Have long appreciated that essay (I remember encountering it shared in some fanzine or early webpage as “Some of your friends are probably already this f***ed.”). I think it’s most revealingly read within context to the time and circumstances it was written in. The latter part of the twentieth century being a certain zenith of the concentration and narrowing of cultural forms due largely to the ascendance of mass media and the paucity of channels available within it - particularly at the time of the typical 3-major-networks television markets. Access to mass-distribution channels (and to a lesser degree, access to tools) in that context was everything, highly coveted/controlled - and our sense of value and significance was distorted by that, to a degree to which I think is largely unacknowledged and still having major ripple effects.
But this whole concept of mass society was also a developing thing, largely by virtue of mass-media. The/a promise of the internet (and DiY before it) was always to side-step this bottleneck. (and it has succeeded gloriously in toppling the distribution part of the problem). And that’s according to Steve Albini: the internet has solved the problem with music | Steve Albini | The Guardian
Have adopted this pet-framing for a while that there are two ultimately really two types of music - industrial and folk. “Industrial” being (in that original sense that Throbbing Gristle/Psychic TV proposed) that mode of production that flows within modern business structures and frameworks. “Folk” of course being everything else - music that people make for themselves and their communities in organic and self-organizing contexts. Realistically of course this is always a spectrum, or a field - and how money is made or changes hands will be involved, but isn’t necessarily the main differentiator. But the point is that music doesn’t have to be big-business, and many of the best examples aren’t. Albini’s studio is a good example of how it’s possible to operate independently from those systems (to whatever degree possible).
