‘THE SOUND OF SILENCING’. Or why I want NOTHING to do with the 'Music Industry'
A barely coherent rant by Pete Brennan (The Common Centrist)
So I have just finished my undergraduate degree in BA Music (HONS). At this point, one might (understandably) expect that I will now attempt to ‘break into’ the music industry. That I will take my certificate and what I’ve learned and start making inroads into show business, networking, pitching projects, etc. But I won’t. I will absolutely NOT be pursuing a career in the music industry.
I briefly touched on two of the main reasons for this in my ‘Introduction’ post ‘Why I Chose Substack’ on this very page recently.
Firstly, ‘Streaming services don’t really pay independent artists for their streams very well. Unless you're in the top echelons of streamed acts, the money an artist makes is almost negligible’.
And secondly, ‘Ideological capture from whatever you want to call it; ‘Wokeism’, Cultural Marxism, Radical Progressivism, Critical Social Justice, etc. The music industry is teeming with this stuff. With so many established artists in the creative industries being ‘cancelled’ for Heterodox views (or ‘Wrong Think’ if you will), what chance have I got of breaking into it?’
I have since discovered a third reason for why I am opting to abstain from the music industry which is probably the most pertinent to date, but I’ll come back to that later on.
When I first made these lofty claims, I did promise to revisit them at a later date. That’s because I was making assertions about the music industry and posited them to be axiomatically true without due justification or presenting any evidence. As anyone who knows me will know, I find that to be unacceptable practice from anyone, including myself. So, (if you’ll indulge me) allow me in this article to lay out my best attempt at a supporting argument for each claim I made while also ranting like a raving lunatic about the current state of the music industry.
Claim 1. Streaming services don’t pay musicians well enough.
This one is pretty self evident and easy to prove so I will not waste too much time on it.
Suffice to say, the modus operandi of music streaming sites, (specifically in regard to how little or under what circumstances they pay independent artists), is something I find abhorrent, and I’m not the only one.
The criticism of one music streaming service in particular (rhymes with ‘Not a Fly') has been well publicised in 2024 after its new payment structures were announced. Any song under a 1000 yearly streams will receive £0 in revenue under these new operating standards. That’s two thirds of all songs so, in essence, they are no longer going to pay smaller artists for their streams (Krukowski 2023).
Not that independent artists have ever been fairly paid for their hours of creative grafting as fees per stream rates have always equated to a fraction of a percent, or in layman's terms, virtually nothing. Don’t take my word for it though as the pitiful financial gains indie artists have typically made in previous years on that platform are well covered in a 2022 article by MUSIC BUSINESS WORLDWIDE that you can read right here: https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/podcast/fewer-diy-artists-generated-over-10k-on-spotify-in-2022-than-they-did-in-2021-according-to-spotifys-own-figures/
This situation has caused more and more artists to look to self publish or self release their own music on various online platforms so they can keep a larger portion of their revenue (Savage 2022) and I think that will only increase. It is also why I plan to release my music, (if I indeed ever do), right here behind the Substack paywall.
Claim 2. ‘Woke’ censorship makes it near impossible for those with Heterodox views to infiltrate the Music Industry.
This is probably a far bigger and certainly more insidious issue than the money grabbing streaming services and by all accounts it's not just the music industry but the entirety of show business that is affected by authoritarian ‘wokeness’.
The case of Graham Linehan (Linehan 2024) is evidence of it in both British comedy and television whereas Rosie Kay’s experiences show how entrenched the world of theatre and dance are also ideologically captured by this nonsense (Kay 2024). I haven’t even mentioned Hollywood, mainstream media outlets or literature, all of whom seem Hell bent on attacking the reputation of Britain's most prestigious author JK Rowling for having the audacity to engage with material reality rather than go along with the kind of magical thinking that would be too fantastical for the characters in her books (Do I really need a citation here? For JK Rowling? Or the Scottish Hate Crime Bill? Have you been living under a rock for the last few years? FFS, just go to her X page. https://x.com/jk_rowling).
But, for me at least, music was the straw that broke the camel’s back as far as my tolerance for radical progressivism goes.
I first learned what had happened in 2020 to Winston Marshall of Mumford & Sons fame about a year or so after as I had somehow missed it the first time around (https://substack.com/@winstonmarshall). In my defence, I had been studying for university and was entrenched in a family bereavement during those years.
