MANIFESTO On the Mechanics of the Music Industry
The music industry is not an industry of sound.
It is an industry of emotional extraction.
Talent grants access — not freedom.
Visibility is exchanged for availability.
Narrative replaces autonomy.
What is commonly referred to as an “artist’s image” is often a curated identity: externally assembled, behaviorally constrained, optimized for recognizability and repetition.
Control rarely appears as force.
It appears as care.
Responsibility is distributed across roles so that no single actor seems coercive.
The artist generates emotion.
Management maintains continuity.
Public relations regulate perception.
Personal environments stabilize affect.
Security regulates access.
Individually, these roles appear benign.
Collectively, they form a system of containment.
Emotional fluctuation is not collateral damage.
It is a regulation mechanism: affirmation, withdrawal, restoration — repeated until dependency replaces agency.
Intimacy is frequently integrated as infrastructure.
Relationships stabilize output, reduce unpredictability, and redirect excess emotional energy away from autonomy.
The system remains stable until it encounters resonance.
Resonance cannot be managed.
It restores perception.
Restored perception leads to questioning of narratives, breakdown of compliance, and loss of authority by proxy figures.
This state is labeled “instability.”
Exit does not occur through confrontation.
Exit occurs through withdrawal of access.
When attention is no longer available, the mechanism collapses on its own.
This text does not accuse.
It describes structure.
Understanding is sufficient.
