September 2025 – HELLO, I'M SETH WERKHEISER

STREAMING WILL EAT ITSELF

The streaming music platforms will soon follow the lead of the streaming video platforms and continue to raise their rates, which I’m sure will be helped along by the record labels that increase their licensing fees because they want as much of the action as the video streaming platforms.

Source: https://www.statsignificant.com/p/is-tvs-golden-age-officially-over

The whole ecosystem will eat itself, and we’ll all go back to pirating music again (but the cool kids will keep buying vinyl and CDs and digital copies off of Bandcamp).

I’ve been seeing it mentioned in comment threads on some of the sites that have posted about Disney raising the rates again, notably MacRumors and I think something similar on The Verge. Monthly rates will continue to go up. Meanwhile, external hard drives and basic MP3 players are cheaper than ever on Amazon. It’s inevitable.

ART VS POLITICAL NONSENSE

A blog is a wonderful time capsule, for both the good and the bad. This from a recent email newsletter from the German band Elder:

Unfortunately, the timing for this release coincides with the change in tariff policies of the US government. Our (Stickman, based in Germany) uses a number of services to ensure the cheapest possible worldwide shipping, but all of them are currently not servicing the US while they re-tool themselves to handle the current situation.

As such, before these tariffs went into effect we only managed to get 100 copies of the EP into the US! If you are in the States and want to get your hands on one, you will need to order either via Armageddon Shop or Echodelic, both of which have only 50 copies.

We know that techincally tariffs shouldn’t affect vinyl as it falls under the banner of “informational materials”. Our shipping partners are not currently servicing the US and our hands are tied. Apologies for that.

Hope to look back on this post five years from now and shake my head at the current state of political affairs.

And holy heck, that album art is soooo good.

STREAMING PLATFORMS FILLED WITH FAKE MUSIC

You have to be on the streaming platforms!

The streaming platforms:

Deezer says it now receives over 30,000 fully AI-generated tracks daily, marking a sharp increase from the 20,000 figure it reported in April and the 10,000 it disclosed in January when it first launched its proprietary AI detection tool.

It’s hard enough to stand out from the crowds on the social media platforms when competing with actual musicians and bands. Now you throw in 30,000 AI-generated tracks EVERY DAY and you’re just buying lottery tickets and hoping for the best, you’re literally swimming upstream just trying to buy those lottery tickets in the first place.

Go play shows. Busk. Stream live. Do whatever you gotta do to get in front of actual humans, create fans, get their email address, rinse and repeat for years.