As technology has developed in the last twenty years, it has brought with it a sense of enablement. Over time, access to nearly everything has become simpler, and as such, the message from Silicon Valley and its offshoots was that you can do it all.
I have worked in the music industry since the late 90s, and through the company I founded in 2011, I have worked with a fantastic array of incredible artists covering anything from top-tier pop to extremely weird and wonderful out there leftfieldism.
When I started my company, it certainly felt like the internet was a place of great promise, somewhere that would empower artists and genuinely enable them to achieve so much more than they could previously.
We perhaps reached the apex of that with the combination of social media and – in the context of music anyway – access to market. After all, record labels were once the great gatekeepers, and signing to them meant two main obstacles would be unlocked: access to buyers, and access to better quality recording facilities.
With those barriers gone and social media providing the reach to Joe Public, we have hit a point where there is a pervading sense that one can – and is almost positively encouraged to – do everything themselves. In 2026, you can record a whole album on your laptop, master it (either yourself or using software platforms), distribute it to digital services (e.g. Spotify for streaming or Bandcamp for unit sales), and then market it almost entirely using social media.
Job done. Who needs anyone else? You are now an industry powerhouse, reliant on no one!
Or at least, this is what you are made to think.
The problem with this is that it ultimately endorses the bleak, dystopian sentiment pervaded by Big Tech, namely that provided you are reliant on tech platforms, you have zero need for other assistance, community or input.
Think of some of the greatest musical genres and almost without exception, they find their roots in a geographical area. Dubstep: South and South East London. Grunge: Seattle. Punk: New York and London. Death Metal: Tampa Bay. The list goes on and on. In almost all cases, gigs and club nights served as epicentres of a sort, bringing likeminded fans together to connect and celebrate the music they love so much.
As 2026 rolls on, we find ourselves in a bleak world in which the techno utopianism of Silicon Valley – itself now almost bordering on a religious cult – has moved far from a “things can be made better” scenario that we saw in the 2000s and 2010s, and more into a brutalist, enshittified world in which everything is not about how much better something can be, but how much worse it can continue to become until people finally cave in and show signs of rejection.
Music is gravely wrapped up in this too. Just last week, an interview emerged with marketing agency Chaotic Good, in which it’s founders talked up its means to deploy large scale bogus fan accounts in order to game the algorithms of TikTok and co. It is oddly understandable, if we view it as an agency trying to play the platforms at their own game. However it is further proof of a race to the bottom, one which has left fans of various bands wondering if they’ve now been duped by bogus fan accounts. This feels less like a genius manoeuvre and more like a capitulation to ‘flood the zone with shit’ principles guiding MAGA and co, leaving us all swimming in fake ‘content’. All the while, the only victors here are the platforms themselves.
In the face of this all, we are sacrificing our humanity. Everything about modern life runs contrary to what it is to be happy and healthy as a human being. We move far less, glued to screens. We socialise less, again electing to do it through devices. We synthesize nature in VR in the name of relaxation rather than take a walk amongst the fields and trees. It is pushing us further and further from what makes humans so special.
I was at a music industry conference recently where artists talked about marketing themselves and their art. What struck me was that everyone spoke purely in the context of reaching people through social media. As they talked, it occurred to me that this is how things are now; Big Tech has managed to ensure that for the most part, everyone’s first thought when contemplating how to reach people is to utilise the platforms Silicon Valley owns.
Almost everyone, it seems, has fallen under the spell.
Is it even possible to cut through and reach people without the use of social media in 2026? I believe the answer is yes, but it involves effort. Perhaps a parallel issue we see at the moment is that convenience trumps everything. Everybody wants music immediately on demand. They want audiences built overnight, and they want instant access to everybody on the planet.
These are all hollow principles. What comes quickly is not valued, and so increasingly we are seeing high reach but exceptionally low value of contact and communication through these platforms. TikTok, for example, is known to deliberately over-serve your very first post so that you will automatically receive thousands, if not millions, of views. Much like a drug dealer, though, it will then diminish your reach thereafter, causing you to doggedly work to deliver more content and regain the highs that you may have initially hit. And so the algorithm remains fed.
Compare that to the value of word of mouth and private communities. Peel back twenty years, and the internet looked like a different place. It required email and it required private forums in order to share opinions with like minds. The friction created by this ensured a higher sense of reward and involvement in what was going on. If you had to work to find these audiences and communities, you damn sure valued them a lot more when you finally accessed them.
Of course, not everybody is falling under Big Tech’s spell. As tQ itself has proven, there are all manner of niche scenes and communities that continue to thrive. This is where power truly lies. Every scene, after all, starts off as a tiny niche. Just look at the Blitz Club of the early 80s that spawned the New Romantic movement, inspired Bowie, and even led to fashion designers being employed by royalty. All of this was born of a club that existed in the tiny basement of a wine bar, close to Holborn tube station.
History may review these things through rose-tinted spectacles, but the reality is that these scenes grow not in the stadiums and under the floodlights, but in the dark, sweaty corners of tiny spots up and down the country, if not the world.
The same can be said for labels. Undoubtedly, broad focus labels are struggling at present. However, niche imprints that superserve a particular audience seem to be thriving. At a time where an artist feels they can do everything independently, it seems clear that in fact the smartest route to reaching an audience is to find one of these labels that acts as a nexus point and release music through them. Labels, like venues, can be these immense creative hubs that accelerate a specific sound, vibe, or culture.
People assume that because they can speak to everybody on the planet, that all interested parties will immediately receive whatever message they are broadcasting. In reality, one requires communities and known nuturers of talent to platform you, such that you generate enough interest to gain momentum.
Right now, it feels like the most transgressive thing an artist can do is to resist the internet entirely. Imagine only learning of new songs in clubs and not being able to share them online. Imagine only being able to access communities through very limited channels. It completely changes the value attribution around these things, and that would ultimately yield significantly greater investment and emotional attachment to them.
It sounds crazy, right? But as we barrel towards God knows what by way of AI-powered dystopian horror, it feels more like the only logical path left available to artists. This system does not work in your favour and should arguably be rejected outright.
2026 is going to be a year of reckoning between big tech and just about everything else. Already, the volume of people switching to open source software as a quiet rejection of Silicon Valley’s megalomania is growing with every passing day. Equally, more and more artists are shunning social media, recognising that it is a race to the bottom. In the face of all this, those small communities that feel so niche at present could be the word on everybody’s lips, in time. I, for one, sincerely hope they will thrive offline, in clubs, in bars, through word of mouth and through any medium that can’t be instantly copied and transmitted.
This is long overdue, after all. AI cannot copy those experiences, as they are fundamentally, immutably, human.
Darren Hemmings’ Network Notes newsletter is an essential read for insight into the machinations of the music biz. You can find it here.
