T.M Krishna vilifying Spotify

 Who is the most streamed artists on Spotify?

An Ethiopian Canadian, from a deprived background, who began uploading his songs to YouTube ten years ago.

TM Krishna, however, believes, that privilege, not talent, is what Spotify rewards. In a recent interview to Nikhil R. he says

 “Now let’s just look at how Spotify works. Spotify works on the basis of saying you have to have this crazy ‘x’ number of streams if you are to make any money. So the most powerful are going to get more money, and probably parts of your own little change. So, the whole system is driven by eyeballs. And if the system is driven by more visibility and eyeball, it’s driven by power. And how is this power designed? It’s designed by race, caste, power, religion, gender, etc.

What power do Ethiopian immigrants in Canada have? Talent they may have plenty of. Power? Not so much. 

Therefore the digital space only makes it worse. And also remember, that the marketplace in the digital arena has already been captured by people in power. How we cannot see this baffles me.

TM Krishna is baffled that people don't believe that a School drop-out, of Ethiopian heritage, raised in poverty in Canada, has power of an institutional or elitist type. 

'Therefore I would be more afraid today than ever before. Because the physical space was a counterbalance, in my opinion…because it allowed multiple communities to grow. It allowed strengthening, and out of that strengthening emerges voices in the digital space.'

Music occurs in a physical space. People listening to Spotify do so in a physical space. Multiple communities exist in physical space. Digital space makes it easy for people from one community to access music created by another community thousands of miles away. Why does this frighten TM Krishna? 

Pre-empting the objection I had at hand, he continued, “You can throw a counter-argument. Look at Tiktok or look at Facebook. People who have never found a space to express themselves have found that. Right? That’s the counter-argument. But the question is, what is the percentage of people who are able to even be that one voice that you see?

The answer to that question is that a much higher percentage of people can compete for attention on the world stage thanks to the internet. The power of the Recording labels has declined. The 'barriers to entry' for the industry have decreased.  

Those are the ones that slip through. The system is not made to allow so many of those voices to emerge.

The reverse is the case. It is precisely because the oligopoly of the Recording Companies has been broken that many new voices have emerged. On the other hand, some established artists have lost market share.  

And I am not entirely convinced by this argument that if not for the digital space, a certain voice would not have emerged. It’s like saying if people didn’t have these reality music shows, these voices wouldn’t have emerged.”

Competitions permit 'new voices' to gain market share.

As much as I shared much of this bleak vision, I wasn’t entirely convinced. Surely, there had to be—to use, a TMK favourite—a ‘strategy’ of resistance.

There is. Don't listen to shit music. 

“Ultimately the work is in the real domain,” he maintained, “and you have to constantly be in a loop with the digital space and keep using it. For example, digital education should be a real priority. I heard that, I think it’s in Finland….right from 5th or 6th grade, they are taught how to, shall we say, receive the information that comes through the digital space…[and filter it] in terms of fake news, in terms of lies that are perpetrated. I think that’s a very important task… learning that lies are being told, things are being hidden from you. Just teaching people to code is not enough anymore.”

TM is repeating 'fake news'. Thanks to the internet we can immediately see that he is lying. The fact is Finland's Pisa standing declined because of its embrace of digital learning.  

I had one final question. Back in August 2019, he had explained that he was reluctant to use the much-bandied f-word to describe the current regime, for reasons enumerated earlier in this piece. But so much more has happened since then, and a larger number of commentators now openly embrace the term. I was curious to know if he had shifted his stance. “No no,” he told me, his vehement disapproval perceptible even over the phone, “there is a reason why I refused to use that word. This is a horrible dispensation…an insensitive, cruel dispensation. Those are the words I would use. But I’m not going to use the word fascist, fundamentally because it has multiple historical and political connotations.

No it doesn't. Sonia Gandhi's daddy was a member of the Fascist party. Mahatma Gandhi was described as 'the Il Duce and Fuehrer' of India by Govind Vallabh Pant. Feroze Gandhi called Indira a Fascist. She jailed her opponents and suspended the fundamental rights guaranteed by the Constitution. That was Fascist. 

India also has Communist parties. Communism was worse than Fascism.  

There is a serious challenge that civil society is posing…and by using that word, we will completely trivialise the challenge that needs to be posed at them. So I will not use that word. I don’t want to give them that advantage. Because they will then use the fact that such words are being used and say, what are you talking about? And then you will have to go into the nuances of what it means to be fascist. And nobody has the time for it. So when you use the term fascist or when I use the term fascist, we’re perhaps using it in its nuanced sense. But in today’s scenario where everybody is watching everything on WhatsApp for 1 minute 20 seconds, nobody cares a damn about what the nuanced usage of a word is. So by using it in the absence of a nuanced understanding, I am playing straight into the hands of these very harsh and draconian forces. So my reluctance to use the word….you could call it a political strategy.” 

That word again. Strategy.

What is TM's strategy? It is to shit where he eats. He says that Carnatic Music- which sounds horrible, but which elderly people like because it is linked to orthodox Religion- is Casteist, Misogynist, Elitist and features sexual and other types of exploitation by Teachers of Students. The thing is repugnant. Don't listen to it. Go on Spotify and find something produced by underprivileged people who, however, have genuine talent.