How The Algorithm Ruined Music for me

and all womankind

I wake up to a diamond shaped beam of sun hitting my face from an opening in the curtains, the first thing I do is peer over to the clock at my bedside. I swing my legs over the mattress I share with my boyfriend, onto the wood floor of our 1920’s apartment. I make my way towards the bedroom door and into my kitchen to make myself a cup of coffee, I only drink half of the coffee and pour it out once it’s gone cold. There is something captivating to me about the early hours of the day, after waking up from a long night of dreaming, half in slumber, half in the real world. It feels as if I am able to see the doorway to my dreams shut tightly and seal itself for good. I set the day out in front of me, there are one of two choices that determine how it will unfold, I either reach for my guitar and notebook, or, I unplug my phone from the wall and open up my social media apps. In other words, I choose either to write down and keep my dreams forever, or let them dry up with the morning dew.

A myriad of Tik-tok stars and wealthy socialites-turned models-turned actresses-turned indie musicians, plaster the walls of my mind, as I move my thumb slowly over the glass of my iPhone 14. Almost all of them seem to be sporting the same oval rimmed fake glasses and taupe lip liner combos that are advertised to me as I scroll further. “Perhaps, I need to buy this for people to find my music?” I wonder, as I fall deeper into the trance that is swiftly consuming me. My inner monologue starts like rapid fire when I notice I have lost a few hundred followers from my profile, “what is so different about me in comparison to these girls, whose careers seem to be thriving?” “Life seems so easy for them.” “I wonder if I am too old now?” “If my music is just no good?” “I wish my parents were rich.” “I wish I was rich.” “Should I be writing more like them?” “Will I ever write again?” “Did someone put a hex on me to give me low streaming numbers and album sales?” Suddenly, I come to, gasping for air as if violently released from a deep and cynical hypnosis.

“Who the fuck have I become?” “I used to be a rational person.”

The world is crumbling, you don’t need me to tell you that, and it is not lost on me that I fit the modern trope of the “self involved-mediocrely talented-white girl with a fringe-singing somberly in cursive”. I don’t mean to imply that I am any better than all of these girls, following whatever new fad du jour is circulating social media. My problem, I fear, is that whatever fad I’ve been following, has led me astray, by becoming seemingly irrelevant. So let’s set that aside, as I continue to tell you what I mean here, about the algorithm and how it’s affecting the way I see being an artist moving forward. It seems to me, behind calculated advertisements parading as ‘culture of the moment’ hides a collective, deepening sense of impermanence and capitalistic desperation by the music industry and society as a whole. Most likely because, well, no one’s buying music, so how do we sell them something they already get for free? In this industry, there has always been the “top-tier” artists, a handful, maybe a dozen, of pop’s biggest names. The problem for most of us now, is that those names have vastly monopolized music and culture as a whole, because, the algorithm is feeding them to us, them, and only them, well if you fail to include interspecies friendships, makeup tutorials, and videos of strangers yelling at each other on airplanes. Intentionally or not, it seems as though everything in the world is combining to collectively jump the line, ahead of us little guys.

So, how does this affect the way I make art?

An album, can take years to finish. Half a decade in my case, 5 years of grueling efforts to finish a twelve song record with absolutely no budget, it honestly took so long because I was constantly collapsing into emotional exhaustion at the risk of it’s potential failure. Then, when finally completed, the music is released, or, uploaded, onto social media platforms. Only to be grazed over by a small handful of strangers while they take their morning dump. Finally, after my life’s work is given a .5 second chance at catching on, it is seemingly lost forever. At least, that’s how it seems to me. Within my endeavors as an artist, I try my best to be vulnerable and honest in my work, but nowadays, I notice that more than anything, I am constantly wondering how I can be, and stay, relevant. The fact is, the algorithm, throw away culture, and the progression of social media culture as a whole, has personally led me to a creative impotence that is threatening my future as a professional musician.

What do I have to do for my work to be seen and heard?

