Tech Won't Save Us - Art is More Than Ones and Zeroes w/ Nika Roza Danilova

Episode Date: June 4, 2020

Paris Marx is joined by Nika Roza Danilova to discuss how COVID-19 is affecting artists, the privileged worldview of tech, the human essence of art, and why that can’t be replicated by artificial intelligence. She also provides advice on how to best support artists and her hopes for what a better world for artists might look like.Nika Roza Danilova makes music under the name Zola Jesus. Her fifth studio album, Okovi, was released in 2017. Read her essay “On AI and Silicon Fascist Privilege” for more insight on her perspective, and check out Koir, a website she co-founded to help artists livestream their performances. Follow Nika on Twitter as @zolajesus.Tech Won't Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter.Support the show

When you're reducing art down to something that can just be computational, it's just ones and zeros, you're removing that entire empathetic, connective experience. Hello and welcome to Tech Won't Save Us, a podcast that thinks any tech solution that seeks to maintain the social relations from which it profits will not actually solve the fundamental social problems that we need to address in our societies. I'm your host, Paris Marks, and today I'm joined by Nika Rosa Danilova. Nika performs and makes music under the stage name Zola Jesus. Her fifth studio album is called Okovi, and it was released in 2017. In our conversation, we talk about the impact of COVID-19 on the music industry and on musicians, but we also talk about the orientation of Silicon Valley and the impact of various tech solutions like artificial intelligence,

algorithms, and the streaming platforms on musicians and on art in general. If you like our conversation, please leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts. Make sure to share the episode with any friends or colleagues you think would find it interesting. And if you want to support the work that I put into this podcast, you can join patrons like Danny Bednar by going to patreon.com slash Paris Marks and making a contribution. Thanks so much and enjoy the interview. Nika, welcome to Tech Won't Save Us. Thanks for having me. It's fantastic to speak with you today. So obviously I wanted to have you on because last year you wrote this essay about kind of your perspective of the tech industry and the impact of tech on music. And so I certainly want to talk to you about those issues. But before we get into

that, obviously we're in this very unique period, you know, with this pandemic still affecting us around the world. A lot of people are still in lockdown. And in that essay, you wrote that, you know, touring is still a really important revenue stream and a revenue stream that, you know, hasn't so much been gobbled up by labels, streaming giants, etc. So what has the impact of COVID-19 been on musicians, on artists so far? Yeah, and what are you seeing? Well, it's been pretty devastating for myself and my friends and peers, because so much of our livelihood comes from traveling and performing in public. And right now, you know, we're prevented from traveling, but more than anything, prevented from congregating in venues and clubs and theaters. So the main

source of our livelihood, one of the primary ways in which we were able to survive off of our art these days in this contemporary world was performing live. And so now we can't do that. I can't record my next album. I was supposed to go to LA in March and New York in April and Berlin in April to record my album and work with musicians in those cities. But now I can't do that because I can't travel. So that's been put on hold. So I'm basically just personally scrambling, trying to figure out how to subsist and kind of continue being able to support myself with music while we're undergoing these strange times. But it's a challenge. And a lot of other musicians have even had it worse than I have because they had just released records and were ready to go on these massive year-long tours and

hit all the festivals. And now they don't have that. And yeah, it's just kind of a mess. So that's for sure. Yeah, I can hardly imagine how difficult it must be, especially when so much of your income is really dependent on getting a lot of people in kind of one place, right? Totally. And so I remember seeing it originally when the pandemic first hit China. You know, we saw people live streaming music online and go into these like online raves and things like that. And I know that you helped to launch a platform called Choir recently to help musicians hold live streams and kind of find a way to play their music for fans, for people who want to listen while people are still locked down at

home. So are you seeing a lot of people kind of shifting online now? And what is the impact of doing that? It's definitely become sort of our primary means of connecting with our fans. Having virtual concerts and live streaming is, you know, it's still in its infancy for music, which is why it felt like it was necessary to create some sort of framework for it with COVID. I was quick to, with my friends to create choir, which would help just give a base calendar and also how to resources and troubleshooting resources and starting a Discord server to help musicians just wrap their heads around live streaming and find a place to connect with fans by doing that. It's hard because it doesn't, live streaming will never replace live music because there's just this intangible physicality to being in a room with people and engaging in such like a visceral way that the distance between the screens just does not even

