Do we need more music?

Do we need more music?

Does the world need more musicians? Do we need more music? Isn’t new music just a copy of already known ideas? How do we deal with the abundance of music (and other art forms) in today’s world?

There is an opinion that almost every imaginable piece of music has already been written and that everything new is just a variation of it. If you look at the abundance of musical material on online streaming platforms alone, the thought quickly comes to mind: We have enough music.

So is the music industry just an artificial machinery kept alive that nobody needs anymore?

Complex problems need complex approaches.

If you look at the history of our planet, you will always find phases of abundance and times of scarcity. So it seems that we are currently in a phase of abundance. In this context, however, a completely different thought occurred to me:

The unprecedented complexity of our society and the resulting complex problems bring with them a wealth of fuel that we artists would call inspiration, among other things. From personal crises to global catastrophes, there is no shortage of subjects that do not provide some kind of raw material for art. We are always looking for more answers and solutions than the entire Big Data Tech Revolution could ever offer us. Because the abysses of every human being are sometimes so deep that even the most advanced AI cannot produce any light that could explain these abysses in their entirety. The digital revolution is the modern Don Quixote, while we churn out new high-performance wind turbines.

The music industry is just a self-imposing punchline …

The only bright spot in this dystopian race is art and its gradual liberation from conventional structures. For the collective artistic output of our world today, the music industry is just a self-imposing punchline, a running gag within the framework of what is actually possible.

The capabilities of humanity as a whole have long since surpassed the challenges of our environment. There is no lack of knowledge and opportunities, there is a lack of focus. Art can give us that focus. Art gives us meaning, inspires us and gets us out of our dependencies – if we let it. Artists are the medicine men of our time, the tribal elders of every generation. And by that I don’t mean that every artist is a prophet or has the right answers. But he has the tools to open the right doors for us.

We need more art.

In this sense – yes! – we need more musicians. We need more music. We need more art. We need art as essential as bread and water. Our world is becoming more complex and fragile every day. No unisex treadmill productions or international advisory committees will help. We need individual, open-ended approaches from intrinsic motivation in order to be able to counteract the self-destructive impulse of individualism that has become a system in itself. We need art.