Audacity - simple, clunky, terrible interface Audacity - is basically the multitrack recorder we would have FUCKING KILLED FOR in the 1980s. And 1990s.

Trouble is their weapon was Rebecca Black. FRIDAY FRIDAY FRIIIIIDAAAAAAYYYYYYY

I can quite believe it, but do you have a cite on that 8 million that I can use? Thanks :-)

I used to be a music journalist, so "Old man yells at cloud" describes my life pretty accurately.

Yep. Note also how fan fiction actually competes with what was the midlist of books. Fan fiction is laughed at for the hideous shit, but lots of it is passable quality if you like the characters, and it turns out the precious commodity is reader time and attention. So it plays out just like with music, except you need even less equipment. It's also totally a folk culture - the writers are the readers.

This already happens. Deadmau5 has confessed he basically shows up, presses "play" and dances a lot. (no cite readily to hand, sorry)

I blame neoliberalism. Day jobs are fucking horrible these days too.

What you're missing is that the mainstream has never been about seeking out aesthetic quality. The driving force has always been to market things they know how to market. Weird shit can spend its time in the indie leagues, and we can pick it up later.

Yeah, that's 'cos there's not enough free autotune plugins.

There's very little worth doing that you can't do with the older cracked version. ... so I hear.

I'm annoyed Slashdot didn't use the quote about how everyone else is giving away zero-marginal-cost digital steaks, even if they’re actually reconstituted tofu or maybe poop.

Radio ... that's the thing you listen to in your car, right? When the MP3s on your phone are too varied.

In the future, everyone will be famous for fifteen people.

You might think that, but I mentioned the problem in the article for live musicians: in the '80s they were competing with boring television, now they're competing with an Internet full of ATTENTION GRABBING EVERYTHING. I wrote that bit from talking to musicians who can't even get decent pay for gigs any more and are wondering what the fuck happened.

Yeah, LMMS doesn't come with an autotune plugin. It will in due course.

(I use LMMS as the example because it is not professional equipment - it is totally a toy. It literally doesn''t even have "undo". But I use and enjoy playing with it.)