I am beginning to think that the music economy is destroying itself. This has been going round and round my head recently, so I have to fix it.

The cornerstone of the music economy is the hit single. The hit single creates a spending frenzy that literally drives the market. The success an artist experiences from a hit single gives them the freedom to explore more artistically; which benefits themselves, other artists, and society as a whole. The current system, based on the streaming music system, destroys this process and pressures artists to continue feverishly searching for a hit single even though they might have a few under their belts already. As a result, the industry looks more and more to artistic standardization, in such things as artificial intelligence, to write their hit singles from predictable rote formula.

If I were king of the music industry, this is what I would do:

1. The streaming services would remain largely the same as they are right now. Even with the amount of money they pay out to the artists. However, the only difference between the free streaming service and the paid streaming service would be commercials. The paid streaming services would not be allowed to let users listen to the same song more than once a day unless the user bought the song. The users would be allow, and encouraged, to build their own personal radio stations with playlists both private and shareable. But, unless they owned the song, they could not listen to any given song more than once a day. If they bought the song they could listen to it as much as they wanted without interruption. So, for example, a person using the free service could listen to a song they bought one hundred times in a row, but with commercials every three times to pay for the service. Or, a user who pays for the service, but has not bought a particular song, would still only be able to listen to that song once a day.

(Ultimately, there must be a recognized difference between the value of the streaming service and the value of the music. And making a user pay for a song they wanted to listen to over and over again would protect the most important engine in the music economy: the tidal wave teenage frenzied need to listen to the latest hit single a million times in a row to piss off their parents.)

2. If an artist sells a couple of hits, they will then, because they have money to burn, have the option to take their art further. This means they might wish to make an artistic album (like Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon”), or a theatrical album (like The Who’s “Tommy”). These projects are almost impossible for the starving artist trying to break into the system, but they are very important for the development of music, the artist, and society. The singles on the artistic album would be treated the same as any other single, except that the user would not be able to buy just the single. They would only be able to buy the entire album. The theatrical albums would be a bit different, as they would be treated just like movies. They would have trailers and samples and the user could either rent it to listen once over a set period of time, or they can buy the entire album to listen to again and again.

3. This third part would probably be the most difficult thing to do… ensure that some international protocol enables listeners to transfer their paid-for music between streaming services. It is not the same as when I was young and we bought a 45 or LP and played it until the grooves worn smooth, then bought the cassette tape that melted in the hot car, and finally bought the CD our roommate used as a beer coaster. This process, repeated with over one hundred albums, soured people like me to the whole music industry and left us trying to scrape by as best we could with the few CDs we had left. Then, when we finally got enough money again to blow on music if we wanted to, we discovered that most music has become so painfully formulaic that we would just rather watch a baseball game.

Anyway.
This is what I would do if I were in control of the world’s music industry. So, vote for me as the Earth’s first Planetary King.