Bioluminescence — Goth Babe
#365Songs: September 8th
I feel her skin and hold her tight
We make our way for the ocean light
I slip into the clearest blue
A sea of stars all around you
It's tough being an artist these days. Not that it's ever been particularly easy, of course, but listen up kids: there was a time, not so long ago, when audiences actually paid for the art they appreciated. Sure, we made mix tapes and copied CDs, shared books and swapped VHS tapes (shut up, I know I'm old), but we also bought things, and while too much of what we paid went to all the wrong people-the business folks-at least some of it trickled into the pockets of the makers. And so, those of us who started bands, wrote short stories, or produced backyard films, we at least for a moment could trick ourselves into believing there was a viable path forward.
And then everything changed.
In 1995, Amazon “disrupted” publishing with an unspoken mission to put every independent bookstore, literary magazine, and small press out of business. At the same time, big box stores like Borders and Barnes and Noble started popping up in strip malls across America, genre-ifying the in-person book buying experience. For literary writers like me, the market shriveled: with fewer lit mags and small presses, and readers now trained to seek Mystery! Romance! Horror!, nobody knew we existed.
Our lights were on, but nobody could see us.
(Hello? Reader? Do you exist? Are you here?)
We swim through the sea on a lucid night
And make our way through the island’s tides
We swim through the stars on a lucid night
We make our way through the ocean’s tides
I wanna wait for
I wanna wait for
The ones that will dream more
That will dream more
In 1999, Napster irreparably damaged the music industry with peer-to-peer file sharing, a simple way to make infinite copies of any song ever released — or not yet released — and download immediately to your computer. Around that time, the first mp3 players hit the market — big clunky Discman-looking devices to store those unlimited tracks, organized by artist, album, genre, and song. Physical album sales were declining at record rates by the time Apple stole the mp3 technology and took ownership of the “1000 songs in your pocket” market. A series of early copyright lawsuits struck fear in those of us still stealing music, and for a few years, at least, we started buying music again — for the price of a physical album, you could now not own but fully borrow your favorite album—or a single song for $1.29 —thus feeding companies like Apple and Amazon at the expense, once again, of the artists who made the music. But the real death knell for musicians came in the form of Spotify in 2011, the all-you-can-eat music buffet for just $9.99 a month. Suddenly the motivation to acquire music or an .mp3 device all but disappeared, putting the future of the music industry in the hands of tech bros with no discernible interest in the art form.
And on and on we go.
And I wanna wait for
I wanna wait for
The ones that will dream more
That will dream more
Holding tight as we swim below
The fish around begin the glow
It does appear at least one person is making money off of music these days. Or, at least, was making music until his arrest last week. Michael Smith (unfortunate name, that) made over $10m in royalties by using AI tools and bots to stream fake versions of the songs billions of times. Good news: we’re still listening to music! Bad news: it takes a tech-adept grifter with musical aptitude to rig the system, steal the measly royalties meant for legit artists, and redirect the money to his own bank account.
And that’s just music. This is happening across all art forms, and the tech is getting better by the day. Though we’re still quite some time away from indiscernible quality, the future is bleak.
We swim through the sea on a lucid night
And make our way through the island’s tides
We swim through the stars on a lucid night
We make our way through the ocean’s tides
I wanna wait for
I wanna wait for
The ones that will dream more
And that’s exactly why we need to celebrate all those still diving into the bleakness: the high school garage bands and street photographers, backyard filmmakers and late night playwrights, barstool poets and everyone else who takes the time to make things–regardless of whether an audience awaits on the other end. Art and storytelling is humanity’s fuel, and artists will always find a way — even if we’re barely surviving, scraping by, or “selling out.”
To be an artist at any time in history required a lot of ambition, of course. But nowadays it can feel as lonely and as dark as the deep sea, a future filled with vastly lowered expectations, a lot of whiskey or awareness-numbing drugs, and a shameless imagination. And yet, sometimes all we can do is send a few beams of light into that darkness and wait for something to glow back at us, the final dreamscape where anything is possible.
That will dream more
And I wanna wait for
I wanna wait for
The ones that will dream more
That will dream more
~
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