Enshittification

No. You’re missing the point of what was said. It’s not “new technology will destroy integrity.” All of the tech he’s talking about he talks about from experience. He’s discussing how companies are bastardizing technological advancements for profit. And selling the soul of what’s meant to be human expression for a more guaranteed return. This isn’t an old guy vs the youth thing. It’s a music guy speaking on what is happening with late stage capitalism in the music industry.

Now, a legitimate criticism is his whole thing about how it was better to have to work for money to save up to buy records. I mean, sure, there is a marked difference in the way people consume music nowadays and it has (again, thanks to capitalism) morphed into what is most likely to catch people’s attention, what can be the most TikTok friendly, etc.

It’s the focus on catchy singles in an attention economy instead of cohesive albums. But the upside that he missed to both of these is that while, yes, the democratization of pro-quality tools does make music easier to make and thus is done to homogenize a lot of music—but this can also be a good thing. In commercial music, it’s a big downside because pop music is now basically engineered to be as earwormy as possible. But it’s also a huge upside because now anyone, regardless of privilege, can create. That does flood us all with endless subpar bullshit, but it also allows small artists to be heard without some corporate fuckin record label holding those keys. He doesn’t go into that, and he overlooks the upsides to this. But the video was “what’s wrong with music,” so maybe he’d agree, but he doesn’t mention it and that’s a big failure on his part.