The Beat

Welcome to The Beat, Decential’s weekly exploration of music, culture and the new Internet – featuring all the friends we’ve met along the way.

On the culture-tech byway, things move at breakneck speeds. From web3 to AI, copyright to collective ownership, art to psychedelics, The Beat is an exercise in association. We all contain multitudes, and within them, vast differences. But there is some connective, fundamental essence to be found.

The Beat is dedicated to that essence; the rest, as Alex Ross wrote, is noise.

Joy as an Act of Resistance

Back in 2018, I saw the punk band IDLES play at the Music Hall of Williamsburg. The crowd was happy and raucous. I love all moshing, from the thrashy maelstrom of metal shows to the more buoyant punk pits; this one was squarely in the latter, and perhaps the most joyous I’ve ever roiled in.

Post-show I immediately navigated to the merch booth. “I gotta keep this feeling alive,” I thought, and promptly purchased a band tee that read: “joy as an act of resistance” (the name of the album IDLES released that year).

It was the first moment I realized that that feeling is the holy grail – that’s what music tech builders should seek, that nameless bliss that motivates people to buy tee-shirts after a show, to keep feeling that magic, to feel part of the community they've just shared an experience with, and to signal to people outside that experience that they're part of the tribe.

Since the election results I’ve worn the shirt three times, fiercely invoking its message as a member of some nebulous joy-based counterforce. He can’t take that away, even if he takes so many other things.

And perhaps it’s through that lens that we’ll have to shape the future…

Do Deranged Squirrels Dream of Electric Sheep?

Much of Trump’s Silicon Valley support came from the folks banking on AI deregulation. He’s promised to nix Biden’s 2023 executive order on “the safe, secure, and trustworthy development and use of artificial intelligence.” But his interest in AI, like all things, is self-serving and lacking in nuance (and this demands nuance – we live in a world where Universal Music Group is both striking deals with AI companies to train on their data and suing them for using it). It lies in quashing the tech that’s being used to to “censor the speech of American citizens” (i.e. censor whatever swill’s mucking about his subconscious that day). 

Presaging how Trump ultimately addresses AI – and how said policy will affect music – is akin to predicting the whims of a deranged squirrel. If he wakes up with a tune pinging around his tin head, maybe he’ll call Kid Rock and, over a congenial round of Budweiser target practice, decide to champion musicians. And then come tomorrow, god knows, and god help us.

Similarly capricious wish-wash and fundamental uncertainty lie waiting in TikTok’s ban and divest ruling. Once upon a time, Trump was all for wresting the app’s US presence from its China-based parent company, Bytedance. Then he realized it might be a more favorable haven for his vanity and insanity: 

“For all of those who want to save TikTok in America, vote for Trump,” he said. “The other side’s closing it up, but I’m now a big star on TikTok… and we’re setting records. We’re not doing anything with TikTok, but the other side’s gonna close it up, so if you like TikTok, go out and vote for Trump.”

According to the Washington Post, “some advisers expect him to intervene on TikTok’s behalf if necessary.” But again, god knows. It’s absolutely demented that we still live in a world where the grudges and whims of one megalomaniac can affect such profound incertitude.

But wait, there’s another despot in our midst. Grima Wormtongue, aka Elon Musk, was just tapped by Trump to head the new “Department of Government Efficiency” (alongside fellow billionaire, Vivek Ramasamy). The roles are “informal,” meaning the appointments can bypass conventional Senate approval and Musk can carry on with Tesla, etc. (In harrowing rhetoric, Trump called the department’s mandate – i.e. dismantle Government Bureaucracy – our era’s Manhattan Project.)

On the topic of TikTok, Musk has publicly criticized the government’s dictum to force a sale. Then again he’s also the owner of Twitter, a TikTok competitor, so… These are conflicts of interest that are impossible to disentangle – and just the tip of the iceberg of the cronyism that pervades Trump presidencies.

Elsewhere, Canada made the decision to close TikTok’s business operations (but not restrict access to the app).

“The government is taking action to address the specific national security risks related to ByteDance Ltd.’s operations in Canada through the establishment of TikTok Technology Canada, Inc,” said François-Philippe Champagne, the minister of innovation, science and industry. The decision, he said, was partially based on “the advice of Canada’s security and intelligence community and other government partners.”

TikTok also just formally announced the “Share to TikTok” feature, which allows Spotify and Apple Music folks to share tracks directly to the social platform.

Regarding streaming, in the UK, the government has declared that it’s simply getting out of the way.

​​In 2020, you might recall that the UK’s Digital, Media, Culture and Sport Committee launched an inquiry into the economics of music streaming, ultimately denouncing the prevailing streaming ecosystem as “unsustainable.”

Earlier this year, the Committee made numerous recommendations regarding “creator remuneration.” The British government just issued its official response: “UK government wants ‘industry-led action’ on music remuneration,” reads a recent Music Ally headline.

“And yes, if you read that headline as code for ‘we’re not going to step in with legislation,’” writes Music Ally’s Stuart Dredge, “you’d be absolutely right.”