remotely reproduce that feeling. But it's something that we should be implementing and we should be adopting and figuring out how to use regardless because musicians are already struggling to have enough tools at their disposal to feel autonomous with what they do. And since, you know, we can get into Spotify and stuff, but since streaming has really taken away the way in which we used to support ourselves, which is through record sales, we've had to think on our feet about different ways to be able to make up for I say, like a tool in the tool belt for musicians to be able to find new ways to connect to fans and to monetize what they do. I guess my greatest fear is because I'm so skeptical of big tech and so skeptical of the corporations behind the technology that I want to make sure that the musicians are in control of that as much as they can be. So starting choir was an attempt to try to sort of take up some of that space. So I knew, well, if I'm doing it, I know my intentions are good. So let me get in there before Amazon does or Facebook does or Google. And then we're back at square one like we were with Spotify. So that was that was the attempt, at least. You know, I obviously completely share your fears about the way that big tech is taking everything over and how they'll probably try to do so if live streaming music becomes a more popular thing as well.

Right. Even even beyond this, this pandemic. Yeah, I mean, they're already trying to do it twitch has greatly augmented their music arm or you know they're really trying to develop the music aspect of their service and then also pandora is trying to do something similar i mean people are scrambling right now to do things but you know and this all comes down to power uh i don't care about technology like i love technology i'm a computer nerd like I've always been a computer nerd you know I make my own music on a computer but I'm concerned about who's holding the power and making sure that's evenly distributed especially with creators

so that's something that is always going to be at the forefront of my like skepticism everything yeah no I love that and I completely agree And before we get into the specific impacts of these big tech companies in particular, and the recent developments in tech on music, and musicians, obviously, I did want to speak to you about, you know, your broader perspective on the tech industry, because you did write this essay on AI and Silicon fascist privilege in November of last year, I believe, that I think might have annoyed some people, but also, you know, really resonated with a lot of other people as well, right? Yeah. Because in that essay, you kind of describe kind of like the culture and the mindset that exists within Silicon Valley. And when you have so many of these like-minded people with really similar experiences in the same place. And so did you just want to talk a bit about kind of your perspective on the tech industry and where these kind of solutions that they present come from?

Yeah, I mean, this isn't my wheelhouse necessarily, but I do feel, I did feel like I had an opinion about it and here we are. But it's something I really feel strongly about. So I'm happy to talk about it. I said something on Twitter that I'm not going to get into because I don't want to drudge up that, but I brought up this idea of Silicon fascist privilege, which is kind of like a mouthful of words, but to me, it illustrated a really dangerous problem that is coming from Silicon Valley. And it's born from the ethos, I feel, of the tech industry, this tech utopianism where technology is everything, you know, technology is growth and growth is progress and progress is evolution. And that

is the ideology of mankind is to move forward into the future. And while that's all great, and I love the optimism of it, it's a tale as old as time, like we saw with the Italian futurists and the Russian futurists and how those were kind of, you know, swimming around the circles of fascism. And we're seeing this happen as well. It's like, if somebody is telling you that you need to believe in what they're doing, unquestioningly, and you're supposed to trust them with all of the power and all of the resources, because they know what's best for us. Well, that's literally fascism. And that is quite literally what these tech giants want us to believe, is that they're doing this for us, for the people.

