Okay, I watched the whole video and I have to disagree. The first half of the video is about how music is too easy to create, and only part of it is really about how corporations are using their catalogue to train AI, which I agree is scummy. However, the rest is about how the barrier of entry is lower, and he doesn’t really articulate why that’s a bad thing. Yeah you can make really sterile stuff at a fast rate, but you can also put work in and create something unique even with cheap tools. It kinda feels like saying every artist who uses MSPaint just copies and pastes Clipart, ignoring the few who make visually stunning pixel art. If anything, we’ve trended a bitaway of the stranglehold of companies in the last decade due to independent creation being much more viable.

He also says that modern music is subject to trends, which I think is a weird distinction to make. Old music is full of trends, because people would try to replicate what was popular on the radio. How many parents tried to make the next Jackson 5? I’m sure some followers of trends put out great stuff, but a lot of it was trash, same as ever.

Likewise, I find the second part overly steeped in “wrong generation kids these days” emotion. If he made more of a point of how streaming services rake artists over the coals, or the value of listening to full albums from artists you want to support, or about how cheap streaming services cannot financially support the large number of artists they carry, then I would agree. But he makes a big point of saving up and buying an album with his allowance which is purely a nostalgic feeling that is still felt by kids today. I also feel that we’re just a lot more cautious of integrating artists into our personality just due to the fear of them turning out to be terrible people.

So, enshitification of streaming services? Yes. Enshitification of the entire industry? Not so much. Also nothing is going to make him sound more out of touch than calling phones “thought deletion devices.”