In the internet era, who exactly is a musician?
If you want to see a framework gimme a hell yeahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
This essay is part of a series where I’m exploring how the internet has changed culture, life and business in the 21st century, a project titled The First Quarter.
It’s likely that you’ve never heard of Breakmaster Cylinder. And at just 549 Instagram followers, neither have too many others. But the name should be seared into the heads of one cohort - podcast listeners. “Music by Breakmaster Cylinder” is a staple credit read for Morning Brew's Business Casual, The Atlantic's Crazy Genius, The Verge's Decoder, Vox's Today Explained, LinkedIn's Hello Monday, and the show that started the anonymous musician’s podcast-scoring career - Reply All.
It’s a little more likely that you’ve heard Amouranth - especially if you’re a, well, male of college-going age. She is a performer who, at the time of writing, is the 34th most followed Twitch streamer, and has netted $33M from OnlyFans by 2022. Her repertoire includes ASMR, adult entertainment and… yes, music. No seriously, she’s released a (largely unlisteneable) song called Down Bad, which seems to have more views through reaction videos than official Spotify streams. I’ll leave it to you to find Ms. Amouranth’s content for academic purposes.
Both Breakmaster Cylinder and Amouranth could technically be called musicians, though purists might vehemently disagree. They’re certainly a far cry from a classically-trained cellist, a hair-metal frontman, or even a festival-happy DJ. But they definitely are good examples of the internet’s impact on music. Who gets to be called a musician? What even is music? Should we pay attention to purists who still have their head stuck up their 70s classic rock arses?
Who is a musician, anyway?
The United States Employment Service has quite a broad definition:
I’m not quite sure what ‘follows’ means - does this mean a reviewer for Rolling Stone magazine is also a musician? A stagehand at a music festival?1 For the purposes of this essay, I’m going to say a musician is someone who MAKES music for money. The degree of compositional complexity, the talent involved, the output, the era, the driving ambition, the actual amount of money, and whether it’s even the primary occupation - are irrelevant. This way, we exclude those for whom music is a hobby, or those who are involved in the industry but don’t play. We’ll also exclude - perhaps unfairly - the earliest ‘musicians’. I’m talking tribal singers, war chanters, church choruses and more2.
So if we agree that a musician is someone who makes music for money, we can classify everyone from Bach to Linkin Park.
There are composers (those who write the music). There are performers (those who play the music). There are composers who were also performers / conductors (Bach, The Beatles, Adele).
Side note - I find it interesting how the dynamics between these two would continue to change. In Mozart’s day the composer was the star. In the 1950s, the performer was the star. Even today, more people have heard of Taylor Swift or Britney Spears than the person who wrote their hits, Max Martin. Anyway.
As culture, technology and formats evolved, new kinds of musicians would emerge. Think John Williams (music scores), Louis Banks (iconic Indian ad tunes) and even Jim Johnston (all your favourite WWF/WWE entrance themes). Each with their own nuance and tools. Here’s my favourite work by Johnston:
Things would continue to evolve (maybe ‘change’ is a better word, purists will not like where this is going).
The growing number of commercial establishments gave birth to background music and a company called Muzak (yes, it was an actual company, not just a pejorative).
The number of use cases for specific types of music - from ads to film scores - gave birth to production music, or what we may call stock music today.
As companies saw merit in strengthening their intangible image, sonic branding became a thing.
All these examples involved musicians - sticking true to our definition. Yes, you probably don’t know who created the Intel tings or your office elevator’s inoffensive background track, but it didn’t matter. This was music and musicians finding new roles as things progressed.
The internet would take this proliferation to another level.
The music ← → personality spectrum
I know this sounds like I’m just trying to salvage my MBA, but framing it this way helps simplify things. So here’s my handy-dandy music-personality spectrum which will be our guide for a few paragraphs.
Remember, we’re still speaking of people making money from music. No “make music for the love of it” idealism here. Let’s go, as some Western democracies seem to be doing right now, from left to right.
Utility / Functional music makers
At the leftmost extreme, we have those who make music for stock and background purposes rather than for entertainment. In the internet era, there are several use cases all with their own nuances - audio for TikToks, stream-safe tracks for copyright-aware YouTubers, UI and app sounds, intros for videos and podcasts, video game sounds… There are even niches like workout video music or meditation music for specific creators or app developers.
You could even extend this to ‘mood’ music. When you fire up “Songs to fall asleep to” at 2AM or “Songs for gym” on your Spotify, you care more about the function rather than the entertainment or, honestly, who made it (they get paid anyway, and that’s the point).
But if we allow ourelves to get a bit more musical in the entertainment sense, there’s plenty happening at this end of the spectrum too - basically, the evolution of sampling, ie, using parts of other recordings into new songs. What started out as a legally dubious practice by 80s hip-hop pioneers is now an established pan-genre practice with its own legalities and credit system. Today, ‘utility’ musicians make audio specifically to be picked up by others and worked into a full song. A well-known recent example is from Sabrina Carptenter’s hit, Espresso, which is based on three royalty-free tracks from the platform Splice. Check it out.
