When AI tells me there is a more concise way to phrase something, I reject it immediately, and I then convince myself that this is how I best fight for humanity.
06.03.2026 18:09
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When AI tells me there is a more concise way to phrase something, I reject it immediately, and I then convince myself that this is how I best fight for humanity.
Thank you, Brodie Conley, Maarten Walraven, and the MUSIC x collective for pushing my argument further.
To protect human creativity, merely engaging AI companies may not be enough.
Obtaining equity stakes (i.e. a true seat at the table) could help ensure that AI companies operate ethically and in accordance with humanist and culture-forward principles.
musicx.substack.com/p/who-contro...
The essay I referenced above, The Struggle For Independence in the Modern Age:
dariusjagjag.substack.com/p/the-strugg...
The music recording industry has increasingly become a catalog one in recent years. It is harder than ever for new artists and the independent labels supporting them to find fans and build sustainable businesses.
3/4
Previously, I wrote in an essay: "It is a fair question to ask whether the majors have become less interested in investing in the emergence of new music by new artists, which often requires riskier investment and which may cannibalize revenues from their bell cows, compared to 30 years ago."
2/4
In a letter to shareholders today, Warner Music Group CEO Robert Kyncl noted that just 27% of US music streaming consumption in 2024 came from new releases, versus 45% a decade ago.
1/4
I also posted this on my Substack, with slightly more extensive footnotes and an acknowledgement section.
dariusjagjag.substack.com/p/rise-of-th...
Generative AI models that create music represent a new challenge for the music community.
I wrote about AI's threat to human artistry, and what we can do as music independents to protect what matters most.
www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/rise-of-the-...
Please read and share this wonderful article about music. We may soon reach a point of no return, never to recover what we've lost. It all boils down to a simple choice: start fighting for new art and new sounds,or start to perish. @dariusjagjag.bsky.social
dariusjagjag.substack.com/p/the-strugg...
More importantly, IMPALA’s work here makes market-bending acquisitions like this one harder to pull off in the future.
IMPALA's statement on the outcome can be read here: impalamusic.org/impala-state...
UMG acquired Downtown, but only after being required to divest Curve Royalties.
I'm so encouraged by how effective IMPALA & the broader independent community was in this fight against further market concentration, forcing a serious review by the European Commission & extracting a meaningful remedy.
And I am still glowing about the song that Kevin released yesterday. Yes, when you fall you get back up and run:
youtu.be/6JDL9GAjgeE
This morning I walked out my front door, put my headphones on, and Kevin Morby sang to me about how there’s a heaven on earth.
My favorite song poet right now.
So starting my day off with a huge pep in my step (even though I’m pretty sure I’m listening to a song about death).
A nurse. A researcher. A helper.
… In our modern era, the existential struggle is about the right to deviate, to be an anomaly, to be unadapted, weird, and messy."—Max Schmermbeck.
Link to Maarten’s post “x Friction in the Sea of Sameness”:
musicx.substack.com/p/friction-i...
This concept of friction reminds me of the essay Becoming Subversive:
Becoming subversive "has to do with subverting and disrupting those technologies and systems that constantly attempt to make us fit the mold, to smooth things over, to make us jump through endless hoops. …
Thought-provoking:
“Any theory of community will tell you that it is just as important to put up barriers to entry as it is to welcome people in. To make a community feel valuable there needs to be some friction involved.”—Maarten Walraven (Music x)
I wrote about my favorite song from last year, "Me," & the artist behind it, Lucie Lozinski (aka Ski Team).
I also talked about the challenges new artists face when trying to get their brilliant new music out into the world & about how my role has evolved.
dariusjagjag.substack.com/p/episode-4-...
words by Thomas Pynchon from his 1990 novel “Vineland”
“When power corrupts, it keeps a log of its progress, written into that most sensitive memory device, the human face.”
“During the Vietnam War… every respectable artist in this country was against the war. It was like a laser beam. We were all aimed in the same direction. The power of this weapon turns out to be that of a custard pie dropped from a stepladder six feet high.”—the late, great Kurt Vonnegut
Thank you so much, @jgrossnas.bsky.social , for the kind words. Not sure my essay is one of the best pieces of music journalism in 2025, but it always feels good to be recognized!
When she wrote The Bluest Eye, she did so because no one else had yet written a book about the interior pain of racism from a Black girl’s perspective. This was Morrison’s first step in breaking the cycle of estrangement and unrooting. She began by protecting her concept of home.
She saw how this left no room for the stories of her own community, and even contributed to their erasure. So she started to fight not only for the existing, almost invisible voices that had been systematically disregarded, but also for new voices and emerging perspectives.
Big book publishers—being averse to any subject that might upset readership, and maintaining a rigorous focus on generating profits from existing cultural consumption patterns—were contributing, on a mass scale, to the very “looking glass phenomenon” that Morrison named in "The Foreigner's Home".
She became intimately aware of big media’s own culture-destroying—or shall we say, home-destroying—predilections.
From the very beginning of her writing career, Morrison always dared to imagine a better world, not just for herself and her community, but for all of us. When she was at Random House editing textbooks, she saw firsthand what the publishing industry refused to publish.
The implicit warning that Morrison is giving us: if we allow this to happen then we risk failing “the human project”, which, in her words, is the project “to remain human and to block the dehumanization and estrangement of others”.
Ultimately, this blurring circularity is what alienates us from ourselves and destroys our sense of home.