You Will Never Listen to Every Song Ever Written

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Chris Richards writes today in the Washington Post that we are routinely “freaked out” about music. I’m not so sure about that, but let’s go with it. Here’s his explanation:

It’s distressing to be reminded that the world is filled with corporations that will work relentlessly to monetize every moment of our lives — especially because those moments are finite. And I think this is where our underlying angst over streaming originates. Listening to music on streaming platforms ultimately reminds us that there are lifetimes upon lifetimes of recorded sound that we won’t live long enough to hear.

Both of these statements are true. But they’ve been true for a very long time. They’ve been true of music, books, movies, sporting events, paintings, and just about every other form of art in existence. More than that, though, critics have been moaning about the commodification of art for as long as art has been around. Has anything really changed that much just because we now consume music through iTunes and Spotify?

That said, I’ll confess that the monetization of every moment of our lives really does seem a lot more obvious than it used to, and it can be both tedious and demoralizing. This is one reason I was never upset that the geekosphere failed to create a workable micropayments architecture for the internet. Do I really want to have make dozens of decisions, day in and day out, about whether I feel like spending a penny or a dime on something? No I don’t. I think we dodged a bullet there.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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