James Bell Central

What comes after Enshittification?

I’m thinking a lot about music at the moment, although still not really in a position to get back to making it. This month is mainly me thinking about… just the mountain of obstacles facing musicians right now, and how that is maybe a microcosm of everybody just trying to make a living. I realise I’m spending as much time daydreaming about building ‘digital public infrastructure’ for artists as I am thinking about actually making music. Because I’m old enough to remember systems that actually worked for musicians, and I’m wondering if the technology is straightforward enough to bring them back.

I’m not saying anything new in suggesting our current political and economic systems are unsustainable. But week by week, month by month, I’m really getting the sense we are past a kind of public awareness tipping point – and in lots of ways, large and small, I feel like people are ready for something new.

Which is handy because (just to pull things back to this email) I’ve got about six billion recommendations this month. Just like last month, actually. This time lot about older male role models for some reason. And a lot about America, which is obviously far away, but this month’s email is all about canaries in coal mines.

No new music for me this month, and no other writings either. Still focused on starting that freelance business. It’s eating up all my time at the moment. Blah blah blah. It takes as long as it takes.

When I haven’t really been up to much (or much that I would put in a newsletter) I tend to just muse on the state of the world, and that can often get a bit bleak – perhaps because I don’t want to feel I’m putting my head in the sand. But this month I am actually pulled towards cautious optimism.

So…

Recommended

KEEP THE METER RUNNING

This one’s a bit special and I’m going go long if you don’t mind.

I love YouTube and I basically never watch television anymore – be that the BBC or even Netflix. YouTube has essentially unlimited variety, and you will never be short of things to learn, or of new perspectives.

However, if I’m honest, it is rare that YouTube is able to reach the heights that television can at its best. YouTube creators don’t have the time and the budget to really tell big stories.

You guessed it: until now.

Kareem Rahma is the host and producer of arguably the most popular format on social media right now: SubwayTakes. More on that in a bit.

Keep The Meter Running is his attempt (successful, in my opinion) to reach the heights of television on YouTube. This is a proper show – an event – rather than a discussion or a monologue about an event.

The format is that Rahma gets into a New York taxi and says to the driver: take me to your favourite place, and keep the meter running.

That’s a good format idea for some high jinx and shenanigans, but there’s a bit more going on here than that. In this interview, Rahma talks about having been just emotionally lost in recent years, and missing his father – an immigrant from Egypt who worked for many years as a New York cab driver. Rahma believes that New York cab drivers – usually immigrants, usually unbelievably hard-working, usually people who have seen some shit – can be vital male role models for the rest of us.

This format isn’t just about getting some juicy real life clips that can be turned into Instagram Reels. He is genuinely looking for some life advice.

And he’s also trying to show a different side of America, particularly New York. He maintains you can travel the world without ever leaving New York.

New York seems to be having a bit of a moment right now – and Rahma’s support for Zhoran Mamdani during his mayoral election campaign might well have contributed to that.

Anyway, I have no idea how Rahma is funding this new YouTube show. It doesn’t seem to have sponsors, and there’s no way YouTube ad revenue is ever going to pay him enough for this level of production value. So let’s enjoy it while it lasts!

Recommended

THE UNITED STATES ACCORDING TO CHINESE MOVIES

I’ve recommended many videos from this channel (Accented Cinema) in the past. I’ve had a particular love of South East Asian movies since the 2000s and, although I’ve seen a lot of movies from Hong Kong, I don’t know much about cinema from mainland China.

This video is a review of how modern Chinese culture sees the USA, as viewed through Chinese movies.

And the TLDR is rather fascinating, I think.

Many movies deal with American lack of interest and downright hostility to Chinese culture, particularly as experienced by Chinese immigrants, particularly concerning differences in family life. A few make fun of the dumb action hero machismo, and explicitly of Donald Trump.

But the general feeling is actually that the USA is an exciting, culturally-diverse place full of open-minded people. And the open-minded part is really interesting, as many of these Chinese movies seem to use the United States to critique some of the more socially conservative aspect of Chinese life.

Anyway, watch the video – it’s a good ‘un.

Recommended

KERMODE AND MAYO

More on the older male role models here.

