It’s coming up to 12 months since I began writing on Substack.
Over that time, I’ve delivered 27 full length articles. I feel these stories and unique insights need to be told, need to be shared (tell your friends). As I continue, some of these pieces will be exclusive extracts of future longer form projects. A few features will be from my print archive and made available in digital format for the first time here. Much of this Substack will be fresh new content. As it stands, all content is unique and exclusive to this Substack publication.
I’ve focussed on quality over quantity, but I’ve still been able to produce 27 articles that have been published here to date over the last 11 months, which means 2.5 articles a month on average, all of which takes time, with many hours of dedicated work, drafting, re-drafting, editing, and so forth, which adds up. As any writer will tell you, it’s a solitary existence. Writing is demanding and takes time away from other activity, and other work. I have a compulsion and commitment to write, helping drive this publication forward. I am also working on other projects in the stolen hours, a memoir has been drafted, a novel is in the works, a script is planned later this year based on a short story I had published in 2022, but this is about Substack. It’s my most regular output of written work.
So with almost a year gone by, firstly, I want to thank my paid subscribers. I could not do this without your support. You are a lifeline. Thank you. There is no advertising and no sponsorship here. Everything is supported by you. 100%.
Secondly, I want to thank all my subscribers, every single one of you, thanks for your readership. I have had a lot of very positive feedback on my writing and the articles published to date. This is hugely encouraging. Greater numbers in the digital space help a writer’s profile from slipping into an algorithm wasteland in our digitally obsessed world, a world were political extremists, vacuous narcissists, and lunatics, all too often get given the most effective mass communication loud hailers to shout down the experts, facts, healthy discourse, and democracy. A strange broken world that must be addressed, and repaired, for a better chance of hope for the rest of us.
Anyway, it’s hard to get noticed out there in this climate. There are still far too many great writers from many backgrounds who have stories to tell, who don’t get toward the top of the algorithm, or onto the promotional tables and shelves in Waterstones, those who aren’t accepted as they are not part of an established cosy media clique. The same names and faces. Boring.
There is hope. Times change. All empires fall. The course of history demonstrates this.
Sometimes it feels these cycles quicken with time, reflecting technological advances.
Close to home, the creative industries are obviously still suffering. I’ve lived through the recorded music industry’s collapse; it came close to decimation, it barely survived, now a shadow of its former self. It taught me much. That story has still not been published by an insider yet, some journalists have tried, but they weren’t there at the time, not there to witness, to feel and be affected personally in significant life changing ways.
It’s kind of the same with the tech industry now. Big changes are coming fast and ruthlessly.
Technology had been seen as safe and perpetual refuge for me to keep the wolf from the door. To get on, to make positive impact - even fund creative projects. No more. For a multitude of reasons, I walked from Meta after eight years. I chose to leave. After an extended break, in attempting to return to the tech sector, I found it had reached a major existential crisis. Presently, and for two years, I’ve seen the technology sector continually make redundancies, shedding at least 500,000 people, or more, globally since 2022 alone. Google directly attributed their latest layoffs in 2024 to the advancement of AI replacing people.
While many tech stocks return to all-time highs, the jobs market for many people is in a poor state. Soon, if not already, other industries will feel the tremors of AI. Societal and governmental leadership is clearly still not prepared for this and its significant socio-economic effects on society and our economy. Foresight is lacking, playing laissez faire is not a strategy and plays into the hands of ultra-libertarians who despise the idea of statehood, sovereignty, law, taxation, welfare, regulation, and ultimately democracy and freedom. In tech specifically, while big tech near monopoly’s march on, elsewhere in the industry there are only so many salespeople you can desperately hire for the next quarter before you realise your business model and product is past its sell by date because your hiring policy is not fit for innovation and advancement. With real world multi decade experience, my range of skillsets and knowledge will not be replaced by AI, at least any time soon. I’m here, and others like me, for consultancy services when your over reliance on the likes of Chat GBT fails on you with its trend of just making shit up - and with all the carnage that creates.
Those times I challenge ChatGPT’s facts, that are not facts, I get this kind of response:
Then I’m reminded of Hal in 2001 A Space Odyssey.
In this Substack, I have much more to say and share to both entertain and enlighten.
While I’ve tried to offer exclusivity to patrons who pay for my work, I have also opened access to much of my work for free. I have received lots of very encouraging feedback on my writing, which reconfirms I must continue. However, I cannot continue to give away everything for free.
There are reasons for this.
While we live in a time where creative content in pretty much every form has been devalued in an age of advancing technology, I cannot continue to support the ethos and expectation of working for free, derived since the mass adoption of the internet. I have never subscribed to this. It is a race to the bottom. The arts are in a funding crisis. The livelihood prospects for creatives and artists have never been so bad in the last 75 years. In music specifically, chances for the next Johnny Rotten or Johnny Marr, in whatever musical form are much diminished. Career opportunities compared to previous 20th century post war decades have been absolutely savaged by declining revenues, a cliff edge fall in investment and further impacted by the rising costs required for higher education. Creative and artistic careers have never been so inaccessible to so many. Read more about that here.
Having worked in the tech industry for many years I can confirm without doubt that the creative industries and the livelihoods of artists and writers is definitely not at the centre of the agenda for Silicon Valley founders. In fact, as long as people and news organisations keep posting tons of content on social feeds for no reward, they don’t care. They will continue to take 100% of the ad revenue around content you own copyright of.
Such directly contributes to perpetuating the broader issue of rising inequality in multiple forms.
This is the new world order and we’ve all contributed to it.
Such must be reconfigured to save the dignity and hope of cultural output, societal opportunity at large, equality and perhaps even democracy itself, as news organisations revenues and funding further fall.
Recent years have been challenging on multiple fronts. I could share more personally, but I’m not going to for now. Maybe later.
I will continue to write. But, I also don’t believe in the perpetual culture of free that big tech perpetuates for their own gain. Too many have suffered for too long at its hands. Frankly it disgusts me.
Is this a music blog, a tech blog, a culture blog? There is no one topic here, no limits, because life and its experiences and offerings are more complex than that, this Substack will be my frequent outlet for music, culture, tech, society, memoir, opinion, and so forth. Pieces written passionately. It’s a cultural journey through technological change.
You’re welcome to read the free pieces only, I get it, times are tough with the cost of living. Thanks for your readership. I hope it is entertaining and, or, enlightening.
From this month onward I will still offer free content, but every other article, one in every two, maybe more, will be paid for. The free content will likely be a short column. The paid content will often be full articles and features. I may also begin to consider audio and short film pieces here. But, let’s not get carried away quite yet just because I made some records and music videos a while ago.
We all need to justify our work, earn a crust too, and I think the value exchange is worth it. For notability less than the cost of a pint of lager in 2024, just once a month, think about a paid subscription if you have a disposable income - you’ll get full access to exclusive content, all articles, and to the full archive too, if not, as I’ve said before, I welcome you too for some of the journey ahead.
Whichever way, if I can justify the existence of this publication on Substack and the long hours devoted to it for your reading pleasure that would be wonderful. Thank you.