Letter To Reader


I’ve always grown up in a society where everyone is equal. This is year 2822, unlike other societies there are no profits, harsh working conditions, and rich or poor people. Due to more equality, there are safer working conditions, no class, no labor exploitation, and greater opportunities/resources. I am an artist who loves to create unique music and in this society there are so many other artists just like me. We all love how there are no record labels; we can be as independent and free as we want. There is also a large variety of artists and genres/styles of music that you could not even imagine! This is ultimately because we can be as creative as we want since we are not concerned about profit. We live for music and creativity, not the money/wealth and power. There is only one class and because of this we are all equally joyful. We like to refer to our society as e-soci since it is an equal society! In our e-soci:

“the idea [is] that music should not be a privilege of the elite, but a common good, and such thinking eliminated the understanding of music as an exclusively aesthetic formation,” as explained in Music as a means to accomplish ideological tasks.

Pula (Istria, Croatia) in the formative years of Yugoslav socialism (1947–1955) by  Lada Duraković.

We don’t believe that only the privileged should be able to create music as it is an art form that should be accessible to all. 

 In 2822, since labor exploitation is gone, electronic workers have safer working conditions and better hours as employers have no motivation to cut corners since the amount of profit isn’t a concern anymore. The workers don’t have to struggle to negotiate better deals with employers like how, in the past, sometimes the workers had:

“little choice but to affiliate with unions controlled by employers or by states that collaborate with companies to suppress workers’ demands for better pay and conditions”

Ted Smith and Chad Raphael in “Health and Safety Policies for Electronic Workers”

Now, employers and employees can work together in harmonious and fair relationships! Also, for musicians like me, we are more motivated than ever to make music that we enjoy as there are no restrictions set by greedy companies and labels! We can focus on expressing our creativity and entertaining our audiences, so our music has improved in quality and production as there are no harsh deadlines and we have full control over our music! My college professor once assigned me:

“As one particular song scored a great success, hundreds of others sprang up imitating the successful one.”

“On Popular Music” by Adorno

This means that back then, they didn’t have the variety of music and genres that we have in 2822. Blerp! I’m glad that we, artists, have so much freedom now!

Hearing about how and why music was created in the past is a bit shocking, especially during USA 2022. According to the articles my college professor assigned, I have read how USA 2022 was primarily driven by capitalism, which was the privatization of property to produce goods and profits. Comparing our two societies together, I was able to see our differences and similarities between our society when it comes to the quality of popular music. A difference I observed between the USA 2022 and the present 2822 is the difference in ideologies between our societies. Capitalistic USA 2022 created a division within classes and created a society that was primarily focused on producing a profit, to the extent where many were discriminated against. This affected the quality of popular music as artists were controlled by label companies. These companies would control the artistic freedom of the astirst and would release songs that would guarantee a profit, in many cases they did not care for the quality of the song. Also if any other artists were not under a label company, they would struggle to get the proper equipment to record a song. While in our present society, artists are no longer driven by money and are free to express themselves. Popular music today has no boundaries and all artists are able to access recording equipment without any struggles.

In my personal opinion, the music today is way better than the past due to the more liberty the artist has on their music. As I was reading “On Popular Music” by Adorno, I noticed some similarities within our society and USA 2022. Adorno criticizes popular music by stating that once society discovers a popular trend, many start to follow that trend to profit off it. To a certain extent, we still practice standardization in our society as well. When there is a popular trend, many artists like to mash-up the popular trend with their own individual style, instead of bluntly copying the trend. Another critique that Adorno mentioned was that popular music promotes passive listening. Passive listening is pretty popular in today’s society, as it is one of the primarily popular ways to listen to music. Many artists even specialize in creating music just for passive listing, the perks of having total artistic freedom. Especially for me, as a college student, I love to listen to music as I study. 

Something that isn’t too different in 2822 is the way that college students access and listen to music. Similar to USA 2022, many people access their music through their mobile devices or other technology. Though we still access our music through technology, we feel comfortable knowing that listening to music this way no longer contributes to the exploitation of workers who produce our electronic devices. Also, it’s pretty cool that more people are pursuing making music as a career in college. From what I know about the USA in 2022, it was very uncommon for someone to go to college to pursue a music degree, or for young people to pursue music straight out of high school. Now in 2822, individuals with a strong passion for creating music work to share their vision and art with the world without the pressure of having to sign with a record label to be successful. Students, and individuals in general who look to make music also have the security of gaining a stable income from their art and work, since the music industry is no longer profit-based. As someone who aspires to create music and share it with the world, I’m glad that things have changed since 2022.