Ars Gratia Artis

The “Music Industry” - a clever, cruel joke,
Where the art is the mirror and the business is smoke.
They preach of the artist, they weep for the craft,
While the label is steering the gold-plated raft.
But what’s good for the studio, the suit, and the vault,
Is rarely the nectar; it’s usually the salt.

The myth of the starving, the romanticized poor,
Was built by the gatekeeper guarding the door.
Compliance is currency, soul is a cost,
In a system where true innovation is lost.
They don’t want a genius, they want a repeat-
A predictable rhythm with a marketable beat.

Don’t blame the stream for the death of the dream,
It only revealed the rot in the beam.
The choice isn’t “fairness” or “pennies per play,“
It’s “access for all” or “the pirate’s dark bay.”
The algorithm serves the owners of old,
The giants of ‘34, hoarding the gold.

You cry for the “soul” of the silicon sound,
While TikTok-tuned tracks are the best to be found-
Written by dozens to fit in a box,
But you panic when AI picks at the locks?
A synth was a ghost, a DAW was a cheat,
Now the machine makes the solo complete.

Art doesn’t owe you a “hard way” to grow,
It doesn’t need sweat for the spirit to show.
Like Whistler once whispered: it stands on its own,
A kingdom of feeling on a digital throne.
If it moves you, it works; if it speaks, it is true,
The process is nothing - the power is you.

Let the middlemen panic, let the incumbents cry,
The barriers fall as the old ways die.
For art is the artist’s, and commerce the rest,
And the honest expression is always the best.

-Nils Sjöberg