Most of these musicians don’t have an artistic voice, just as most CAs don’t have a spreadsheet voice (some do - and we’ll visit them soon. The musicians, not the CAs). Many are probably just throwing things at the wall, looking at quantity and situation specificity over quality. Still, there are ‘stars’ here too - more because of sheer quantum of output rather than one massive hit. Kevin MacLeod, described by the New York Times as "arguably the most prolific composer you’ve never heard of", has given the world over 2000 royalty-free tracks. There’s a documentary on him, too. A compilation of his ‘most popular sounds’ below, if you want…
Studio / session musicians
Here is where music as entertainment properly starts coming in. The musician is a hired gun, not necessarily having any personal attachment to (or be able to derive glory from) the music. While what they do hasn’t fundamentally changed by the internet era, their lives certainly have.
They face new competition from ProTools and plugins; and one could argue a lot of modern music doesn’t even need extra musicians (think lo-fi and trap). One big issue, because of the payout structure of streaming, is that they get a raw deal.
But at the same time the internet has enabled session musicians to do remote work, enhance discoverability through platforms like Airgigs, or offer classes. Some of them have pivoted to YouTube stardom with music commentary, such as Rick Beato. The classic ‘adapt to new tech and landscape’ thing.
As you can see, the ‘brand’ starts mattering here a little more than when you’re just searching for samples or stock music. You see this here in India as well, as beloved indie stars are anonymous hired musicians for Bollywood songs. As someone once joked to me at a gig, Blackstratblues is Warren Mendonsa’s content marketing so he gets studio gigs that actually pays the bills.
Let’s move ahead on the spectrum.
Niche Specialists
Things really start getting interesting here.
I mentioned above that as culture and technology evolve, there will be specialist musician roles (John Williams, Louis Banks, Jim Johnston). The internet era has given us a few of these too, and it’s fascinating to see the kind of niches that emerge.
Mick Gordon has made a name for himself providing music for first-person shooter video games.
Breakmaster Cylinder, who we started this piece with, is renowned for his podcast themes and is probably the biggest ‘brand’ there.
In recent years, Achint Thakker has been composing some of the best OTT theme songs in India.
Ad film composers of yesterday have given way to branded Reel / TikTok specialists! Movers & Shakers is a US agency specialising in TikTok campaigns and part of their work is creating custom music for branded challenges. Their campaign for e.l.f. cosmetics is still the most viral campaign on the platform.
Because of the sheer variety of content and formats that exist, you never know what niche or new need you’re filling. My friend Mehar Chumble was contacted by a then-just-rising Tanmay Bhat if he’d like to compose music for videos for his new comedy group. Soon, Mehar would move on to make music not just for all of AIB’s videos, but also theme songs of several top comedians. His music may not be ‘comedy’ by itself, but understanding the nuances of the space and being able to work with eccentric artists surely is part of the deal. (BTW I know all this because I interviewed Mehar and we start with the AIB question).
If we allow ourselves to expand the scope of musicians just a little bit, Steven Wilson (best known for leading the prog band Porcupine Tree) has been busy making spatial audio / 5.1 mixes of legendary albums. The cause for this is less streaming and portable audio and probably more just the record label wanting to have another version of a hit to squeeze cash out of nostalgic fans now with money and technology to appreciate a better mix.
You could argue many of these are similar to the functional, leftmost part of our spectrum but the ‘brand’ matters a little more here - there’s a certain prestige (even if in niche circles) in having your podcast theme composed by BmC or as a King Crimson fan owning a Wilson 5.1 mix vinyl of Court of the Crimson King.
This particular point on the spectrum, to me, is fascinating as it shows how specialists emerge within niches. There are likely to be (if not already) AI music prompt specialists. Yes, anyone can get onto Suno and prompt it to “make happy birthday in the style of Bloodywood” but it’ll take experience, audience understanding, and music skill to get it to create the perfect, say, AI-generated theme song for a podcast. In other words, this part of the spectrum is a nice time to reflect and realise that musical skill evolves - from playing big ‘actual’ instruments, to making a song on your own using just a synth and DAW, to now giving the right set of instructions to a machine.
I’m going to pause here, because this piece has got long enough already. We’ll continue this next week - where I’ll pick up the remaining parts of the spectrum, what is so internet-specific about these changes, counterforces, and where I think the future of being a musician might be. If you can believe it, both Parts 1 & 2 were supposed to be ONE point under a 5-point essay talking about how music has changed in the 21st century!
Another related essay topic to get to is: In the internet era, what are the various non-musician roles that have come up, and what has become obsolete? What pays? Is there more money in the “picks and shovels” than actually picking up a guitar?
Ted Gioia’s Music: A Subversive History is a terrific read for those interested in music in its pre-entertainment role. One takeaway from that tome is that, in the long arc of human history, music assumed the role of entertainment only relatively recently.