"I have to play as much of the game as I allow myself to get the music heard. But it's not unlike the rest of the world, so I'm not as up in arms about it as I could be"
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An artist admits a bargain: to get songs heard, she has to play the game, but only to the extent she can live with. The phrase play the game carries all the unromantic machinery of the music industry, from courting press and radio to navigating labels, algorithms, and brand expectations. It is not a capitulation so much as a boundary. Allow myself signals agency and ethics. She will step into the arena just far enough to give the work a chance in public, not so far that the work becomes a product engineered by someone else.
Coming from Kristin Hersh, whose career with Throwing Muses and as a solo artist has threaded between indie credibility and mainstream exposure, the line reads like hard-won pragmatism. She has spent decades resisting easy formulas while still participating in the systems that distribute sound. Her experiments with fan patronage and direct support models were attempts to redraw the rules rather than deny the existence of rules. Yet she does not indulge in purity tests. Music needs listeners, and listeners often meet music through imperfect channels.
The second sentence reframes what might be bitterness into perspective. The music business is not uniquely compromised; it resembles every other workplace that runs on power, money, and compromise. Seeing that continuity loosens the outrage. Anger becomes selective, reserved for moments when a principle is truly at stake, rather than a constant stance that would exhaust both artist and art. The recognition that the world is a network of games turns the question from whether to play to how.
What emerges is a mature ethic of craft under pressure. Integrity is not the absence of compromise; it is the drawing of lines that protect the core of the work. The goal is simple and stubborn: let the music be heard, without letting the game decide what the music is.
Coming from Kristin Hersh, whose career with Throwing Muses and as a solo artist has threaded between indie credibility and mainstream exposure, the line reads like hard-won pragmatism. She has spent decades resisting easy formulas while still participating in the systems that distribute sound. Her experiments with fan patronage and direct support models were attempts to redraw the rules rather than deny the existence of rules. Yet she does not indulge in purity tests. Music needs listeners, and listeners often meet music through imperfect channels.
The second sentence reframes what might be bitterness into perspective. The music business is not uniquely compromised; it resembles every other workplace that runs on power, money, and compromise. Seeing that continuity loosens the outrage. Anger becomes selective, reserved for moments when a principle is truly at stake, rather than a constant stance that would exhaust both artist and art. The recognition that the world is a network of games turns the question from whether to play to how.
What emerges is a mature ethic of craft under pressure. Integrity is not the absence of compromise; it is the drawing of lines that protect the core of the work. The goal is simple and stubborn: let the music be heard, without letting the game decide what the music is.
Quote Details
| Topic | Music |
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