The Beat

Welcome to The Beat, Decential’s weekly breakdown of the music-web3 byway.

Like most things in web3, the music space moves at breakneck speeds, issuing regular bouts of hope, cringe and FOMO. That combination of qualities blur the essence of the movement – the enduring solutions to legacy industry problems and the people building them. Let’s focus on the essence; the rest, as Alex Ross wrote, is noise.

Proactive Protest

“Music exists in a sweet spot between commerce and culture, individual and collective effort, identity and industry, and digital and analog,” wrote journalist and culture theorist Cory Doctorow from the same essay we explored in the Beat two weeks ago. “It is the perfect art-form to create an infinite Internet controversy.”

Doctorow wrote that 12 years ago. And as predicted, here we still are, mired in that infinite “Internet controversy” about music (which, really, is the crux of why the Beat exists). But we shouldn’t simply steep in predicament – to borrow the words of collectivist Austin Robey, “we have to propose, not just protest.”

In a recent essay for Water & Music, founder Cherie Hu proposed proactive innovation as a means of elevating us from ‘infinity.’

The proactive innovation mindset, she writes, is rooted in these actions:

• Anticipating trends and needs before they become urgent

• Questioning established practices and seeking new solutions

• Learning from failures and adapting quickly

• Drawing insights from other industries and disciplines

Proactive, of course, runs contrary to reactive – “Reactive innovation is the adjustment we make out of necessity when external forces compel us to change,” Hu writes.

Hu’s proposal is primarily aimed at an over-reactive traditional music industry. She cites various examples, like major labels starting their own underdeveloped streaming platforms as a “knee-jerk reaction to Napster’s disruption.” And rights holders initiating various lawsuits against tech and media companies, indicative of a broader orientation “towards short-term IP protection rather than long-term business model innovation.”

A brief, half-assed dalliance with the blockchain is another such instance, where major labels knee-jerked a few short-lived collaborations as “just in case this goes somewhere” precautions.

“I don't think majors are innovators, unfortunately,” Steph Guerrero – a former Universal Music Group (UMG) marketer turned web3 thought leader – told me last year. “They're just gonna wait for these tools to be built that are easy to integrate into their program. I foresee that they will go to the startup that presents the most feasible and accessible solution.”

Alas, if it fits neatly into the prevailing paradigm, it’s probably not going to be very innovative. Unfortunately the powers that be have, well, the power. Hu knows this, and her treatise is a gentle nudge to trads to eschew their reactive MO and use their power to be part of the solution:

What if indeed, and if they don’t, will the disrupters amongst us finally find a way to detach music from interminable controversy?

Solidarity Leadership

A key issue with the “powers that be” having said power is that they’re not so incentivized to be proactive. “With its entrenched, well-established structures and complex stakeholder relationships, it’s no surprise that the music industry is often resistant to change,” writes Hu. 

The fact that the legacy industry values “market-first leadership narratives” – as music researcher Brodie Conley writes in his Music X guest essay, “Defining Solidarity Leadership in Music” – is another barrier of resistance.

“Defining and valuing leadership as based primarily on achieving strong, market-based outcomes is, of course, highly incentivized,” Conley writes. “We need transformative leadership that produces solidarity, and results in collective action towards building a better, more fair, and equitable music ecosystem.” 

He stresses the idea of music as “ecosystem,” which “calls to mind the complex interactions and interdependencies found in nature” – rooted in “shared care and nurturing, rather than self-interest.” 

That sounds like common sense, and most will connote some semblance of these words in their “market-first leadership narratives,” but as per usual, I will not pass up a chance to remind everyone that UMG boss Lucian Grainge and Spotify head honcho Daniel Ek – while publicly championing artists and sporting a “we’re all gonna make it” guise – are, respectively, earning $100 million bonuses and bidding billions on Premier League teams.

These are not examples of “solidarity leadership,” a term Conley borrows from the new book, Solidarity, by Neutral Milk Hotel’s Astra Taylor and political activist Leah Hunt-Hendrix. Taylor and Hunt-Hendrix define ‘transformative solidarity’ as a form that “aspires to create systems that benefit everyone” and “points us toward the fundamental fellowship of humankind, connecting with others despite apparent difference.” 

Conley lists many examples of solidarity leadership in music, from artist-owned recording studios to music co-ops like Ampled, a “Patreon-like platform for musicians structured as an artist and worker-owned cooperative.”

