Journal 009: The Music Industry Is Eating Itself

Estimated reading time: 7 minutes

I’ve been thinking about something recently.

And it’s something that I think we’re perhaps too quick to blame on everything outside of the music industry.

The economy.

Capitalism.

Technology.

Streaming.

AI.

The government.

Social media.

And don’t get me wrong.

All of those things have had an enormous impact on the value of music and the people working within it.

But I think there’s another conversation that needs to happen.

One that might be a little bit more uncomfortable.

Because perhaps part of the problem isn’t just that the music industry is being damaged from the outside.

Perhaps, in some ways, the music industry is eating itself from the inside.

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We have more access than ever before.

And that’s a brilliant thing.

Honestly.

The barrier to entry into music has never been lower.

You can download a DAW.

Watch thousands of tutorials.

Buy affordable plugins.

Access samples.

Watch a producer build an entire track.

Learn mixing.

Learn mastering.

Distribute your own music.

Build an audience.

Market yourself.

Create artwork.

Release globally.

All from a laptop.

That is incredible.

And I would never argue that we should go backwards.

I don’t think music should be locked behind expensive studios and gatekeepers.

I don’t think you should need permission from a record label to release something.

I don’t think knowledge should be hidden away.

Accessibility is a good thing.

But accessibility has created a strange illusion.

Having access to something is not the same as understanding it.

Having a mastering plugin doesn’t make you a mastering engineer.

Having Photoshop doesn’t make you a designer.

Having a camera doesn’t make you a cinematographer.

And having Ableton, Logic, FL Studio or whatever else you’re using doesn’t automatically make you a producer.

The tools are available.

The expertise still has to be earned.

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Somewhere along the way, “I can do it” became “I should do it.”

This is where I think things have become a little bit confused.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with learning to do everything yourself.

In fact, I actively encourage it.

Learn production.

Learn mixing.

Learn mastering.

Learn business.

Learn marketing.

Learn as much as you can.

But there is a huge difference between:

Learning enough to understand a discipline.

And:

Believing you’re already good enough to sell that discipline professionally.

And that’s a distinction I think the industry is increasingly losing.

I’ve seen people spend a relatively short amount of time learning something and then immediately turn around and start offering it as a service.

Mixing.

Mastering.

Production.

Sound design.

Consultation.

Mentoring.

And sometimes that’s absolutely fine.

Everyone has to start somewhere.

I started somewhere.

You start by doing work.

You improve.

You learn.

You make mistakes.

But the problem comes when the market becomes flooded with people selling professional services before they’ve developed professional-level skills.

Because inevitably, something happens.

The price drops.

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And when the price drops, perceived value often drops with it.

Let’s take mixing or mastering.

You’ve got someone who has spent years developing their ears.

Years understanding acoustics.

Years learning how records translate.

Years making mistakes.

Years working with clients.

Years learning different systems.

Years refining their judgement.

Then somebody else downloads a chain of plugins.

Watches a few tutorials.

Learns a few tricks.

And starts offering:

“Professional mastering — £10.”

Now again, I’m not saying everyone has to charge a fortune.

That’s not the point.

The point is that the market doesn’t always distinguish between experience and enthusiasm.

Especially when the consumer doesn’t know enough to hear the difference.

And that’s where things start becoming complicated.

Because if the person buying the service can’t recognise the difference between average work and excellent work, what are they basing their decision on?

Price?

Convenience?

Friendship?

Their community?

“My mate can do it cheaper.”

And slowly, the industry begins undercutting itself.

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The cheapest option isn’t always the most affordable.

This is something people often miss.

Saving money and getting value are not necessarily the same thing.

If you pay £20 for something that doesn’t actually improve your record, have you saved £80?

Or have you spent £20 on nothing?

If you mix your own track because you don’t want to invest in a professional, but the mix isn’t competitive enough to translate properly…

Have you saved money?

Or have you spent months writing and producing a record only to release it below its potential?

I’m not saying everyone needs to hire professionals.

Absolutely not.

Sometimes you should do it yourself.

Especially when you’re learning.

Especially when you’re developing.

Especially when you don’t have the budget.

But we need to stop pretending that doing something yourself and doing something professionally are automatically the same thing.

They’re not.

And there shouldn’t be any shame in saying:

“I don’t know how to do this yet.”

In fact, that’s often the beginning of getting good.

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We have confused self-sufficiency with professionalism.

There is this new badge of honour around doing absolutely everything yourself.

“I wrote it.”

“I produced it.”

“I mixed it.”

“I mastered it.”

“I made the artwork.”

“I marketed it.”

“I released it.”

Okay.

But was all of it good?

That’s the question nobody wants to ask.

Because doing everything yourself is impressive.

But it doesn’t automatically make the final result better.

Sometimes collaboration is better.

Sometimes outsourcing is better.

Sometimes bringing someone else’s ears into the process is exactly what a project needs.