They're about moving culture forward, moving humanity forward, progress, you know, let's keep inventing, let's keep finding new ways of making humans better, you know, and then we get the transhumanists who are all like deeply obsessed with, you know, either living forever or potentially coming back to life like cryogenically or generally just augmenting their bodies in a way that that is more than human. And again, it's like the optimism of it is cool and it's exciting. But what I see through all of these great, awesome ideas are just like opportunities for people to be manipulated or exploited,

because that's currently what's happening, even with the technology that we have at the moment. And it's just like extremely dangerous what we're seeing. And every time I think about it or talk about it, I have to catch myself because I'm like, am I a conspiracy theorist? Because I sound crazy. Why does my TV have voice control? Why can it hear me? What is it doing with that? And then everyone's like, oh yeah, I talk about something and then I see an advert on my phone. It's like, that's not a coincidence. These technologies are being implemented in a way that is re-commodifying us as people. So, you know, the thing that was sold to us is trying to sell us more.

And that's not honest. That's really dishonest. It's really manipulative and it's exploitative. And I feel like the kernel of that initiative, like whatever initiative is happening there to want to use people's data against them, like that's going to continue to happen. And it's only getting worse, especially now as we're going through a worldwide crisis and seeing how AI and tracking is becoming a huge part of the conversation about, you know, tracking people that have had COVID, you know, you're like, that's going to be really dangerous. That's already very dangerous, you know? So just seeing all of these aspects of how tech can be actually abused and is being abused and is being implemented and created by people that aren't necessarily operating with morals or ethics. Like there's a huge, huge, huge gaping issue in Silicon Valley. And I think that it has to do

with the lack of education about ethics and morals in science and in these inventor circles or whatever. Because all this invention and all this development and all this technology is being created and implemented within a capitalist framework. And that capitalist framework doesn't have regulation that will protect the technology or protect the people behind the technology from selling it to the government, to the military, Amazon, or by selling it back to us or selling the data to data collecting companies, which then try to target us, you know, again. So it's just like a mess, man. It's a total mess. And it really stresses me out because as a, not only as a musician, but as a human being, as a consumer, as a civilian, you know, I, I live out in the woods partially because I feel safer. I feel like my privacy is, isn't impinged upon as much as it would be in a city where I feel like these days,

you're being tracked everywhere you go, whether it's through people's nest cameras, or whether it's through security cameras or phone tracking. I don't know. It's really crazy when you start to think about it. And it makes me very concerned about what the future looks like without proper regulation. I completely understand what you're saying. I also occasionally feel like I'm like a complete conspiracy theorist because I'm like, how do other people not feel really concerned about the degree to which that like everything is tracking us and like they're trying to put so many more cameras and sensors and things in our homes and in cities as well, as you say. And, you know, obviously, with the pandemic now, contact tracing apps and things like that to track your location are

becoming a key piece of how we're supposed to respond to it, even though, you know, as I talked in previous weeks with Bianca Wiley and Lizzie O'Shea about, there is not much guarantee that these things are actually going to be effective, but we don't know what's going to happen with all of this data that they collect on us once it's all said and done, right? Yeah, I mean, it's bizarre. Yeah, so it's pretty concerning. But now, obviously, all of this tech solutionism doesn't just impact us in these kind of broad ways, but there are specific tech implementations that have been being pushed in your specific industry, in the music industry, right? And you've been quite

outspoken on the impacts or potential impacts of AI, of algorithms, and of the streaming platforms on the future of music. So I just kind of wanted to start with what you see as the potential impact of artificial intelligence, because you've talked about how when AI creates music, it's not the same thing as when a human creates music, right? Because when a human creates music, you're kind of putting that human experience into it, and the AI can't really replicate that or simulate that in the same way. So what are your concerns with the growing push for AI to create music and what that might mean for musicians? I mean, it's kind of a mess because AI isn't necessarily evil.

All it is is just like machine learning. You're just teaching a machine to do something and then spit something back out. But all that really is, is computation. And by insinuating or assuming that an AI can make music better than a human, that assumes that humans are nothing but computers. And that's concerning for me because we don't know that, you know, and there's a lot, there's so much unknown to being a human and to being alive. Like my, my experience is completely unique from yours. And, you know, that's what art is for. It's to create and link our stories together and to feel empathy and a connectedness. And it's an extremely cathartic experience to make art and also to listen to

other people's art that they've made, because you're just learning about the experience of who you are. And then you're finding people that are like you and that they're also humans, and they're sharing their experience, you know. But when you're reducing art down to something that can just be computational, just ones and zeros. You're removing that entire empathetic, connective experience. I can go down a slippery slope with this because I think about somebody like that, that somebody,

something like that AI avatar, Lil Mikaela. I don't know if you've heard of her. Nope. She is a computer-generated artist, kind of like the Hatsune or whatever her name is. There's like another Japanese avatar, AI. It's not necessarily AI, but it's computer generated.

