We all know
that we are consuming too much for the planet we have. A third of all food we
produce is thrown away as waste. That is 50 000kg or 110231lb a second thrown away as waste in
the world and as Greta Thunberg has pointed out it’s not sustainable.

In an
interview not long ago Marcus Ek from Spotify told that artists need to release
more content when he the question that Spotify paid out to low to artists.

I just feel
that we are doing the same stupid mistake in the music business as we do in the
food consumption. The new streaming economy is just one click and then forget. Same
as the food we produce a mountain of apples so you can have one. The same here
we produce a mountain of songs for you to listen to one. Of course, this will
affect the quality. To be able to produce a mountain you start to give fertilizer
to the project, and you need everything to grow faster. Yes, you will get a
decent product but it is not that perfect product that you had before.

During the
pandemic now people suddenly got more time to grow their own things. Even I bought a greenhouse and now the harvest comes. Yes, my slow grown tomatoes,
cucumber, and chilies taste much more and better than the ones I buy in the
supermarket. Probably also that I put in quite much love into growing these vegetables.
I have been out there every day watering and cutting off bad leaves and stuff. The
end result is better then if just had grown a thing in less nutrient soil and
just gone for fertilizer to grow it fast to just consume it.

It feels
as the new space for creating music are more and more going this way. But why
is that necessary? Easy the music that you create and produce is driving the
systems. You are not an art creator you are a content creator. We if we stopped
feeding posts on Facebook and Instagram. Stopped put up videos on Youtube and
TikTok and music and pods on Spotify. They won’t exist. They need all people to give them free content.

Also, they are
feeding on you in a very strange way. If you have a fan base on these sites. They
only let around 10% of these fans see that you have released a new song in the
mountain of songs the expect you to produce. If you should reach more you need
to pay. Funny thing it’s like the apple producer to grow the apples then after
that when they sold 10 apples has to pay extra fees to sell more apples. At the
end that just leaves you to produce with less quality or just leave the whole
thing since you won’t be proud of what you produce.

Question, do you really need these sites? In a way yes streaming music is
around 25% of the economy of the music industry. The live side though has been
50%. We don’t know what happens after the pandemic. But I can easily say that music
won’t die and the live scene won’t be replaced by streaming content. We have a
great opportunity to build up the new live industry, so it benefits the artist
that just release every third year. The ones that want slow quality music
should have a chance here to perform quality art. the ones that want to leave the hamster wheel of social media.

We know for
sure that even if you have millions of Spotify streams don’t mean that you will
draw thousands of people to the concert. Almost the opposite around. We can easily
see that the mass consumption of music in just the form of a post on social media is
just fun for the audience in a couple of seconds. A concert is something
that contains fun for hours. You might meet up with good friends before.  You go out and eat and then go and listen to
quality music. That might be a whole evening to sustain your mind. Not just ten
seconds click.

I have a good hunch that the stress and mental illness around the music community have two
things. One is that we start talking about it. Witch is really great. The other
is that stress of making content for a non-stoppable social media. I start
though to see artists that more or less leave the race. And I think they are
right. I don’t need a post from my favorite artist every day. But I need a function
so when you release a song, I would be certain to see that post. Yes, that could
be done by social media sites. Or I would love to get the knowledge that
you play live close where I am so I can see your performance. We need that kind
of system too.

I guess
this will never happen. We just have to look at how we restart the live industry
and start to build it so the artists can have a chance to write and record quality
music and have time to rehearse a great live show. My mind needs more of that quality, the same with this planet. We need more sustainable plans.