“Keeping up with the Jones’s”, I never really understood that saying until recently. I’ve never been accustomed to conformity, I never had to, I chose to be an artist, artists are meant to be different, we are meant to challenge the status quo and live a life of freedom and abundant self expression. The only problem with that choice, is that at the time that I made it, I seemed to overlook the fact that historically, artists are also usually broke. Whoops! Didn’t think that one through. When you’re 16 years old, which is the age I was when I entered into the music industry, you’re sleeping each night on a bed you did not pay for, in a house where you eat and live rent free, so naturally, a life of pain and struggle in the name of Art, seems quite romantic. Fast forward fourteen years, and I’m just concerned about making enough to pay my health insurance and car payment this month, suddenly, the Jones’s seem like they have the right idea.

Now, as I watch images of strangers blink over my screen in rapid succession, I wonder where all the art has gone from my life? I see so many young girls, all dressed the same, some of them posing on cars, some of them rolling on the floor in bustier ensembles while whisper-singing sexual innuendos into a microphone. As I move on from one image to another, I incur a set of knowledge I never cared to acquire in the first place. Suddenly, I know which sort of eyeliner an ex-child star is wearing to the Grammy’s. I suddenly scramble to find out how I might obtain this eyeliner for myself. “What the fuck am I saying?” Next, I watch a contradictory set of performances by musicians that are claiming to be “hard working down-home Americans, just like me!” at the same time, these people hold a place as some of our nation’s many billionaires. I watch some of the most talented and successful women in the world spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to have their skin pulled back behind their ears and stapled to their skull, to then sing three minute ballads about “inner beauty”. What are we doing?! Actually, the question has to be who is doing this to us?

I throw my phone across the room as a light bulb comes into frame over my head, this is not about how I might stay relevant as an artist, this is about how I might stay relevant as a woman, who also happens to make art. Once again, my gender identity rears its ugly head.

It is not lost on me that in this society, women, are encouraged to see each other as mortal enemies. I also understand that The System these social media platforms are running is actively calculating to prey on my insecurities. I feel shame as I scrape up what crumbs of memory I still have of my childhood, and wonder how I too, fell so victim to this patriarchal mind game. What seems to have multiplied this sickening impulse of self-comparison, is the constant merry-go-round that is having to perform for social media in order for my music to reach people, because whatever I’m doing does not seem to be reaching people, and the problem with that is, if my music doesn’t reach people, I won’t be able to pay my rent. So, I’m plagued now, with another choice, do I cave in? Slather on some lip gloss from the Tik-Tok shop, strike a sexy pose, smile to the camera “Listen! Look! Listen! Please! I beg of you!”, or, shut out the noise of instagram, try my best to create quality work? For me, these two things cannot coexist. This can’t be right? There has got to be a way to reach people without regurgitating a constant stream of clickbait in an attempt to compete with literal billionaires… What about Ella Fitzgerald, Billy Holiday, Kate Bush, Georgia O’keefe, Maya Angelou, Simone de Beauvoir, Frida Kahlo, Joan Didion? Were these women “Nepo Babies”? Did they too, feel pressured towards lip injections and GLP-1’s?

I am not resentful or bitter towards beautiful, rich, confident, and successful women in music and their careers. What I envy most, is their ability to, in some very mysterious way, effortlessly take over every inch of the space we as artists must broadcast our work through, in order to make our own living. Women should be able to be sexy, women should be able to be rich, women should be able to modify their own bodies in whatever way they please. Your body, your life, your choice. I’m not casting judgment on their characters (well, aside from the billionaires). But what is happening when talented women with completely average lineages, average incomes, average physical traits, are overlooked? And why does it seem like all of these things are not allowed to exist together side by side? Must we abide in such opposing categories? Why must we exist in categories at all? For me, it is so incredibly bleak that in the year 2025, in a world where women are meant to be given equal respect and opportunity as men, that somehow, our sexual viability still plays such a major role in the success of our careers. It is not as if any actual person is reciting this to me, in plain English, that I need to be sexier, no one is blatantly informing me that my looks could be improved, no-one is handing me a pair of booty shorts and telling me to my face, that if I show my belly button and circle a stripper pole it might help album sales, no one, other than this enigmatic force that is the internet via social media. So yes, I suppose it is all just in my head, which is spinning uncontrollably, grasping at how to conquer the beast that is The Algorithm today, in order to survive.

thealgorithmmademedoit

-A