“The government’s current view is that the best way to address creator concerns on remuneration in music is through dialogue within industry and, where appropriate, industry-led action,” wrote Sir Chris Bryant MP and Feryal Clark MP on the government’s behalf.

Wrote Dredge: “The letter also declined to reserve more spaces in that working group for representatives of musicians, and batted back the committee’s call to step in to give songwriters and publishers a bigger share of streaming royalties.”

In other words, it’s being sent back to the industry with a post-it note that reads: “you figure it out.”

Startup Shutdown

The industry isn’t exactly in a favorable position to “figure it out,” though. A microcosm of industry dissonance can be observed in the ongoing Merlin-TikTok kerfuffle. In essence, TikTok is refusing to re-engage in re-licensing discussions with Merlin, a digital licensing and membership organization that represents independent labels and distributors. (More context can be found in the Beat’s coverage here and here.)

More broadly, licensing requirements tend to snuff out innovation. But they can also protect creators and other rightsholders. That disconnect has lead to a longstanding industry imbroglio, captured by Music Ally in this preface to an interview with Merlin CEO, Jeremy Sirota (conducted prior to the TikTok tumult):

That need/distrust conundrum has created a tortuous reality. To help us understand it, Sirota offered three art-related analogues:

• Walking into an MC Escher painting: “It’s inherently complex and you sometimes just end up back in the same place.”

• Going through a Richard Serra installation: “It is beautiful. You want to be there. But the same thing happens. You kind of get nowhere.”

• A Where’s Waldo? puzzle: “It’s still complex, but once you find it, you’re done. There it is.”

Music Ally’s Eamonn Forde suggested a fourth option: “Ikea, where you go round in circles looking for the exit and what you are after is not even in stock.”

Added Sirota: “With really odd names that are hard to pronounce. And even when you buy it, you have to figure out how to install it yourself!”

One middle ground is Merlin Connect, an initiative to make “music licensing more accessible to a select group of promising emerging technology platforms by delivering fully cleared, quality music.”

As a representative body of the independents (who account for some 15% of the recorded music industry), Merlin can license music to budding product teams who, at resource-poor early stages, couldn’t otherwise afford to legally license music and test a marketable proof of concept. We need more middle grounds.

Music X’s Maarten Walraven recently suggested a similar approach:

In the piece, Walraven contemplates the vaunted “product-market fit” – that empyrean arrival point for any startup, when a product has satisfied market demand.

As an alternative, he suggests builders explore that model’s inverse, i.e. “market-product fit.” It’s something I’ve pondered before in the context of the social DAO, FWB. 

In your standard startup, founders raise money based on reputation and a focused product idea, then test and iterate in hopes of finding product market fit. FWB flipped the script, building community around ideals – united by the liquid $FWB token – until they found products to build for their own needs. The product market fit – and a diverse constituency of experts – were baked in.

In this model, it’s our niche and fragmented multitudes that become our rallying cry. And that concept was invoked in another recent Music X essay, this one by the excellent Tristra Newyear.

“What if we flip the script, and turn our short attention spans and bits and pieces of media into a strength, not a pathology?” she wondered. “What if fragments are the units of expression of our times, not a problem, but a solution that reflects how we experience our internet- and tech-mediated worlds?”

To make her point, she invokes the Welsh author and mystic, Arthur Machin.

Indeed, this is the world we live in. Instead of despairing or capitulating, we should ask: how can we make it work for us?

To begin, perhaps we root our business ventures not in ROI or mass appeal but in pursuit of ecstasy. Or, as in the case of F2P proposed by Dan Fowler in Liminal Space, “with a focus on fun.” Or, even, through the relentless quest for joy.

The blinkered oligarchs and mass produced slop aren’t going to serve us. So if we need to look elsewhere, why not defer to that nameless bliss of the mosh, where sweaty camaraderie and joy act as our guides – our signals of resistance.

Coda

IDLES just announced two Bristol dates next August (meanwhile, worth noting that the city is considering a one percent levy on tickets to support venues). The shows will be their only UK appearances in 2025 – a fact they’re emphasizing as the tickets go on sale a whopping nine months in advance.

I’ve heard some people wonder if the band is organizing a mini festival around those dates, resurrecting a kind of All Tomorrow’s Parties (an acclaimed, defunct London festival that was curated by the band Mogwai) approach.

I’m for it – the music industry would be a whole lot more fun if artists were building more things.

Jamie Reddington, aka the artist Sound of Fractures, clued me into the IDLES announcement. In early December, Reddington will release “Network Archives 001: A Directory of Inspiration,” on Metalabel.

The archive is a monument to artists building things. It’s “a curated collection of creative experiments, writings, and reflections by a diverse community of creators, listeners, thinkers and collectors from around the globe drawn together through a love of music.”

Dozens of on-chain music projects (one of which is the FOLK manifesto) are featured. It’s a nod to the folks in the sandbox – many of whom are artists – building for something better because nobody else is building it for them.

It’s meant to be a blueprint of sorts – “a wellspring of ideas and an invitation to engage with the content, build upon it, and ultimately, shape the future.”

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.