To me, it’s not a problem of access to music. The problem is more like the way in which convenience culture has shaped a specific idea of what music is and what its purpose is.

Once upon a time twenty-plus years ago, people spent $100 a week on music, books, and magazines, directly supporting the creative cultures they cared about.

Today, people rent access to infinite creative work for $15 a month, with little of that money going to the creators of the works themselves.

In the post-hipster era, you listened to what Spotify told you to listen to. If you read a book, it was because the precise pattern of blobby pastel-coloured shapes on its cover contained coded instructions to TikTok’s algorithm that sent it zooming to the top of your feed. Your tastes and preferences were decided for you by vast crystalline machin... See more