Ampled was co-founded by the aforementioned Austin Robey. A long-time advocate for alternative approaches to organizational structure and ownership, Robey recently left Metalabel – another mission-oriented project he co-founded – to start something new. And as the trads twiddle their thumbs, he’s using shared ownership as a tool to proactively ‘subvert’ the incumbent paradigm.

Subvert

Over the past week, Robey has begun to unveil Subvert:

Subvert is fashioned as a Bandcamp successor. Thus far, the rhetoric has been rooted in the recent foibles and shortcomings of the one-time indie darling of music platforms.

Last September Bandcamp was acquired for the second time in 18 months. Epic Games, who bought the company back in March, 2022, divested the organization as part of a larger downsizing. The second acquirer was Songtradr, a B2B sync licensing platform, but it was still kinda all in the family. The Chinese conglomerate Tencent, which owns about 40% of Epic Games, has also invested an undisclosed amount of capital in Songtradr. It’s the music industry ouroboros – another Cherie Hu-ism – that keeps on eating its tail, and Bandcamp was the newest hot potato in the M&A aisle of music’s corporate infrastructure.

“To many,” Subvert writes, “Bandcamp was a last bastion of independence in music. In the wake of Bandcamp’s acquisition is a familiar sense of betrayal and concern.”

The betrayal was piecemeal. Songtradr tried to ameliorate initial concerns with claims like, “There’s not a need to change [Bandcamp] into anything other than what it is,” but within a month, half the company was let go, inclusive of Bandcamp’s entire collective bargaining team – the eight union members democratically elected by their peers to negotiate their first union contract.

Because Bandcamp’s corporate structure enabled the founders to sell its values without collective consent (typical in startup land), Bandcamp now teeters on the precipice of “enshittification,” Robey says, invoking the neologism coined by Doctorow – one that’s gotten a lot of air time in this newsletter.

Is it possible to build something that’s truly independent of this mess? Something that can respond to the needs and wants of the folk instead of some bland monolith of fundamental asymmetry?

That’s what Robey’s banking on. Subvert’s ‘proactive innovation’ is shared platform ownership. He’s framing it as “a collectively-owned marketplace for musicians,” and a “new platform with 100% of its founding ownership reserved for its artists, supporters, and workers” that “codifies its commitment to collective ownership, democratic governance into its legal and organizational foundations.”

And it makes a lot of sense:

Despite our agreement on the premise, the fact that it’s “difficult” will deter most from becoming “architects of innovation.” But that doesn’t make it any less viable. In the words of Thomas Edison (or maybe Henry Dodd, or Isaiah Hale, or Paul Larmer, or Lila Kroppmann), "Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work."

Coda

I’ve always liked the idea of bands’ aspired mutualism – at its best, when not ‘subverted’ by egotistical frontmen, it’s an example of Conley’s sentiment that: “Ultimately, it’s about individuals undertaking meaningful action together.” Coming together to make music is a metaphor that can – and should – be borrowed by everyone doing anything with anyone. 

30 years ago, Portishead came together to release their excellent debut record, Dummy. Beth Gibbons and Geoff Barrow met over coffee at the unemployment office in Bristol (near Barrow’s hometown, Portishead). Allegedly, it was during an Enterprise Allowance course – a Thatcher-era scheme that gave unemployed folks a whopping £40 per week as long as they were starting their own business (the topic of another Beat, perhaps).

Gibbons and Barrow started recording music in Neneh Cherry’s kitchen in London. Eventually, Adrien Utley joined the fold. Barrow taught Utley sampling, and the latter reciprocated by sharing distinct instruments like cimbaloms and theremins. Armed with Gibbons’ haunting voice, the trio created one of the most distinctive sounds of the late 20th century.

Dummy won the 1995 Mercury Prize, went triple platinum and is included in Rolling Stone’s (and NME’s) 500 Greatest Albums of All-Time. All of this despite Portishead being famously averse to the limelight, and initially uncertain that their individual musical styles would even mesh when pieced together.

It’s proof that bands – and companies – are more than the sum of their parts. They birth impractical, difficult and even impossible things – may that be a ‘wandering star’ we follow in the midst of these lonely, isolated, ‘sour times.’

Now go outside and listen to music – it’s a beautiful day.

My name is MacEagon Voyce. For more music and less noise, consider subscribing to The Beat. And if you already do, consider sharing with a friend. Thanks for being here.