Existential Anthems for the Undevoted: How Musicians Reclaim Meaning in a Meaningless Industry

The Death of God, the Death of the Algorithm When Jean-Paul Sartre wrote that existence precedes essence, he probably wasn’t thinking of musicians queuing to pitch their lives’ work to playlist curators who ghost like indifferent gods. Still, the sentiment fits. In a world where traditional institutions have collapsed and new ones like Spotify’s editorial machine or TikTok’s attention economy offer nothing but fleeting mirages of meaning, many artists find themselves chewing on Camus’ bitter orange: knowing it’s all meaninglessly absurd, yet needing to go on. Not because they believe in the system, but because belief itself is optional. Action isn’t. In the hollowed-out landscape of independent music, existentialism has become the only philosophy left that makes sense. Yet we rarely talk about music in existential terms. Rock is dead. Rap is lost to commercialisation. Indie is paralysed by its own nostalgia. The press would rather pin movements to moods, subcultures to style. But existentialism isn’t a genre, it’s a posture. It’s what you find in the low-light hiss of a demo recorded in a bedroom that smells like decay. It’s in the refusal to quit, even as streams flatline and algorithms punish silence. It’s not in the numbers, and […] The post Existential Anthems for the Undevoted: How Musicians Reclaim Meaning in a Meaningless Industry appeared first on A&R Factory.

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The Death of God, the Death of the Algorithm When Jean-Paul Sartre wrote that existence precedes essence, he probably wasn’t thinking of musicians queuing to pitch their lives’ work to playlist curators who ghost like indifferent gods. Still, the sentiment fits. In a world where traditional institutions have collapsed and new ones like Spotify’s editorial machine or TikTok’s attention economy offer nothing but fleeting mirages of meaning, many artists find themselves chewing on Camus’ bitter orange: knowing it’s all meaninglessly absurd, yet needing to go on. Not because they believe in the system, but because belief itself is optional. Action isn’t. In the hollowed-out landscape of independent music, existentialism has become the only philosophy left that makes sense. Yet we rarely talk about music in existential terms. Rock is dead. Rap is lost to commercialisation. Indie is paralysed by its own nostalgia. The press would rather pin movements to moods, subcultures to style. But existentialism isn’t a genre, it’s a posture. It’s what you find in the low-light hiss of a demo recorded in a bedroom that smells like decay. It’s in the refusal to quit, even as streams flatline and algorithms punish silence. It’s not in the numbers, and […]

The post Existential Anthems for the Undevoted: How Musicians Reclaim Meaning in a Meaningless Industry appeared first on A&R Factory.