If you haven’t noticed, things have gotten...hairy in the economy. Inflation is up, the stock market is down, and the fed’s money machine? It stopped going “brrr.” All of this suggests that we might be leaving the VERY long, frothy period where companies (looking at you Uber!) didn’t need to muddy their hands with things like “earning profits” in order to reshape our lives, cities, communities, and consciousness. But if that’s REALLY happening…what does it mean for the music industry? Saxon and Sam try to connect macro-economic upheaval to entertainment activity, puzzling through how a return of market-based reality could remake streaming, the financialization of song-rights, the major labels, and maybe—just maybe—open up some space for the kind of limited, tend-your-garden community that has been difficult to conceptualize over the past 14 years of “go big or go home” tech. Are we probably wrong? Definitely. But sometimes the only way to get ready for a change is to make some predictions.

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Music: Hermeto Pascoal - "Dança do Pajé"

 

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