Music Discourse Is Plentiful, Often Angry and Increasingly Not About Music at All
Why is industry- and culture-focused commentary now taking up such a huge portion of the music conversation?
“Does Anyone Like Music?”
When Sam Hockley-Smith published an essay with that title just a few weeks ago, he was actually writing about the (seemingly inescapable) hubbub around the popular “indie” band Geese and the skeezy promotional techniques that were employed on their behalf by a digital marketing company called Chaotic Good. If you have somehow avoided this hubbub, you can probably consider yourself lucky—unless, that is, you’re someone who gets a large amount of satisfaction from people recklessly throwing around the word “psyop”—but the controversy has at least shined a light on the way that monied actors in the music ecosystem are now using fake fans, pre-planned narratives and bought-off influencers to enact staged attempts at online virality. And though Geese have been the primary focal point of the discourse to date, The Guardian last week published an eye-opening feature by Shaad D’Souza which spelled out just how widespread these less-than-honorable marketing practices have become, even within the corners of the music sphere that continue to brand themselves as “indie.”
Part of the reason this story caught fire is because it called into question the authenticity of the fandom that has sprung up around Geese and other similarly hyped artists. Even in an age where listeners are routinely spoon-fed content via algorithms that they have little understanding of and even less control over, most music consumers still like to think that their tastes are entirely their own. This controversy not only called that notion into question, but suggested that people had been tricked into liking something subpar that they would have otherwise discarded. Hockley-Smith touched on this directly in his piece:
The latest discourse around Geese is not actually about Geese, and it’s not even about the tactics that Chaotic Good employed to keep Geese in the conversation. It’s actually about insecurity.
That insecurity is exactly what he was referring to when he called the essay “Does Anyone Like Music?,” but perhaps his scope shouldn’t have been so limited.
Set aside the question of whether Geese are actually any good, or whether Chaotic Good’s marketing techniques should be regarded as a nefarious new form of treachery, and what’s far more interesting is the degree to which this story—which is easily the biggest music story of 2026 so far—has so little to do with actual music. It’s about fandom and music industry machinations. It’s about social media and the growing sense that everything we encounter online is tainted by shadowy forces and undisclosed big-money deals. At its core, it’s about a loss of control, and our seeming inability to do much of anything as corporations and capital steamroll their way into virtually every pocket of the culture.
Those feelings aren’t hemmed in by genre, nor are they dependent on individuals’ allegiance to any particular artist, scene or sound. In many cases, they’re even shared by people who don’t know much about music at all, which is likely why the prevailing music discourse has in recent years taken on an increasingly systemic orientation. Think about it: During prior eras (and the 2000s and 2010s in particular), topics like royalty payouts, corporate consolidation, major-label acquisitions, the influence of private equity, the politics of streaming platforms and the potential impact of AI would have been fringe concerns, the sort of thing that only a handful of nerds and industry insiders would have paid serious attention to. In 2026, however, they’re full-fledged conversation drivers, and tend to inspire more passionate responses—and, to put it in contemporary internet parlance, “engagement”—than even the most fawning coverage of any artist who’s not already in the superstar tier.
Given that, it’s no wonder that so many music journalists, bloggers and talking heads have cut way back on reviews and other traditional coverage formats, pivoting instead toward what might be described as “big picture” issues. Some of that shift is happening at established music media outlets, but it’s especially noticeable on platforms like Substack and Patreon, where a glut of writers and content creators have devoted themselves to delivering industry-focused takes on the regular. As you might guess, many of these takes are of the highly critical, “things are going to hell” variety—and yes, First Floor sometimes engages in this behavior—but anyone who looks more closely at this budding ecosystem will quickly see that there’s more than doom and gloom on offer.
For every “Spotify is destroying music” screed—and there are admittedly a lot of those—there’s a separate foray into sober analysis or plain-old “everyone is overreacting” contrarianism. Techno-optimism, both cautious and enthusiastic, is also readily available, and in a sign of just how much shameless hucksterism and Silicon Valley-style optimization language have infected the culture, you’ll even find some guys touting their “insights” with the brash confidence of a timeshare salesman.