it is inexorable. It is a fascinating engineering challenge and mundane artistic accomplishment.

nobody wants to concede the awful truth but music and art industries as we knew them are struggling and have been eroding for a decade.

Automation compounds that, but is not responsible. AI sobers us to questions we have been avoiding.

social media has been a time of quantified consumption and revealed preferences. When you ask what people support they will say they support artists and vibrant culture. When our data is revealed we see that most spend time liking pictures and listening to the middle of the road.

AI may thrive in satisfying those private preferences but that does not answer the question of how to revive everything else.

I think streaming is more culpable, as an example of valuing music and art based on the number of times a piece of media is consumed. This economic logic and the populist alibi it relies on cuts off important areas of culture at the root.