editing software and publishing tools too. While we were writing this, we were given constant suggestions which underline ‘unconfident words’ and ‘complex words’, and we’d end up with more searchable language, but language lacking in the character of what we’re trying to convey.

It certainly is a weird time, and it is pretty obvious that allowing tech companies to decide what we should see is problematic. Not everyone can afford the financial implications of ditching their phones in favour of an mp3 player, separate camcorder and fancy camera or whatever – the fact is, our phones are powerful and incredibly useful when we want them to be. How we interact with them is the thing we need to look at and, if you think everything sucks, that’s because there’s a whole world of tech guiding you toward distraction and idle behaviour and changing that can feel daunting.

However, you do get to have a say in it. Opt-in to what you find good and become active rather than passive.