yes but the pop industry is just one facet of music as a transcendental cultural/spiritual/secular meaning-making expression activity as a whole. its a place where both bob dylan ans taylor swift can exist on the same plane, the implications of such cannot and would never be able to be reduced to data. "if the only tool you have..."
not to undermine the implications of complex automation as symptomatic of the current epoch, but I would argue that art offers a materially grounded experience irreducible to data. it doesnt mean that the affects of art wont be harnessed by corporate interests in ever accentuated ways, it seems like an obvious and natural development; on one level its simply the cyclical production of crappification occurring in tighter spirals of output/dynamism, weeee!
great quote - and the dialectic is that it is only through the most "individuated" individuals that such work can be brought forth (the Frankfurt school would say during Modernity, such individuals are not so much distinct, but the most alienated)
I understand the pragmatism but....it took me around a decade+ of doing crap jobs, that I hated, in order to subsidize the pursuit of "my passion"
Its now been 6 years where I have been able to make a living doing what I love and I have to say, it was worth the risk. Do I recommend putting all your eggs in one basket, and going through life without a 'Plan B' - no...but the twist is, the maniac dreamers, whose passion run into the gamut of iconoclasm - those people simply will not (or more realistically) cannot abide by pragmatism.. but this obsessive nature is usually symptomatic of greater 'issues' (that then may bear fruit) and everyone who forges their own path in such a way must pay the toll and suffer the consequences (think starving artists, alienated high functioning individuals, persons inhabiting or transgressive practices, etc)