Fly High, Spotify

I’m tired of all these wars between different music streaming services. Oh, Spotify has ads, Apple Music isn’t free, Soundcloud is full of freaks, what even is iTunes, blah blah blah, I DON’T CARE! Fuck streaming, bring down the establishment. It’s time to go back to our roots– let’s lift up small, independent artists and local businesses– BRING BACK ROAMING BARDS!

Release band kids to the streets! Do your street corners feel empty, blank, silent??? A simple fix: Capture a feral guitarist and make him at home in an alley. Let him play! Throw little dubloons and dollar coins into his guitar case! When will we return to being accosted by musicians singing their silly songs, following their employers around the open air market? 

Y’all ever seen Monty Python and the Holy Grail? Do y’all even know ball about Sir Robin and his minstrels? Why can’t I have a score of bards to explain my quest wherever I go? Get me a marching band to follow me around and play any song I choose! Personalized bands, singers for hire, PLEASE can I have some motherfucker jamming on a lute while I walk to class?

The only reason musicians aren’t taken seriously is because the market is so competitive and centralized. If we want our musically talented peers to succeed without being Disney Channel stars first, we need to create a new market. A better market. A market where you can have a personal rapper who follows you everywhere and free styles about your nemesis in real time!

If rap or renaissance-era ballads aren’t your thing (loser), there will be bards from every genre clambering at this opportunity! Jazz background music, pop songs to play while you montage, operatic commentary on your daily commute! You could have a personal theme song, written and performed daily by your very own Theme Song Guy! (The Emperor’s New Groove, anybody? Culture yourselves).

Live music is healing to everyone. Let’s stop treating it as something elitist and unattainable, and make it an everyday activity! Singing telegrams, wild cellists on the streets, anything. Bring humanity back to music before AI gains a physical form to beat the shit out of me with a plastic ukulele.