Revisiting the Problem with Music

In May 2024 Steve Albini, the legendary musician and recording engineer, left this mortal coil. During his career over multiple decades Albini’s approach to music and recording across the musical universe, from the rise of acclaimed alternative rock albums to underground punk and noise music.

For this session we will revisit “The Problem with Music,” which first appeared in The Baffler in 1993. Here Albini develops a trenchant critique of the problems of the music industry in how it exploits artists and produces low quality music. Revisiting this essay three decades later, how do his arguments hold up? Have the problems of the record company as gatekeeper been solved by the alleged democratizing potential of distributed media production and distribution, or have they been recreated at the level of the digital platforms?