The 'Deshittification' Of Music Policy

Soft Launching the Music Economy Development Initiative

It has been a busy month. I am writing to you from Lagos, Nigeria, where tomorrow I will be running the inaugural Music Policy Assembly - a private, invite-only mini conference supported by the IFC to soft-launch a big project the Center for Music Ecosystems is leading with Global Citizen - the Music Economy Development Initiative.

I have written a lot - here, on Forbes and elsewhere - about my frustration that most countries do not treat music as an economic good. Yes, music is everywhere. It is ubiquitous. But that ubiquity translating into universal economic access to its potential benefits - is not everywhere. In most places, music is entertainment. It is not work. I wonder how many of you who work in music were told - either in jest or seriously - to get a real job when pursuing music early in your career.

I was. I’m sure you were.

How offensive is that?

This has become a bit of an obsession of mine. I wonder, outside of the arts, what other jobs are pursued that are actively discouraged despite the economic benefits the job - or jobs - can provide. Yes, music is an exceptionally competitive and complicated business. The success rate in some cases, especially in how most view success, may be less than 1%. But the ecosystem that gets music to us - wherever we are - comprises dozens of jobs and hundreds of skills and vocations, many with little to do with being on stage. I know that my job, however it can be defined (Music Policy Wonk?), is undoubtedly not considered by those tasked with creating the conditions to support employment and economic development think of ‘music jobs’. But it is one. And I am one of many.

All the cards are stacked against music becoming a viable, lucrative and supportive economic sector in most countries. Despite billboards advertising concerts and top acts selling out stadiums, most countries actively - either through ignorance or bad policy - discourage music (and its economic benefits) from flourishing. If there’s little copyright infrastructure, much of what is created has to be offshored for it to be protected, and even then, getting paid for its usage locally is difficult, let alone convincing folks it is worth paying for. If there’s no education investment, less talent is incubated, but a lack of music education also means fewer audiences and listeners because music appreciation begins at a young age. Moreover, no infrastructure to rehearse, record or perform limits access, plain and simple.

I’ve heard all the excuses and ‘buck-passing’. Music isn’t ‘serious’. It is too complex an industry. It is corrupt. We have more significant problems, so ‘get your head out of your backside’. Get a real job. And everyone who has used these excuses to my face still listens to music. A few even asked if I could get them tickets to see their favourite artists.

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Complaining isn’t productive. It reasserts those whose position is not to take music seriously. If we don’t care, why should they, right? This way of thinking, acting, making policy, and treating each other is accelerating the ‘enshittification’ of our lives, and how we treat music is no different. So let’s change this.

Like me, I am sure you’re trying to read less news but failing. Every day, we see another decision made to rip off the majority for the benefit of a few. Even well-intentioned governments (in my opinion) are falling prey to this. An example is the current AI consultation in the U.K., where the government has drunkenly accepted the correlation that ‘growth’ means giving US tech firms unfettered access to stealing from the UK’s creative industries to train AI models. Or the dozens of policies paraded as progress by the Pinky and the Brain-influenced White House, all set to make our collective lives worse so a few narcissists can feel good about themselves.

taken from https://wallpapers.com/pinky-and-the-brain

We continue to make decisions - or allow crooks to make decisions - that make our lives worse, and then we accept those decisions as inevitable. It is what Cory Doctorow predicted when he coined the term ‘enshittification’.

Enshittification is an informal word used to criticize the degradation in the quality and experience of online platforms over time, due to an increase in advertisements, costs, or features. It can also refer more generally to any state of deterioration, especially in politics or society. Similar forms include enshittify and enshittified.

But it does not need to be that way, and music is a good tool to show how, why and what we can do about it. One reason is music has been at this game for a long time. We’ve been ‘enshittifying’ music as an economic good for generations. If there is no option to pursue it as a job because of the way things are, we lose access to talent, new sounds, ideas and, with them, economic growth. We accept that this is the way things are because this is how they have always been; certain places are the way they are and, therefore, do not deserve to have copyright, education, infrastructure or basic policy. Or those of us who do have music industries think that everyone does or feels things are ‘well enough’ because we’re fine. Again, music is everywhere, right?

We have not realized that we have created a global framework where the music economy has built ‘enshittification’ into its CPS. The industry functions as it was designed, and its designs are not to support everyone everywhere. We may proclaim that music is a universal good and stage benefit concerts to assert that claim, but it is a utility everywhere, not an economy.

This is not out of wanting to try to create change. I am far from unique here. There are global treaties and multi-lateral organizations doing good work to promote music as an economic good. The expansion of music rights organizations, especially since COVID-19, is encouraging. Yet, despite a decade now of nearly double-digit economic growth, music remains inaccessible as an economy to hundreds of millions of people in dozens of countries. Governments continue to ignore or denigrate it. Kids continue to be told not to waste their time and pursue something else. Music remains ignored - despite overwhelming scientific consensus - as a potential therapeutic. And so on. We go out of our way to either make or keep things worse than they need to be. We enshittify, because we always have. But we don’t need to.

So I’m in Lagos to launch the Music Economy Development Initiative (whose partners include Universal Music Group, Global Citizen, the International Finance Corporation and many others) to argue that there is a better way. Music and the broader creative economy can (because it is right now) reduce poverty, improve livelihoods and make places better. Music can be a tool to promote public health, stop folks from fighting each other and create jobs. It may not be a panacea or a cure-all, but it can help because it is right now doing just that.

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But we must first change how music is seen and treated as an economic good. I will continue to state that until it happens.

What does that mean? We need copyright laws to exist and be enforced everywhere. We need basic economic foundations for music to flourish. We need to convince folks that music is worth paying for. We need to ‘deshittify’ how music is treated in policy. Because we all love music, right? And if we could do it for music, imagine what that could show us about how to look at other issues that impact all of us yet are moving in the wrong direction.

So as part of the Policy Assembly, CME is publishing a short introductory report on the MEDI initiative called We Need Tracks Before We Have Trains. I wrote it with my friend and economist Will Page. I hope it shows why we need to change and that it is in all our best interests. Click the link above to have a read.

Join me.

I’m done with the way things are.

Let’s make them better. }

Time to ‘deshittify’ music and, well, everything else while we’re at it.

More soon.