The Music Industry Isn’t Dying. It’s Achieving Singularity — Without Humans.

The industry promised innovation. Turns out it was just fewer humans.

Every week, a new op-ed drops pretending the music industry is either under siege by AI or one good Daniel Ek epiphany away from salvation.

CNBC asks if we should be worried that AI bands are going viral.

The Hollywood Reporter pleads with Spotify’s CEO to “pony up hard” and save music like some superhero.

Let’s be real: the only thing Spotify’s saving is margin.

Daniel Ek doesn’t care about “the song.” He never did. This is the same guy now investing in military drone startups while artists still get fractions of a cent per stream — and then we're expected to believe he just hasn’t had the moment yet? That maybe, just maybe, he’ll wake up one morning, put on a Phoebe Bridgers record, and decide to fix the entire ecosystem out of the goodness of his Nordic heart?

Please.

A platform that pays $0.00001 per stream is not confused. It’s not waiting for a better business case. It knows exactly what it’s doing — flooding catalogs with AI filler, diluting human-made art, gamifying virality, and turning music into noise wallpaper.

Meanwhile, real musicians write songs. They lose sleep over lyrics. They blow their rent on mastering. They scream into pillows because they’ve been told for the hundredth time that “the algorithm didn’t pick it up.”

But sure, let’s act like The Velvet Sundown, an AI-generated band, is a creative breakthrough and not just spreadsheet music with a fake vinyl aesthetic. Let’s pretend the music industry is a passive observer here — instead of the main architect of its own silicon replacement.

To quote my own Instagram story earlier today:

Pleading Ek to become a good guy is like pleading Ted Bundy to stop doing what he was doing.

This isn't a reckoning. It's a rebrand. The industry isn’t dying — it’s just uploading itself. And no, Dylan, no one’s worried. We’re just insulted.