"The couches, the ashtrays, the space for 10 to 12 people to sit comfortably. It feels less like infrastructure, and more like experience. And meanwhile, on the board 48 channels available - in use: a stereo track, and a vocal. Three faders moving. Not because the console is obsolete, but because the work doesn't need it anymore. Commercial studios didn't disappear, they were repositioned from necessity to luxury. In fact, there are more engineers now than there ever been...
Studios don't have the margins to train. Sessions don't last enough to mentor. So the education moved to YouTube. But it also removed context. You learn technics, and not judgement. Settings, and not standards. And without someone in the room to push back, everything starts to look correct. The tools became identical. All available at low cost. Making a record turn into assembling one. Not art, but craft. Not expression, but output. Songs became products to be optimized. Released quickly. Efficient. Repeatable. Scalable. And when a system rewards speed over risk, the work begins to sound less like people, and more like a machine...
It was built for friction. Time costs money. Mistakes mattered. And the system itself forced people to slow down. What collapsed wasn't creativity, it was the economy that supported careful work. Technology didn't break the music industry, it did exactly what it promised to do. It removed friction. It lowered barriers...
Not 'is this interesting?', or 'does this challenge the listener?', but instead: does this perform, does this translate?, and does this fit the format...
Attention shifted from listening to recognition. Branding began to move faster than music itself. Music didn't disappear, it became secondary...
And now AI enters the picture. Not as shock, but as continuation. If music is treated like data, if taste can be modelled, and if style can be predicted, then automation becomes inevitable. AI doesn't ask whether something should exist, it asks whether it can. It doesn't need studios, or engineers, or time, it only needs references...
Maybe what we've been calling a collapse isn't ending at all, maybe it's a system shedding what it can no longer carry. Whether that leads to something hollow, or something honest depends on what we decide music is actually for.*"
Serge Droban, Dec. 25, 2025, YouTube (link)
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* Просто да се както вовеки образ-оваш сам ли? Мой учителю и мила моя. Или "нека се образоваме сега заедно според който както се обучава: та беше то досега, че според както заедно се образоваме всеки се обучава". Беше, но не в България. Шумен, 29 дек.' 2025.
