A new class of musicians

There is fundamental shift happening in the world of music. It’s been happening ever since the major record labels just about imploded during the rise of the Internet.

There is a giant economy of “working class musicians” who have taken their love for the craft and forged a new path. It’s possibly not so new as it’s a bit reminiscent of the musicians in the 50’s and 60’s during the birth of rock-and-roll.

Music is about a decentralized as any industry can get at this point. 20,000 new songs are added to Spotify/Apple/other digital services — each day! With that amount of music content being pushed by thousands of artists in every part of the world, there’s hundreds of thousands of splinter-tribes forming.

Gone are the days of a new group like U2 hitting the radio with a new album and selling out arenas for a year. Let me be clear — the supergroups of the last 4 decades may always sell out arenas. The point being, rock bands and the like starting out today will probably never do that.

It’s a case of world-class music on a much smaller stage. The music being released today is just a creative and timeless and songs 50 years ago. The difference is how people are discovering and consuming those songs.

Aaron Lee-Tasjan is a perfect example of this phenomenon. He’s worked as a singer-songwriter-producer since 2006, releasing 8 full-length albums and collaborated with the likes of Pat Green, Jack White and Tom Petty.

Here’s the interesting part — he’s not a superstar. He’s a working class musician of 2019. Here’s a series of tweets sent by Aaron just this week.

If there’s a epiphany here to be found, it’s that we are just getting (re) started. There are over 7 billion people on the planet and 1/10th of them have access to music. I can’t wait to see where we are in 5–10 years.