This resulted in me, quite uncharacteristically it must be said, paying very little attention to current events at that time.
When I did start to re-engage with the world I found myself delving deeper and deeper into the most Heterodox parts of the internet, discovered the cancellations of those I’ve mentioned for merely criticising ideas and I started to doubt whether the music industry was for me.
My mind was made up when I watched an Andrew Gold interview with singer songwriter Louise Distras where she recounted her experiences with her representatives, publishers, etc (Gold 2024).
Louise seemed to me to be an inspiring woman, a true artist and a badass. But she had (at least it seemed to me) been broken by her experience. Dropped by Bandcamp in 2023 (Distras 2024) due to not adhering to the ‘groupthink’ and agendas of the institution, she thus lost access to her music’s income. Not to mention the now typical online ‘struggle sessions’ and pile on that followed.
Betrayed by colleagues and those that I am certain at one point she would have called her friends. All because she knows what a woman is, a legally protected belief in this country since 2021. Thank you Maya Forstater, Twisted Forstater for taking that bullet for all of us. (HMC&TS 2021)
I wonder how many artists who were not as brave as Louise and capitulated to the orthodoxy when faced with the same societal pressures to conform and fear of social media backlash?
This censorship, this curtailing of free speech in the music industry was best described by Mr Winston Marshall in his address to the FreedomFest Conference on the 14th July, 2023. He recounted what he claimed was a ‘puritanical progressive culture’ that censored dissenting opinions or ‘wrongthink’ and listed many other creatives with comparable Orwellian experiences in the creative industries (Marshall 2023). I cannot recommend this lecture enough. Watch it here:
In this address, Marshall makes the claim that he knows many heterodox people in the music industry who won’t speak out for fear of cancellation and pile ons. He doesn’t allow himself to infer that there is a silent (or silenced) majority of non-woke people whose views are being stymied in the music industry by an overly vocal minority, but rather does what many prominent academics struggle to do these days and resists making claims that he cannot substantiate. Instead he states that it is unclear at this time what percentage of individuals are having to hide their heterodoxy from the Woke orthodoxy. I’m willing to bet it is high and I’m willing to bet Winston would agree with me.
Wokery is an overt attack on our traditional western values and the ideological capture of the music industry is a part of that assault. I aspire to insulate myself from the cries of ‘witch’ from these new puritans (Doyle 2022) by creating online spaces on platforms like Substack where my freedom of expression cannot be ‘cancelled’ and my livelihood cannot be sabotaged. Having to submit to an institution’s ‘groupthink’ to make a living is authoritarian, Kafkaesque and the very kind of thing that George Orwell was trying to warn society about when he wrote 1984 (Orwell 1949). The redefining of words, the Doublespeak, the retrospective revision or reinterpretation of history, the protectionism, wrongthink. These are all symptoms of a tyrannical and oddly religious authoritarianism and I will avoid it when I can and fight it when I cannot. Tooth and nail; to my last breath. I gave up my childhood to one puritanical ideology (Jehovah’s Witnesses) and will not be beholden to another one for as long as I live.
I am not alone in this fight and there are those who are fighting back to save the arts; and they are garnering a lot of support. In response to ‘wrongthink’ policing in the arts, the founder of the dance company that shares her name, (and from which she was unceremoniously ousted) Rosie Kay has established an organisation along with others to fight for and protect freedom of speech and expression of creatives in their industries. The organisation is called Freedom in the Arts (2024) and has thousands of signatures, including yours truly.
If you care about freedom of speech in the arts, then please also sign this open letter, available here: https://www.freedominthearts.com/sign-our-letter
‘Without freedom, no art; art lives only on the restraints it imposes on itself, and dies of all others’. (Albert Camus 1913-1960).
Reason 3. I don’t really care about music all that much!!!
[This section is mostly comprised of excerpts from the ‘framing statement’ that I submitted as an accompaniment to my Portfolio in my final year. My performance was framed as a repudiation of the music industry proper and a ‘retirement’ from music in a professional capacity. I have altered it slightly where context was lost by the extraction.]
Looking back at my youth, I, like so many idiots before me, thought my music was going to change the world. And like my predecessors I have had to come to terms with the fact that that is not going to happen.
Music was always going to be the subject I studied in higher education as it was my first and longest love. But what I learned over the course of my music degree is that I don’t want to work as a musician. I know, getting a degree in something is a pretty expensive way to rule it out as an option but what can I say I’ve never done things the easy way.
