creation destruction (creative destruction and the destruction of creatives)

https://www.metamute.org/editorial/articles/lost-translation

here 20-odd years after its original publication horsemouth reviews an article he wrote about jacques attali's bruits; essai sur l'economie politique de la musique (1977). while  there was an english translation in 1985 (the thing horsemouth had actually read in depth). horsemouth pegged his article on the publication of a re-written and re-edited french version in 2001. 

it was the first of a series of articles he wrote for mute following a trajectory through noise, improv, play, repetition, theatrical doublings, zombies and finally back to noise again. then exhausted, and faced by the global financial crisis, he gave up. 

he thanks the people at mute who enabled him to do this. it was most useful to him. 

one of attali's claims is that the political economy of music prefigures the wider political economy (and that the political economy of music can be read in the structure and form of the music itself). 

at the time 'the political economy of music was changing due to digital forms of production and distribution'.  we were in the creative destruction phase of napster and mp3 - the old CD and vinyl music industry was being destroyed and the new streaming services and social media model had not, at that point, arrived to replace it. 

'both karl marx and joseph schumpeter wrote at length on the 'creative-destructive' tendencies inherent in capitalism. while marx clearly admired capitalism's creativity he... strongly emphasised its self-destructiveness. the schumpeterians have all along gloried in capitalism's endless creativity while treating the destructiveness as mostly a matter of the normal costs of doing business' - david harvey, wikipedia article on creative destruction.

as an (ex-)musician horsemouth was mainly at the time interested in what this would do to the musical commodity and to music itself. the implications for the wider economy were of less interest to him. 

it is somewhat ironic that technology that enables the distribution of creative products (the internet) actually serves to destroy the basis on which creativity has been (financially) rewarded. on youtube you can find a number of 'content creators' where they were involved in the music industry (rick beato, andy edwards) but the youtubing about music is currently their main gig. 

in addition to the review shows and top tens there are the reaction videos where you can watch people listening to bridge of sighs  for the first time (and getting paid for it). 

now horsemouth was never a big fan of the (then) actually existing music industry and is not sorry to see it go (or at least reduce). horsemouth always liked the folk music school of actually just playing music for the hell of it - of not (particularly) expecting any financial reward from it. that said this is pretty much all that remains - music as hobby. 

a similar blight spreads over all the so-called creative industries.  it is another irony that being creative is so widely praised and promoted  at a time when it becomes unrewarded.  this is why horsemouth speaks of creative destruction and the destruction of creatives. 

indeed there's that whole notion of the gig economy (facilitated by the apps of platform capitalism) of a radical (if alleged) de-skilling and casualisation of all productive activity (in the style of musicians and their temporary employments 'gigs'). 

more detailed studies of attali's theories are now available - he would probably recommend eric drott's music and the elusive revolution: cultural politics and political culture in france, 1968-1981 and his rereading jacques attali's bruits.