The Post-Enshittocene Music Manifesto

Michael Topic
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The music industry is extractive. Royalties go unclaimed, algorithms decide what gets heard, and talented musicians are burning out and walking away — even as the business generates more money than ever, most of it siphoned off before it reaches the people who made the music. Anything that can't go on forever eventually stops. This series makes the case for what comes after: a "post-enshittocene" music economy built around connection, agency, dignity, meaning, and joy instead of extraction. Drawing on a lifetime in music technology — from a university DAW project decades ahead of its time, through Fairlight Instruments and Digital Audio Research, to music education — host Michael Topic traces the gaps he kept hitting as a working musician and technologist, and lays out a portfolio of tools designed to close them. Along the way: the Estonian Singing Revolution as proof that music can be genuine social infrastructure, a hard look at what this would actually cost (and why that isn't the real obstacle), and a closing argument that this only works as a coalition — not a pitch.

Episodes

  1. Sep 4

    How we actually pay for it

    This episode opens by naming the real obstacle — not a lack of capital, but a lack of category recognition, since investors can only value what already fits a box they understand — and argues the vocabulary for this box (impact investing, the wellbeing economy, regenerative investment) already exists. From there it makes the case that ownership has to be settled before funding, because money is never neutral: every pound arrives with expectations attached, and those expectations become an organisation's real incentives. That principle drives a staged funding stack — Research, Prototype, Pilot, and Productisation, each matched to an appropriate funding source, with a permanent public-good layer running alongside all four from day one — followed by a Growth stage funded on non-extractive terms. The episode then asks whether a cooperative can actually carry that weight, lands on a multi-stakeholder cooperative paired with a separate public-good foundation holding the core IP, and — rather than assuming that structure is safe — walks through the well-documented pattern of cooperative degeneration, using Britain's building-society demutualisations as the cautionary example. It closes with the concrete safeguards meant to interrupt that pattern (one-member-one-vote, protected reserves, disclosed share-withdrawal terms, data portability, an asset lock on the technical commons, and a nod to sortition), brings the funding stack back down to what a member or listener would actually see in their own account, and ends with a direct ask: not applause, but help from accountants, co-op lawyers, musicians who've been burned by bad contracts, and credit union managers who've actually lived inside these systems. Join the Conversation Subscribe, share this with someone who still remembers why they picked up an instrument and cares about artists. This episode's ask is more specific than a general subscribe/share. It's a direct invitation to accountants, co-op lawyers, musicians who've been burned by a bad contract, and credit union managers — anyone who's actually lived inside these systems rather than just heard them described from the outside. Listeners are asked to share their own money story: unpaid royalties, a contract signed too young, or a co-op/mutual that either got sold out from under them or is still standing and still working as intended: info@confelicityrecords.com Cover art: Clare Topic - Copyright 2026 - All rights reserved. Editor: Alex Topic Buy me a Ko-fi

  2. Aug 18

    We are trying to preserve a human capability

    The music industry is extractive. Royalties go unclaimed, algorithms decide what gets heard, and talented musicians are burning out and walking away – even as the business generates more money than ever, most of it siphoned off before it reaches the people who made the music. Anything that can’t go on forever eventually stops. This episode makes the case for what comes after: a “post-enshittocene” music economy built around connection, agency, dignity, meaning, and joy instead of extraction. Drawing on a lifetime in music technology – from a university DAW project decades ahead of its time, through Fairlight Instruments and Digital Audio Research, to music education – host Michael Topic traces the gaps he kept hitting as a working musician and technologist, and lays out a portfolio of tools designed to close them. Along the way: the Estonian Singing Revolution as proof that music can be genuine social infrastructure, a hard look at what this would actually cost (and why that isn’t the real obstacle), and a closing argument that this only works as a coalition – not a pitch. Join the ConversationSubscribe, share this with someone who still remembers why they picked up an instrument, and tell us your own “what’s missing” story: info@confelicityrecords.com Cover art: Clare Topic – Copyright 2026 – All rights reserved. Editor: Alex Topic Buy me a Ko-fi

  • 2 Episodes

About

The music industry is extractive. Royalties go unclaimed, algorithms decide what gets heard, and talented musicians are burning out and walking away — even as the business generates more money than ever, most of it siphoned off before it reaches the people who made the music. Anything that can't go on forever eventually stops. This series makes the case for what comes after: a "post-enshittocene" music economy built around connection, agency, dignity, meaning, and joy instead of extraction. Drawing on a lifetime in music technology — from a university DAW project decades ahead of its time, through Fairlight Instruments and Digital Audio Research, to music education — host Michael Topic traces the gaps he kept hitting as a working musician and technologist, and lays out a portfolio of tools designed to close them. Along the way: the Estonian Singing Revolution as proof that music can be genuine social infrastructure, a hard look at what this would actually cost (and why that isn't the real obstacle), and a closing argument that this only works as a coalition — not a pitch.

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