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The Future of Music Is Offline
Spotify and AI are replacing our living music with a dead one
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Back in 2018, I built a remote drum recording studio. To promote my services, I posted short videos on Instagram showing myself mic’ing and recording drums to various tracks. I quickly noticed that the currency of Instagram, especially Instagram Reels, in the music performance space was driven by epic feats of technical mastery and often unintentionally comic acrobatic performances compressed into 30—to 60-second snippets.
Around this time, an old friend from my University of Miami music school days shared an interesting story on Facebook. As the bassist in a household-name band, he had just completed a round of auditions to find a drummer for their next world tour. While they’d invited their usual roster of in-demand session drummers, they’d also decided to change it up and reach out to several Instagram drum stars.
What struck him — and he was diplomatic about not naming names — was how these social media virtuosos couldn’t actually play a song. The band could tell within the first measure something wasn’t right. They ultimately hired one of the in-demand session drummers (virtually unknown on Instagram) while the Instagram stars returned to posting their 30-second…