OK. And there's something about this Lil Mikaela who she's, you know, she looks like this cute girl that would be on Instagram who's sort of ethnically ambiguous and, you know, nubile. And her music is like kind of like a Rihanna, whatever. You know, it's like she's very cool and it's all very cool. But then you can't relate to it because I can't relate to it because it's not somebody's lived experience. It's a simulation of a lived experience. And so there's only it can only really be personally.

This is all personally. It only for me really exists in a space of novelty where you're like, oh, wow, interesting. Like, this is like a fake artist. This is a fake influencer. This is a fake person that exists, but attempts to sort of swim in the same circles of of like real artists. They'll have a real artist or influencer or something posing with this computer-generated little Michaela to make it seem like she's real. And it's this uncanny valley

where it's not an animation. It's not something that is so disconnected from reality that you can appreciate it as an art project. It's really so fundamentally realistic to the point where it feels very disturbing because we're seeing the opportunity that people or corporations will have at creating these avatars that are seductive and that can sell whatever they want for them. This little Micha like this little Michaela is never going to say, I'm tired, I'm hungry, I don't want to do this.

Can I go to sleep now? Or a little Michaela can never say, I don't want to do that. That's against my morals. Or I don't like that song. That's cheesy. Or you know what I mean? She doesn't have a choice. She doesn't have an opinion.

So she's the best tool for corporations or for advertisers or anyone that's marketing anything to use as this vehicle for whatever they want to do, all while doing it through this like sexy, nubile young girl named Lil Miquela. You know, you're just kind of like, there's nothing about this that seems like a good idea. And it just seems like it's going to end up being another tool for manipulation. And simultaneously, by doing that, you're silencing, you know, real people, real artists with real ideas and real memories and real experiences and real talent and skills and passion. And that's, you know, that's someone like me. I'm not saying that Lil Miquel is replacing

me, but I'm saying like, she could. And then what, you know, and then if all of our art is made by simulations of what we think humans would want, there's something so a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy about that. For me, it does not feel optimistic at all. In fact, it feels very cynical. It feels like people are reducing what they think art is, what they think music should be, or what they think a musician should be. And they're trying to create a simulation of that. And I feel like that, along with the algorithmic explosion within music, we're reducing the variability of the human experience. We're reducing the randomness of being a human. And by doing that, we're going to really limit and reduce what we're capable of thinking of or imagining or trying and failing. That's when art is really important and beautiful,

when there's that feeling of rawness and there's that space of humanness. It's organic and it's strained and it's gone through something, you know? And so I'm just, yeah, I mean, I could go on and on because I just feel like this is really affecting the music industry in a dangerous way. The way in which algorithms are reducing people's options and trying to make decisions for people about what they should listen to or what the song should be or what, you know, what they might like. And that's, again, we're putting our trust in a technology that isn't benign necessarily. It's not a closed loop. It's an open loop. And there's somebody else that's digging their hands in that.

It's just all a mess that it's it's just all a mess it's a mess just going back to the ai for a second like when you describe it what what comes to my mind is like this this kind of avatar that's created to appeal to potentially the maximum possible market you know yeah and you know to to then sell as much things as they can or to produce this kind of algorithmically generated music but when you talk about it also being like you know then the artist can't say no like the thing that immediately came to my mind and you know i'm sure there are issues in the western music market as well but just some of the really kind of horrific stories that you hear out of kind of the K-pop scene in South Korea, right? And, you know, some of the

ways that some of those artists are treated and placed under really high pressure. It makes it so that, you know, if you can just get rid of kind of the human body, then you can still kind of create the same sort of feeling and then not have people who can kind of say no or say like, this is too much or have potentially bad stories come out about the way that you're, or the way that management or whatnot is treating those artists, right?

