Capitalism, Creativity, and the Music Industry: A Crisis of Value

🧐 Estimated read time | 7 minutes

If talent floats to the top, why does so much of what we hear feel the same?

On an October evening in 2023 a twenty‑three‑year‑old songwriter named Maya R. uploaded a thirty‑second chorus to TikTok. The next morning two million strangers had played it, half of them had shared it, and industry scouts were in her DMs. Maya thought she’d won the lottery. Within weeks she was in a fluorescent studio in Los Angeles, rewriting that chorus for the twelfth time so it could “hit” by second seven. The song had no verses yet. The algorithm, she was told, did not reward slow builds.

That tension, between craft and code, is the starting point for a puzzle that cuts to the heart of twenty‑first‑century creativity. We are told we have unprecedented freedom to make and share art. Yet the further we scroll, the more the music feels curated, flattened, optimised for engagement. The paradox, as always, sits in the details.

The Merit Myth

Capitalism loves a just‑so story. Work hard, innovate, and the market will bestow its blessings. Sometimes it does. More often, visibility replaces vision. The British cultural theorist Jeremy Gilbert calls capitalism an ideology of infinite growth—a machine that converts everything, including emotion, into measurable units. In that machinery, art’s value lies not in meaning but monetisability.

Radiohead’s Thom Yorke offered a blunt footnote in 2013 after pulling his solo catalogue from Spotify:

“Make no mistake, new artists you discover on Spotify will not get paid. Meanwhile, shareholders will shortly be rolling in it… New artists get paid fuck‑all with this model.”

When one of rock’s most successful frontmen calls the system broken, we should pay attention.

A Timeline in Five Formats

Streaming gave us everything – every genre, every era, every artist. Nevertheless, it left the artists with almost nothing. A million streams might earn you £3,000. That’s before taxes, before your label takes a bite, before rent, before groceries.

Today Spotify pays US $0.003–0.005 per play; some services dip below $0.0017 after intermediaries. A viral single that cracks 10 million streams, a career highlight for most, nets its performers roughly the price of a used hatchback.

If something is free, you’re not the customer; you’re the product.
― Bruce Schneier

Engineered Taste

Every tap, skip, and replay becomes data. Media scholar Nick Couldry calls it the commodification of attention. Recommendation engines do not merely guess what we like; they train us to like what they can easily monetise. Surprise is expensive; familiarity scales.

If your Discover Weekly feels oddly predictable, that isn’t a flaw. It is the feature.

The Myth of the Overnight Success

We’ve all seen it: the breakout star, the viral hit, the “overnight sensation.” Scroll deeper and you’ll see the grind.

Benson Boone didn’t just get lucky. His rise from TikTok covers to global chart success with hits like “Beautiful Things” reflects a deep blend of talent and strategic timing. Though his voice and vulnerability drew listeners in, his team also understood how to work the platform, build momentum, and convert clicks into contracts. Behind the glossy music videos and viral moments were years of refinement, online consistency, and the backing of a major label once the numbers proved his staying power.

Next thing you know, it’s been three years and you’ve spent almost no time on your art. You’re getting worse at it, but you’re becoming a great marketer for a product which is less and less good.
– Ricky Montgomery

Most artists who go viral never make it to album two. Not because they aren’t good. Because virality isn’t built to last.

The Lottery of Virality

Consider three case studies:

Baauer – “Harlem Shake” (2013): a meme tsunami, then a near‑silence.
Rebecca Black – “Friday” (2011): 150 million views and a decade of reinvention to outrun the joke.
PSY – “Gangnam Style” (2012): the first video to one billion views, followed by diminishing returns outside Asia.

Indie pop singer Ricky Montgomery, who spent five years chasing his own TikTok spike, summarises the aftermath:

“You become a great marketer for a product that is getting less and less good.”

Going viral, it turns out, is like winning a one‑time grant. Delivered as confetti, redeemed in stress.