A big part of why I feel this way is (as I have said already) the industry itself. The ‘fake it ‘til you make it’ shit. Creativity stifling genre expectations. Streaming services flat out robbing artists, (in my opinion). Ideologues, Artificial Intelligence and miles and miles of fucking cables. I want nothing to do with it.
And the bloody bureaucracy! You wouldn't believe the amount of insipid barriers that exist between artist and art/art and audience. I am constantly reminded of the Vogons in Douglas Adams’ ‘Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy’ and their obsession with filing cabinets, queuing and form-filling.
If I was feeling grandiose, I would say that my abstinence from the traditional music industry was a non-violent protest against a soulless, corporate norm of hustling and entrepreneurship. (Entrepreneurship is another of those nausea inducing words that I am fundamentally deterred by and disillusioned by).
Honestly though, I am merely choosing to engage with music on my own terms without compromising my own ideological principles. I just want to play music without the ‘faff’ and the nonsense and if that means I make it in my bedroom just for me, then so be it.
But that’s not really the main reason I don’t want to work as a musician.
I have always obsessed over everything, ‘nerding’ out about every minute and trivial detail. I can’t just watch a film. I have to read the book or comic it's based on. I have to know the back catalogue of the director, the actors, everything. It’s life-consuming, I can’t sleep. I do it about football, family life, video games, the news, everything. But not music…..
It took me nearly forty years to notice but I was practising for my final performance one day and I suddenly noticed at the end of it I hadn't thought of anything at all that whole day. My mind was quiet, and I had a horrible, horrible realisation…
Studying music has robbed me of the one area of meditation in my life. My one sanctuary away from the obsessive part of me. I need that back. So I will not be pursuing a career in the music industry. They all take music entirely too seriously for me anyway.
I was constantly asked to define my ‘purpose’ as a musician or outline my ‘vision’ as a creative artist but music has never operated in that way for me. I have no compulsion nor wish to ground my life’s meaning in any way to my creative, artistic or musical identity. I do it because I enjoy it. Because it is fun.
Music is merely a hedonistic endeavour that I had hoped to study with the aim of monetising it in some way. That was oddly my most practical and pragmatic financial option I had as I have never been any good at anything else.
My ‘vision’ (although I find such quasi-spiritual language nauseating) was simply a desire to earn a modest and livable wage, entirely through making/performing music, that provided a comfortable and financially secure life for my family and I. But to do that, I’d have to delve into the dreaded music industry proper. Well fuck that!
Sorry for the rant.
Thanks for reading,
Pete Brennan - The Common Centrist
Bibliography
Adams, Douglas. 1979. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Pan Books
DOYLE, Andrew. 2022. The New Puritans.
DISTRAS, Louise. 2024. ‘Fighting for freedom of expression in the arts’. Crowd Justice [online]. https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/louise-distras-legal-campaign/
FREEDOM IN THE ARTS. 2024. https://www.freedominthearts.com/home-page
GOLD, Andrew. 2024
HMC&TS (Her Majesty’s Courts & Tribunals Service). 2021. Maya Forstater versus CGD Europe and Others. Employment Appeal Tribunal Decisions (UKEAT/0105/20/JOJ). https://www.gov.uk/employment-appeal-tribunal-decisions/maya-forstater-v-cgd-europe-and-others-ukeat-slash-0105-slash-20-slash-joj
KAY, Rosie. 2024.
KRUKOWSKI, Damon. 2023. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/nov/30/spotify-smaller-artists-wrapped-indie-musicians#:~:text=If%20you%20want%20to%20do,of%20tracks%20on%20the%20platform.
LINEHAN, Graham. 2024. https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/help-me-2/
https://substack.com/@grahamlinehan
MARSHALL, Winston. 2023. How Censorship is Killing the Music Industry. FreedomFest Conference, 14th July 2023.
MARSHALL, Winston. 2024. ‘Welcome To The Winston Marshall Show’. Substack [online] 25th January 2024.
MUSIC BUSINESS WORLDWIDE. 2022. https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/podcast/fewer-diy-artists-generated-over-10k-on-spotify-in-2022-than-they-did-in-2021-according-to-spotifys-own-figures/
ORWELL, George. 1949. 1984.
ROWLING, Joanne K. 2024. https://x.com/jk_rowling
SAVAGE, Mark. 2022.