Over the past few days, I’ve started to move my digital social network footprint off the standard social networks. I believe there are better options where people and their art are not hideously exploited. It’s hard as an artist seeking some publicity to drop the bemoths like Amazon and Twitter and Facebook. To cut the cords and look for other ways to move forward as an artist is not easy. For a hundredth of a cent, musicians have become way too dependent on Big Tech. We’ve sold ourselves way too cheap.
As Big Tech tightens the screws on freedom of speech and ideas, what can artists do but sell themselves and their craft for next to nothing, while the big companies make obscene profits. We are like grasshoppers in their eyes, is scripture that comes to mind. I believe there are other options and other ways to share our art in the public space, and not be ripped off. ASCAP and BMI have pursued these freeloading companies for years and those companies have been protected by political buddies. Songwriters and musicians have been ripped off for far too long.
There is encrypted mail (Protonmail.com) and messaging (Signal and Telegraph), Facebook replacements (MeWe), along with encrypted browsers, Hooktube instead of Youtube, and private search engines, so you are not constantly tracked and harassed. I certainly don’t need my package in 2 days, don’t need the monstrous warehouses and trucks polluting the air. As an artist, I am finding far better options, like Bandcamp, for paid streams that encourage artist and fan interaction, no matter what your reach is.
Honestly, didn’t we all do this to actually play for people? Big Tech is like the worst artist management ever. Support companies that give artists a fair shake and don’t suppress the fair and free exchange of ideas. None of the protest songs of the 60’s would have flown the airwaves with the current state of oppression.
Mark Grosz Music 