I realise that I have been listening to Simon Mayo and Mark Kermode, on and off, for about 30 years. I first heard them when film critic Kermode had a slot on Mayo’s BBC Radio 1 show, and now they have their own YouTube channel where they talk about film, TV and culture more generally I think. They have quietly and steadily got better with age, in my opinion.

I wanted to single out this video: not because of the film review, which is incidental, but because of the conversation between them.

Kermode says that he wanted to like Steven Spielberg’s new movie more, but was ultimately left disappointed. Mayo (getting emotional) said he recognises the disappointing aspects, but still felt this was an important film because it was a celebration of empathy at a time when we badly need it.

Kermode says this is why their show exists: because Mayo will balance his cynicism by saying things like that.

And then they spend the rest of the episode talking about how much they love each other, basically. Which we all know men should do more, so here you go.

Recommended

INDE NAVARRETTE PLAYS LAST OF US

If you want an indication of how Hollywood, and celebrity, is changing…

This is a very standard type of YouTube video: a YouTuber films themselves playing a computer game (often for hours) and then just chats idly throughout it, giving you a much less filtered, much less ‘performed’ window into their lives.

Except that this is the star of the film Obsession, which (along with Backrooms) became a smash Hollywood hit recently and beat the latest Star Wars film.

Inde Navarrette is, in Hollywood terms, hot right now. Like, hotter than the surface of the sun hot. She’s doing a billion interviews, and probably fashion shoots and whatever else.

But she is also having this incredibly unfiltered relationship with a huge audience.

I’ve mentioned before about how canny politicians like Zack Polanski are bypassing mainstream media and building direct relationships with audiences with their own channels.

I wonder if this is the future for Hollywood stars too.

Recommended

THE ATLANTIC’S AI DATASET SEARCH

Can’t help but add a little more AI news, things being as they are.

The Atlantic magazine has created a fun little figurative hand grenade which they have thrown into the Discourse™.

It’s a publicly available database that allows anyone to search a creative work to see if it has been gobbled up by AI.

I am nowhere near important enough to be in it. Which is… good? I guess?

Recommended

GEORGE CARLIN DUBS THOMAS THE TANK ENGINE

Decades before the word ‘woke’ was appropriated and weaponised, George Carlin was the wokest and angriest white comedian in the US.

Known to my generation is that nice old man from Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, he was a gateway to radical politics for dudes slightly older than me.

Anyway, unrelated to all that, I was surprised and charmed to find that he had also done expletive-ridden voiceovers for the children’s TV show Thomas the Tank Engine.

It’s a little hit and miss, but I did like the train that could make his cat defecate by pointing the TV remote at it and pressing the volume buttons.

Recommended

SEASICK STEVE

There is something particularly mournful about a musician in his mid 70s singing about the season finale of America.

They’re shutting the whole thing down
All that’s left is the theme song

I’m currently in a slightly optimistic frame of mind when it comes to the direction of world politics. But he’s right that it’s the end of the America he used to know.

And, good or bad, will he live to see the next one?

Let’s start with the bad news.

The market value of what musicians make (i.e. music) seems to have declined steadily since the arrival of Napster. And it was never that great to begin with.

But pirating reduced it to zero. iTunes brought it up to 0.99 per track. Spotify changed the game again, offering musicians £1 for around 300 streams – which, for context, means 1 million streams will pay you a little over £3,000.

Spotify changed the game in more ways than one, of course. It became the only game in town if you wanted to get your music distributed. If you wanted enough money from streaming to pay the bills then you needed to satisfy their recommendation algorithm – and so musicians get flattened into being ‘content creators’.

But there was always money from touring. Until the ticket companies and the venue owners got consolidated into one glorious monopoly, and the musicians started to get squeezed there too.

And then along came AI.

These days musicians are being told to accept that yes, their music will be used against their will to train generative AI, which will ultimately replace them – or at least flood the market to the point where… well, musicians aren’t really needed by society at all anymore.

Now the good news.

Nilay Patel, editor in chief of tech website The Verge, often talks about how the music business is always the canary in the coal mine for the media at large. The way that musicians get screwed today will tell you how everyone will get screwed in about five years.

Or… maybe not. Because, to the surprise of nobody outside Silicon Valley, everyone hates AI, and everyone hates AI music.

