Independent Music after Metallica v. Napster, Inc.: Seeking Liberation in the Music Streaming Simulacrum

Abstract

In this brief paper, I note the ways in which being a musician has changed in the aftermath of the digital downloading and file-sharing developed by Napster pioneer Shawn Fanning, through the lens of the music streaming simulacrum—my term for what has unfolded since. I contrast the present environment with the potential that emerged with this technology. I theorize the music streaming simulacrum as opaque, flat, and hegemonic—a parody of both industry and culture that incomprehensible by a single human being, militates against deeper connectivity between artist and listener, and exerts outsized power over human behavior and decision-making in a particular domain. I draw on my personal experience as a critical social theorist and veteran recording artist to describe life and art in this environment. In reaching a dialectical conclusion, that independent artists both gain and surrender greater autonomy than in the past, I sketch alternatives which connect back to the promise and difficulties of earlier modes of musical production and consumption.