✘ Is there still a music counterculture? Towards a politics of care

- Disenshittifying the Internet - Brain-computer interface hearing tests - Nightclub in Kenya from shipping containers - Stop renting, start owning - Budweiser's Spotify ad strategy

What do we mean when we say counterculture? It’s something that counters the prevalent, mainstream, culture. It’s also something that resists the status quo. Music has long history of counterculture. Think about things as far back as music broadsheets, which conveyed not just news but also different ideas and gossip that went against the king, count, or whoever was in power. Of course, the hippie and folk counterculture of the 1960s probably resonates most. Or, perhaps the punks of the 1970s and 1980s. Otherwise the gabbers of the 1990s. What connects all of these is that the starting point, the seed, was local. All of these counterculture are strongly placebound. Where they began influenced what it sounded like and the messages they carried. Metal music, and certain industrial bands like Throbbing Gristle, come from the metal city of Sheffield. You would have needed to be there and see certain gigs to be brought into the culture. From there, it spread via records and zines and stories. How does this relate to our current time, here in 2024? The local still matters, but we spent a lot of time online, mostly on social media.

From carelessness to a capacity to care

It seems that any online counterculture requires that culture to embrace the MAGMA tech overlords. We connect through them, share our stories and ideas on them. Each time the seeds of a counterculture get sown, it has to be shared online to grow. Of course, we have our dark forests, our non-indexed places where we germinate and metastasize our ideas. But outside of those places, there’s mostly carelessness. We see this every step of the way. It starts at the macro level with neoliberal policies pushing the Western world into ever more individualized worlds. Technology plays its part as well. Imagine how we created personalized space in the car - our very own sonic bubbles. Then, we created new technology to create different auditory experiences inside of that sonic bubble - through headphones, screens, etc. Everything points towards the individual, not just our For You pages.

So how to escape this? By being intentional about it. By seeing our interdependencies an acting on it. Here, music cultures around independent artists, labels, and collectives are strong examples. Take the Ottawa, Canada based Debaser. It’s a non-traditional promotor - they call themselves a presenter - and much more. Most of all, however, it’s a community of creatives. And, they all support one another. They operate locally, around that Ottawa area, and bring together recurring events and one-off shows. All of it geared towards creating and nurturing a capacity to care for the community.

Debaser’s Frosty Valentine

Care can take many forms and shapes. From personal care, to direct care for others, but most important is that capacity to care. This sits within all of us, of course, but it’s also a mindset. Canadian hip hop artist Haviah Mighty has shown how to operate with a politics of care at the heart of her artistry. When she won the Polaris Music Prize in 2019, she put the prize money into something resembling a fund for other independent artists to use. She had the capacity to care, the mindset of care, and suddenly an opportunity to act on it in a broader way. At a local, and even national and international, level we can create more abilities to lead by these examples.

Ecosystems of care and resilience

So much around independent music gets influenced by politics. Whether artists and their teams can afford to work in certain urban areas is a question of gentrification and city planning. The structures for funding are bound by government rules. The independent music structures are, quite simply intertwined with politics. However, most of the people working within those structures have little influence on the politics. Thankfully, there are trade bodies like CIMA in Canada who work tirelessly to push any countercultural seed through its cultivation into a garden.

Counterculture necessarily starts in the independent sector and historically this is called our fringe culture. Look at the start and rise of hip hop as a recent example of counterculture became mainstream culture over the course of a few decades. The culture made its way through an ecosystem as much music as urban as digital. It’s a web of interdependencies.

To bring these seeds of countercultural change into cultivation, something like CIMA is a cog in the wider network of the music industry. As Frank Kimenai shows, there’s a need for policy change as much as there is for collectives like Debaser or artists like Haviah Mighty. Similarly, the Center for Music Ecosystems works, amongst others, with local governments to institute policy change. To help prevent music from being pushed out of city centres, to make sure there’s space to musick and create, and to bring to the fore the economic benefits to cities of a vibrant music culture.

Self-custody = politics of care

Throughout the above the emphasis is on the capacity to care and its importance to establish these music ecosystems of care and resilience. While this happens at many different levels, the seeds of change are always sown in the independent music sector. Artists operating in this sector need spaces and places to express their countercultural tendencies, ideas, and sounds. Once they grow, and seeds cultivate to gardens, the politics of care should continue to focus on self-custody of rights. Retain that, and artists are well-placed to nurture their gardens. That doesn’t mean that artists can’t do label deals, but those deals should be fair and flexible. There’s no politics of care without the self-custody of rights.

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LINKS

🕵🏽‍♀️ The disenshittified internet starts with loyal “user agents” (Cory Doctorow)

“In other words, they class enshittification as an ideological phenomenon, rather than as a material phenomenon. Corporate leaders have always felt the impulse to enshittify their offerings, shifting value from end users, business customers and their own workers to their shareholders. The decades of largely enshittification-free online services were not the product of corporate leaders with better ideas or purer hearts. Those years were the result of constraints on the mediocre sociopaths who would trade our wellbeing and happiness for their own, constraints that forced them to act better than they do today, even if the were not any better.”

✘ A good history lesson, and a solid path forward. If you’re a builder, ask yourself if you’re rewilding the internet and if you’re building a loyal user agent.

🧠 Dutch startup to test hearing via brain-computer interface (Ioanna Lykiardopoulou)

“Aurora uses a headband that patients wear while listening to soft chirps and watching a silent video for less than 10 minutes. The system reads the brain signals and combines the information with air conduction and bone conduction audiometric threshold tests to make the diagnosis.”

✘ I wrote about Brain-Music Interface as a new music format recently, so it’s cool to see that the tech continues to develop.

💡 Budweiser is turning Spotify into beer ads (Jeff Beer)

““UninterruptAds,” made with Africa Creative Agency, use complete songs mentioning Budweiser as ads on Spotify’s ad tier, in an effort to minimize the blatant interruption of a typical ad.”

✘ This is a cool way to do advertising.

♣️ Student wins grant to build nightclub in Kenya (Christian Fuller)

“The mobile sound studio will be built by local artisans in Nairobi from repurposed shipping containers. By using local vernacular designs to promote youth cultural identities, Mr Mugambi said he wanted to drive positive change through music, dance and connection.”

✘ Another great example of the need for taking a local approach to building healthy music ecosystems that focus on a politics of care - both for local scenes and the environment.

🏡 Stop renting, start owning - a framework for sustainable growth (Rob Abelow)

“1) Don’t leave Rented Channels.

Just understand them for what they are: Advertising. You still need discovery & reach. Use them for that, but don’t build your home on rented land.

2) Your goal is to move everyone you can from Rented to Owned.

Every time you peak through the noise, bring that person back to owned land. Get great at converting down your funnel. If fans want it first, direct, exclusively or premium, they need to join.”

✘ If you’re reading this newsletter, you’ll know this already. But, it’s a good reminder! And there’s some helpful links to tools in there.

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MUSIC

Everything that has been released on Gondwana Records has tickled my ears in just the right way. The new album by Jasmine Myra is no different. It’s a textural record where you can feel the layers of instrumentation. Most of all, though, it’s beautiful music. One of those records you can put on and drift through the currents offered by the compositions and musicians.