The greatest creatives throughout history haven’t necessarily been the people who could do everything.

They’ve often been the people who knew what they could do, what they couldn’t do, and when to bring the right people into the room.

That is a skill in itself.

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And this is where the industry starts eating itself.

Because we have a generation of creatives entering an industry where everything appears to be possible alone.

And again, that’s empowering.

But there is a downside.

If everybody decides they can do everything themselves, fewer people invest in specialists.

If fewer people invest in specialists, specialists have to lower their prices.

When specialists lower their prices, the perceived value of specialist work drops.

Then newer people entering the market see those lower prices and go even lower.

And suddenly, everyone is competing to prove how cheaply they can do something.

Until eventually the question isn’t:

“Who is best for this job?”

It’s:

“Who will do it for the least?”

And that is a dangerous race.

Because eventually nobody wins.

Not the engineer.

Not the producer.

Not the artist.

And ultimately, not the listener.

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But this isn’t just about young people.

And I want to make that very clear.

Because this isn’t me sitting here at 44 years old pointing at a younger generation and saying:

“They’re ruining everything.”

That would be lazy.

And it wouldn’t even be true.

There are incredibly talented young producers and engineers doing phenomenal work.

Far better than people twice their age in some cases.

Talent doesn’t have an age requirement.

Experience doesn’t automatically equal quality.

And youth doesn’t automatically equal ignorance.

The problem is cultural.

We’ve built an environment that constantly tells people:

You don’t need anybody.

Do it yourself.

Use this plugin.

Use this preset.

Use this AI tool.

Use this template.

Use this chain.

Use this shortcut.

And suddenly we’re moving further and further away from learning the actual craft.

Because the process itself is being packaged into ready-made solutions.

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The irony is that I share more information than ever.

Anyone who follows me knows I’m not precious about knowledge.

I’ll show you mixing techniques.

I’ll show you mastering techniques.

I’ll show you production techniques.

I’ll talk about business.

I’ll talk about mistakes.

I’ll talk about what I think.

I mentor people.

I teach people.

I make content.

I give things away.

So this isn’t:

“Nobody should learn how to do this because I want you to pay me.”

Far from it.

I want people to learn.

I want people to become good.

I want people to become better than me.

Honestly.

But knowledge without experience is still incomplete.

You can watch someone explain a technique.

You can understand it intellectually.

But it can still take years to develop the judgement required to know:

When should I use this?

When shouldn’t I?

Why isn’t it working here?

What am I actually hearing?

That’s the part you don’t download.

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Perhaps we need to become more comfortable investing in each other.

Because the music industry is an ecosystem.

And ecosystems don’t survive when every organism decides it wants to consume everything and contribute nothing.

If you value someone’s work, invest in it.

If you need help, ask for it.

If someone has spent 20 years developing a skill you haven’t developed yet, there is value in that.

And if you’re a professional offering a service, don’t feel embarrassed about charging properly for it.

Because if we continuously race towards the bottom, we eventually create an industry where nobody can afford to specialise.

And that would be a tragedy.

Because music needs specialists.

It needs producers.

It needs engineers.

It needs musicians.

It needs designers.

It needs managers.

It needs educators.

It needs people who are genuinely good at specific things.

Not necessarily people who can do everything.

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My first responsibility isn’t the music industry.

And this is perhaps the most personal part of this.

I love music.

I love creativity.

I love helping people.

I genuinely enjoy watching someone improve.

I enjoy helping somebody understand something that they didn’t understand before.

But I’ve also got a family.

And my responsibility to them comes before any romantic idea about what a creative career is supposed to look like.

I cannot pay for life with passion alone.

I cannot provide security with Instagram posts.

And I cannot ask my family to carry the financial instability of an industry simply because I’m supposed to prove how dedicated I am to music.

My passion is important.

But providing for the people I love is more important.

Every single time.

And I don’t think there should be any shame in saying that.

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Perhaps that’s the real conversation.

Maybe the music industry doesn’t need to go backwards.

Maybe we don’t need more gatekeepers.

Maybe we don’t need less access.

We just need a healthier understanding of value.

Learn everything you can.

Do as much as you can yourself.

Experiment.

Make mistakes.

Be independent.

Be resourceful.

Be ambitious.

But don’t confuse access with expertise.

Don’t confuse independence with isolation.

Don’t confuse cheap with valuable.

And don’t assume that because a professional can do something for you, you’re somehow less of an artist for asking for their help.

Because the music industry is changing.

That much is obvious.

But if we’re not careful, we will spend so much time trying to avoid paying each other that we slowly remove the possibility of people making a sustainable living from the skills they’ve spent their lives developing.

And then we’ll all sit around asking the same question:

What happened to the music industry?

Perhaps part of the answer will be staring back at us.

We ate it ourselves.

—

Raff Di Renzo

Founder, Eleven One One Audio