Yeah, absolutely. And I think that the whole K-pop industry is really fascinating because it seems like more than ever, there's this attempt or desire to sculpt these human beings that are a part of these acts or these bands or groups into avatars themselves. Like the immense amount of plastic surgery, the immense amount of depersonalization that happens to these poor people that just want to make music. And, you know, you see that there's this desire in them to want to be successful. But the point at which they need to completely dehumanize themselves in order to

participate in that industry is just like, you're kind of selling yourself and you're becoming this product. It's literally one step away from just becoming an AI avatar, which will probably happen eventually. Probably, right? Obviously, I'm sure that that's something that the companies who control the music industry over there will be really interested to have happen. Yeah. Now, you also mentioned the kind of impact on algorithms, right? And so I think there are two really important pieces that i have seen you talk about in your writing

and in your tweets um and that's both kind of the the impact on those algorithms of kind of steering our culture in a certain direction and kind of steering our artistic preferences always giving us the same sort of thing and also kind of creating this more kind of homogenous uh preference in terms of music and not kind of allowing us more kind of homogenous preference in terms of music and not kind of allowing us to find things that might be different. But then that also plays into this larger potential issue with streaming, which has become such a dominant force, I think, in the music industry over the past decade, I guess, you know, with the important role that it now plays in producing revenue for the industry and, you know, for labels in particular. So what issues specifically do you see with algorithms and

how does that play into kind of streaming and the dominance of Spotify and what that's doing to the industry? The first issue is Spotify itself or streaming itself. I say Spotify because Spotify basically started it. You know, Spotify says it's better than Napster. The streaming companies like to say that they're better than SoulSeeker, Napster, like Torrance. But that's not true because you're basically legalizing pirating.

And we're still being pirated for the most part. We're getting paid half a cent per stream at the most, really. And that stream rate comes from a loophole where when iTunes had preview, you could preview 30 seconds of a song on iTunes before buying it. They had to pay royalties to the artists for doing that. And that's the royalty rate that we stuck with. Oh, interesting. I didn't know that. Yeah. So they found this loophole where they're able to use the song for that much money. And then that's what we get paid. But that was for a preview, you know? Yeah. And so now people think that by streaming on Spotify,

artists are getting paid millions of dollars and I should be living in a mansion in Bel Air right now. But it's like I get millions of people streaming my song, but that doesn't really mean much because at the end of the day, I'm barely seeing any money from that. So that basically took away a major, major source of the artist's income. So we've had to rely on touring. And that's why earlier I talked about why touring is so important. But additionally, Spotify in particular has really mastered the art of the algorithm in music discovery to the point where very rarely do, I guess, users of Spotify type in an artist they want to listen to. So often it just comes from their playlists or from the Discover Weekly or just from, you would also like this or that, you know, based on an algorithm.

And that's also really dangerous for our industry because what we're doing is we're putting the onus of our own music discovery onto this corporation. And the corporation has obviously seized the benefits of what their algorithm can give. And so the playlists that they make, it's not an algorithm necessarily, but they're all rigged. They're either payola from labels or the songs on the playlists are made by artists that Spotify basically bought like their library music from. So then they don't need to pay royalties. So basically Spotify made half the music on those playlists and those artists don't exist at all. Fake name.

