(Up to: On Hearing )

OK, I don't object to the state of modern music based on it's content. To claim that "music is crap" just because the current infiltrational trend doesn't match your particular taste is dumb - music goes through trends, but there's always something out there that will suit your preferences. No, music is crap for the same reason beer is crap, or rather, the music itself isn't crap, but the models and systems that have grown up around it have tainted it.

In its attempt to be commoditised and sold as a product that we buy (see We, the Sheeple), it suffers a seemingly-inevitable fusion with technology to pervert it even more than it already is. Music is, like speech, and food, an original. It exists outside of cultures, of opinions. In its merging with capitalism, it became something reduced, viewed as something to be acquired in exchange for money. It was captured and tamed to fit into a mercantile ideology. Now, musicians had "rights", and the rewards extending from the music became more important than the rewards of the music itself.

Now, we see an emergence of technology. Just as capitalism thrived on the technology that preceded it, the former's staticism hs now lead to its overtaking by technology once again, and in a fight for survival, capitalism is attempting to capture the technology, and blend it with its conservatism in a bid to maintain the status quo. However, it does this without understanding the technology. The pressure of progress is its only motivation, the threat of being swept aside by new concepts. And, while this misunderstanding prevails, the technology laughs. Witness:

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2003-07-28-buymusic_x.htm

Contrary to "popular" belief, music is not a commodity, and musicians do not own sounds. They do not make music, they mould it, shape it. It comes to them. It does not exist purely because of them. This is fundamental to the theory of ideas which are not proprietary, which cannot be individually owned.

Today we are of the temporarily inflicted point of view that the power derived from the control of music is the higher priority, and yet we are on the brink of potientially a new era, or rather a re-establishment of the old era. Now that technology has been accepted as a mainstream, now that it threatens the stability of a capitalist establishment (note the .com default, rather than .org), there's a gathering chance that this will be turned around. In the long term, music cannot give way to profit, as with so many other things. But the sheer arrogance of those who control it dictates that there must be change coming, and that music will benefit from it. Music itself does not necessarily need to change, only our attitudes towards it.

(See also: We The Sheeple )