in the Wire essay I talk about "the hydraulics of culture" going awry: DIY X digitech = a swamp of overproduction

here's an incisive piece looking specifically at how digitech has affected the cultural economics of electronic dance music

"...The old channels are jammed. Whoever tries to break through them following 'proven' old ways... is wasting time and energy. We can’t learn much from studying the careers of Carl Craig or Ricardo Villalobos anymore because the conditions that enabled them don’t exist any more."

Not entirely convinced though, about Mr Goldmann's "but on the bright side" recipe for success in the excess-of-access era:

"Now there’s that third dimension of having to create a wide gap between you and the competition, even if that’s just within one genre. If you can implement this idea in your work, the flood is not threatening at all anymore since it works against itself. 'Unique' is the most valuable word in a crowded environment of generic ideas and overwhelming redundancy... I’ve only been covered because of totally odd projects"

Sounds like a recipe for willful wonkiness...

Lots of Analogue System nostalgia in the comments section, e.g.

"My point is that while I appreciate what digital technology has done for us, sometimes I wish I could go back to 1995 and remember what it was like to truly Value something. Read about and excitedly wait for that new record or video game, without knowing who did what, in detail, and then once you get it, you play the shit out of it for weeks, months-–years"