The state of the internet as we enter 2025 is a far cry from the internet of 1999. The promise of a “town square for the global village of tomorrow”, as Bill Gates put it that same year, has long since succumbed to the pressures of platform capitalism, bad-faith actors, and surveillance.
The walls between enshittifying platforms grow ever higher and relentlessly decontextualising data scraping accelerates us into a dead internet full of bots and AI slop. The self becomes commodified, fragmented, post-individualised. What does this mean, how does this feel for artists? for music makers and music lovers? where is the future for us on the internet?