TIDAL has recently announced two fairly major changes to their company. No, Kanye hasn’t updated The Life of Pablo again (at least not at the time of this article’s publication), and no, Beyoncé isn’t single (yet). TIDAL has just announced a massive shakeup in their structure, as Sprint has acquired a 33% stake in the company. All 24 artist/owners will remain part-owners, while Sprint will now offer TIDAL to all of its 45 million customers. Seems like a good deal for everyone. Should have gotten that TIDAL stock… oh wait… I don’t think it’s public.
The second major change to TIDAL is of a more aesthetic nature, in which art dies yet another death, for, at TIDAL, art now truly lives in the ear of the beholder.
Important questions of aesthetic objectivity, form, and meaning have been around as long as Western art itself has; yet, under capital, aesthetics has taken a very particular, necessary turn toward abstraction and interpretation. One must consider not only the medium of art in finding its substance and meaning through reason, but, even more importantly, one must account for the society in which it was conceived. Questions of the culture industry, mass production, and the decline of listening (or viewing) mediate all aesthetic judgment today. But at least — in a sense — art was a thing outside one’s self, something real, tangible, meaningful, subject to analysis in light of the subject-object dialectic. Of course, the author’s interpretation of a work is not the final say, nor is it even really that important in an immanent critique of the artwork. Meaning in art comes from thoughtful reflection, dialectical analysis, and interpretation. Alas, things have changed in the past few years (decades [century]).
Case in point: TIDAL now allows listeners to edit elements of the songs they stream. “Now you control the aesthetic object!” says TIDAL. “Want a song to be longer? Slower? Louder? Well, art is whatever you want it to be! Just do whatever you want to do! Don’t interpret the art, just make it into what you yourself like!”
And we do. Not even just in art, but in life. People protest, yell, scream, and thrash against reality, clawing against the cosmos while it further eradicates their subjectivity. And yet, the clawing deepens the void. Make no mistake: lengthening a song or making it slower is not freedom — it just allows you to hear your own ruin at your preferred length, speed, and volume.
More about: Tidal