So they realize people like the playlists a lot and they drive people towards the playlists. But then they're getting the money because it's their music is on the playlist. It's just like incredibly corrupt. And it's incredibly hard for an independent musician like myself, who's an independent label to get on those playlists. I tried and failed to the point where I saw sort of what was going on. And now I don't even care. So at that point, as a musician, you're like, okay, so Spotify has created a culture around music streaming that they control and they direct and drive. And I mean, an algorithm in general is sort of like a slap in the face because you're asking a computer, at the very least a computer, to decide something for you. And sometimes that can be interesting, like, you know, when you're getting things you never would have thought of getting, but typically the algorithm works through similarities. So if you're listening to Zola Jesus, they're going to recommend you something that sounds just like

Zola Jesus. And that's cool. But like, what about the stuff that you like about Zola Jesus that doesn't sound like Zola Jesus? What if you like the lyrical content or if you like the fact that she's really into big tech or, you know, like you're not really into criticizing big tech. You know, you're not going to find these these weird amorphous connections to things. And you're not allowing art to live in this nebulous space. You're kind of defining what it is. And then you're making decisions for the listener about what they're going to like that's like that. And then that in turn ends up limiting or minimizing just like the exposure people have to types of music. And so all these algorithms

and everything that people think are widening the scope of art and allowing all this new stuff to come through because it's random, it's not. It's actually minimizing it because a computer wants things to make sense. So everything is a one and a zero. So at some point, you're just going to end up having everything sound the same. And that's, I think, a lot of why pop radio has become just more and more and more homogenous. For instance, I was in the car the other day, and I go back between the classical station and the pop station, and the difference of the depth and the dynamic and the variety of the classical station and the pop station was astounding it's like you have a dude like who writes an entire like ballet that has all these different moments and and moods and it's this journey and you're you don't know where you're gonna go next and then you switch to the

pop station and it's just like one just like onslaught pop EDM like homogenous R&B trap onslaught after another they're trying to be all things at once to the point where it's just this like brown sludge of music you're like cool this is what the algorithms and the quantization and all of those tools that all the producers are using the same tools and everything's in a little pocket and all the voices are auto-tuned so nothing is out of tune so you're not getting any of that real emotive kind of like sharpness or or flatness like those things that really push sonics and really like titillate the senses you're not getting that you're just getting full throttle one and zero and nothing else and that's that's changing the way that we think about what

music is and we think about what good music is. And it's changing the way that we make music and what our expectations are for music. And I'm just finding that very dangerous as somebody who studied opera singing for like 10 years continues to study it and feels like there's no space for anything other than the very limited palette we're being given. And it's just getting more and more limited. So it becomes very frustrating as an artist to try to create, hoping someone's going to like what you do. Because if you try to do anything that's not that, you're not going to have as many fans. And I'm just like, man, I just want to sing in a minor key. Like, that's not even that bizarre. But these days, everything is so

narrowly drawn. It's great to hear that from your perspective, because, you know, obviously, I don't have that kind of technical knowledge of music and how it all works. So it's great to hear you put it that way. And I have to admit, like, when streaming kind of, you know, started to become more popular, I guess it would have been in the early to mid 2010s, right? I did kind of buy the narrative that they were selling, you know, about this kind of, you know, being a better way and, you know, giving people more choice and all that kind of stuff. And obviously we can see that's not necessarily how it played out. And yet again, musicians have been kind of given the short end of the stick. Right. And so I'm wondering kind of in two parts. So, you know, support musicians and support music, what would you advise is kind of the best way to do that? And then the second piece of that is, what, in your view, would a music industry that better supports artists and that is really made for artists to thrive kind

of look like? And what things do you think should be artists to thrive kind of look like and what things do you think should be in place to kind of enable that to happen yeah all right sorry big question no no it's great uh these days it's hard because i would say go to a show and buy merch and you can't really go to a show musicians have online merch stores and that is a much more direct way to support an artist because they get more of the profits of that. Also, when you think about like how far it's like anything, like let's say you buy a chair at Walmart, you know, the person that that built that chair isn't the one getting the money, you know, so you've got to try to get as close to the source as possible in order to really, truly support the artists.

So I would say like directly at the artists like online official merch store, if they have a Patreon or some sort of subscription service, that is the only way I'm able to survive currently. And it is just an incredible, I mean, Patreon itself is, you know, VC funded and has its own whatever. But just as a model, it's like a really good positive addition to the platform economy, at least for musicians. And then Bandcamp is also the most artist friendly music website or music sale website because artists can list their own music and you can buy it basically directly from them. It's just kind of like a storefront for them. They're just exceedingly artist-friendly. They have a really good editorial staff, so they have really good journalism and critics' picks. And it's not algorithm-based, but it's editorial-based and it's really democratic. And I just really respect Bandcamp.