Yes, people are listening to it, often in Spotify playlists of background music. But if all we have to eat is mouldy bread, a lot of people will eat mould. That doesn’t mean they like it.

To me, it feels to me like we might have passed a tipping point of enshittification – in media, in social media, and particularly in music.

Of course I could see why Spotify became so dominant. It was just so convenient! All the music in one place for a monthly subscription. Sure it didn’t pay artists much, but it paid more than piracy, and it removed so much friction.

But now, as a lover of music, the experience from Spotify and the industry at large is just… bad. And keeps getting worse. It’s clear that no one on the business side of music really cares about music. It’s just a handful of cartels, and no one really needs to try anymore.

Here’s the thing: if someone wanted to bring a bit of friction back, I think as a consumer I’d be happy with it. I would rather go back to some kind of iTunes model where I pay around £1 for a track which I then own. I wouldn’t need to pay a monthly subscription for an increasing mountain of slop.

I feel differently about ‘convenience’ and ‘friction’ now. It just doesn’t seem as attractive anymore. There’s a reason why cheap all-you-can-eat buffets didn’t make restaurants redundant.

And I’m clearly not alone in this sentiment.

Let’s come back to the man of the moment, Kareem Rahma, and the hottest property on social media right now: SubwayTakes.

This was the clip that set me off on this little internal mini-rant.

Because it’s a discussion that mirrors what I’ve been feeling.

10 years ago it seemed like streaming was here to stay and we would never go back to paying for digital media, never mind physical media. Even if the alternative was better for musicians, and a more sustainable ecosystem. Each listener would have to make a sacrifice of convenience to help musicians, and how realistic was that?

Now it’s not a sacrifice. Now these old-fashioned forms of media can offer you something that Spotify can’t: control. You can use an uncluttered, non-distracting interface that doesn’t feel like it hates you. You can build your own library without having to pay rent for it. You can choose to not spend any money on music for the next few months if you want to. And you can gift music to other people as a present, which is something I really miss.

Where is this utopian neo-luddite technology going to come from though? Are iPods going to start selling again?

Well, it’s early days, but one reason why music might be the canary in the coalmine could be that musicians are surprisingly resourceful fuckers. From punk to early hip-hop to proto-grunge, there have been many occasions when musicians have bypassed the music industry and managed to build large audiences. Usually all it takes is for one music scene to really commit to the idea and give everyone else a proof of concept.

Initially I was wondering why we haven’t seen this DIY movement in musicians for decades, but then it occurred to me that since Napster there has been been one long continuous DIY movement on social media. Platforms like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and TikTok initially seemed to be enabling musicians, artists, entertainers and journalists. It was helping us all get around the gatekeepers.

In the last few years, however, it’s become clear that they are simply the new gatekeepers. And they’re worse than the last ones, because these software-brained CEOs are way too high on their own optimising supply to realise that they are destroying the media ecosystems that their businesses depend on.

So, my prediction: the thing we call ‘tech’ has become essential to modern life, and it’s not going anywhere, but I suspect as a society we’re going to move away reliance on the increasingly enshittified Silicon Valley tech companies – because it was only ever convenience that bound us to them, and that convenience is rapidly vanishing.

And if history is anything to go by, musicians might once again be the canaries in the coal mine here.

Better technology already exists! We just need people to tinker and share.

My sense is that positive change is coming, in so many areas in so many ways, but it’s easy to forget how much it is still early days.

I mentioned a tipping point in the way we relate to music. I think globally there has been a much wider tipping point, where the number of people who feel that our systems are fundamentally broken has now become the majority.

The desire for fundamental change seems like it has reached a critical mass.

Because when everyone believes that society’s systems are imperfect and run by leaders who should know better, nothing really changes.

However, when everyone believes those same systems are being aggressively weaponised against them, they start to organise.

I’m seeing so much grassroots political organising at the moment. And so much development of digital public infrastructure – particularly in Europe.

Now, let’s be realistic: shit’s still pretty bad right now though. And there is still plenty of room for it to get worse.

But, with each month that passes, I get an increasing sense that our technofeudal overlords don’t really know what the fuck they’re doing.

And there’s a new generation of community builders who don’t exactly know what they’re doing, but they’re fast learners.

Maybe I’m totally wrong about all of this.

But we need to focus our attention on something, and this is where my attention is now.