Exploring the Origins of Digital Burnout in the Music Industries and What to Do About It

The emergence and proliferation of digital platform technologies during the twenty-first century have enabled the expansion of DIY music-making across geographical boundaries. However, this also means that DIY musicians now must contend with new pressures and seemingly insatiable demands for content from online platforms, streaming services and the algorithms that structure them. In short, experiences of the digital economy have become entangled in algorithmic chains, which track and direct musicians and fans alike across a range of platform infrastructures that hardly anyone fully understands the workings of. As a result, musicianship is increasingly embedded into commercial structures of the digital economy, and this has led to musicians reportedly becoming increasingly exasperated by the situation; they are overworked, stressed, and confused. In other words, they are burned out. In this chapter, we trace and interrogate the effects of algorithmic intermediation as an interface between do-it-yourself (DIY) musicianship and the popular music industries by exploring this growing issue. The opening section introduces the Californian Ideology as a concept which represents a curious fusion of hippie bohemianism with the hi-tech, entrepreneurial industries of Silicon Valley. From this foundation, we trace the changing role of digital platforms in the production and distribution of music throughout the twenty-first century. We emphasise the transformation of digital platforms from purveyors of democratising promise to their current position as powerful agents exerting significant cultural and social influence. Today, this power services primarily commercial rather than emancipatory interests. The core argument of this chapter focuses on the ideological influence exerted by digital platforms on cultural development. It explores the repercussions of these transformations notably evidenced by the emergence of digital burnout among artists and cultural producers. By analysing the structures of algorithmic power which serve to reproduce and perpetuate the myths of the Californian ideology within digital platforms, we excavate the dark side of ‘doing it yourself’ in the digital age. In our closing sections, we highlight some potential avenues for resistance and subversion that may offer alternative pathways in the digital age to foster ‘free spaces’ for DIY musicianship in the future.