They're just one of the few websites or places out there that I feel like is is actually thinking of the music. But then the music industry in general is really struggling because we're caught between worlds in a way, the old world and the new world. And whereas something like, I feel like gaming has really easily made that transition just due to the digital nature of gaming, music hasn't as much because it's kind of innately an analog format. And so the music world is still trying to figure out

how to implement itself into a digital landscape. And I give it credit for just like growing pains or whatever. But the biggest issue at the end of the day is also who holds the power. Because what little there is of money to go around these days, that means that major labels or the streaming platforms or whoever is going to try to get all that money. You know, there are businessmen at the top of every industry and they're the ones thinking about money and profit margins and investments. And that is still there and they're more desperate than ever. So the major labels have been doing much more aggressive exploitation of their artists in order to try to make some of that money back that they lost from the record industry dying.

So that's also really needs to be addressed is just like, you know, who who is in control here, especially in a time when, you know, you can directly support the artists. You know, we should be doing that more and more. And I think moving forward, I see a vision of the music industry that is, as Holly Herndon and Matt Dryhurst, who are two musicians that are really amazing and they're very tech minded. They have this this term that they use called interdependence, which means, you know, we're not just independent, but we are interdependent. And have this term that they use called interdependence, which means we're not just independent, but we are interdependent. And I really love that because that is how we will all survive this. And that is how just in general, I feel like our communities at large will grow and

prosper is through a sense of interdependence. Again, this is probably in general, but at least in the music industry, we have to get out of this competitive capitalist mindset because it just doesn't work like that anymore we can't be competitive with one another over these french fries and pennies like it's humiliating to be treated like a commodity it's humiliating for my music to be looked at or listened to in a consumerist way where it's like i'll buy this i. I'm not going to buy it. I love it. I hate it. People want to throw it away. And oh, this is old now. This growing consumerist poison, that is just, it's really getting into the grain of the music industry. And it's not good because art and music and culture, it's about connecting people. It's about pushing a narrative forward

or your own narrative forward, contributing to culture, contributing to the story of our contemporary world, giving people a sense of hope, giving people a place to go to put their confusion and put their feelings that they can't put a name to. They have a place to put those things. And that's what I find so brilliant about music is that it's like this placeholder for people to let go and unburden themselves from so much of life's chaos and confusion. And to treat it like this consumerist commodity, it really is going to make that impossible to continue in a healthy way. You know, you can't have it both ways. You can't have this competitive, capitalist, aggressive, cutthroat music market,

but then also have the fragility and vulnerability and openness and idealism and excitement and wonder of art, like it just can't exist together. So I understand that there is some music that is made for that. And that's pop music. And that's great. But like, you know, we really need to protect the arts. And I find that to be dangerously spiraling out of our control unless we keep reining in and going, okay, we need to support our artists, we need to support our culture, because we're going to end up living in an idiocracy even more so than we already are without those special places where you can go and feel the depth of of what art and artists bring to the surface. this. Nika, thank you so much for sharing your perspective with us today. And, you know, kind of giving us this insight on how things are working in the music industry right now, and how we really need to change the way that we think not just about making music, but about how we kind of organize the broader society to really focus on letting artists flourish and letting human nature

flourish as well. I really appreciate that. And I thank you so much for coming on today. Thank you for having me. Nika Rosa Danilova performs under the stage name Zola Jesus. Her fifth studio album of was released in 2017. And you can follow her on Twitter as at Zola Jesus. If you liked our conversation, please leave a five starstar review on Apple Podcasts. You can follow the podcast on Twitter as at TechWon'tSaveUs. You can follow me, Paris Marks, at at Paris Marks. TechWon'tSaveUs is part of the Ricochet Podcast Network, a group of podcasts with left-wing politics that are made in Canada. Thanks for listening. Thank you.