The Multi‑Hyphenate Mandate

Musicians once wrote songs, toured, maybe gave the occasional radio interview. In 2025 they storyboard vertical videos, dissect analytics, and livestream twice a week. Singer‑songwriter Ben Kweller shares:

“There’s a pressure to create a video with every release because audio isn’t enough … Most of us musicians don’t really feel like doing that stuff.” (Noah Kagan podcast, 2023)

Even superstar outliers admit the treadmill is relentless. Grimes experimenting with AI avatars, Doja Cat turning memes into marketing.Their creativity is bold and brilliant. However, it is also built on nonstop output.

Many artists express that they don’t set out to be marketers. Yet the current reality pushes them into that role anyway – juggling promotion, analytics, content strategy, and audience engagement alongside the music.

The Disappearing Local

Detroit once sounded like Motown. Seattle, like grunge. Kingston, like reggae. Today playlists blur accents and origins. When discovery is global, scenes lose their borders. A 2024 study by the University of Oslo found regional genre markers in mainstream releases have dropped 37 % since 2000.

Homogenisation is not accidental. Spotify’s algorithm cares less about where a track was born than whether it matches users’ existing “mood clusters.” The result: a vibe without a view.

AI and the Automation of Sound

David Guetta used AI to mimic Eminem’s voice live on stage.

Suno can generate a full album in minutes. Here’s what I, someone who’s never created music before, generated for under 2 minutes. Simple prompt. No editing. Some say this is the future.

This is insane! If machines can replicate mood, tempo, even lyrics, what happens to emotion? What happens to the soul of music? It’s not just about whether AI can create. It’s about whether we notice when it stops feeling real.

Some artists are embracing it. Not as a shortcut, but as a collaborator. Holly Herndon, for example, trains AI on her voice to explore new sonic textures. It’s not automation, it’s augmentation. This kind of experimentation shows us a possible path forward: one where technology supports vision, rather than steering it.

Survival Economics

Even for those lucky enough to find an audience, sustainability is elusive. According to Help Musicians UK, 91% of artists reported mental health struggles, often linked to economic insecurity. Naima Bock, a promising indie musician, took on gardening work between tours. Laura Marling has openly spoken about burnout and retreating from industry pressures.

Even artists with massive platforms are not immune. Zayn Malik has openly discussed the mental health toll of fame, and Adele took a lengthy hiatus after describing how fame left her feeling “fragile” and “out of control”.

Fame, it seems, guarantees exposure, not well‑being.

Exit Ramps and Experiments

Not all paths lead through Silicon Valley. Cooperative streamer Resonate gives artists equity. Bandcamp Fridays hand over 100 % of sales. Patreon pages quietly fund the unalgorithmic.

These models are small, often fragile. They are also glimpses of autonomy. Evidence that musicians still hack the system that tried to script them.

What Remains Uncodable

Algorithms can predict chord changes. Labels can forecast virality. Neither can fully explain why a whispered lyric at 2 a.m. tunnels beneath the noise and lives inside us for years. That residue, call it soul, call it surplus, resists optimisation.

Somewhere right now Maya R. uploads her seventh unreleased track. It is slower, stranger than the platform prefers. Analytics will flag it as risky. Yet a listener in another bedroom will press replay three times in a row and feel understood. The metric will not notice, but the moment will matter.

Capitalism can price attention. It cannot, however, price meaning.

📚 References

Couldry, N. (2018). The Price of Connection: Surveillance Capitalism. The Conversation.
Florida, R. (2002). The Rise of the Creative Class. The Washington Monthly.
Gilbert, J. (2012). Capitalism, Creativity and the Crisis in the Music Industry. openDemocracy.
Harvey, D. (2007). Neoliberalism as Creative Destruction. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science.
Hesmondhalgh, D. & Meier, L. (2017). What the Digitalisation of Music Tells Us About Capitalism, Culture, and Power. Information, Communication & Society.
Sennett, R. & Cobb, J. (1993). The Hidden Injuries of Class. London: Faber.

Every era promises artists freedom. The smartest among them learn to find it—sometimes in spite of the system, sometimes in the quiet corners the system overlooks. That, at least, has not changed.

Capitalism, Creativity, and the Music Industry: A Crisis of Value