Something that seems to be gaining more popularity lately is sample free vaporwave, or vaporwave which samples original composition as opposed to pre existing music. Besides the common criticisms against it such as; it goes against the very nature of the genre, or defeats the whole purpose, I think it's particularly interesting from a leftist perspective.
Vaporwave started off being made and shared anonymously online by working class people with no regards for copyright infringement. Essentially, it was a big middle finger to the very idea of intellectual property. Then you get into the genre's critique of capitalism, satire of consumerism, and so forth. Anyway, the genre gradually died out, losing its relevance along the way, and around the same time an enigmatic album called "virtua.zip" was released. Meet George Clanton, now multimillionaire record label owner/petit bourgeois hipster, the progenitor of sample free vaporwave. This album challenged the foundations of vaporwave, but also paved the way for the eventual commodification and subsequent recuperation of the genre, the very thing it was critiquing in the first place.
Since vaporwave had been growing increasingly popular, this also meant it was quickly transforming into a marketable product. Pioneering the forefront of this was George Clanton, who quickly rose from a nobody from Virginia into a small-time superstar. He found success in starting one of the first vaporwave record labels, transforming vaporwave into a "brand", as well as hosting the first ever vaporwave music festival (which insisted it was a "safe space" for BIPOC and LGBTQ+ folx despite selling out 100$ tickets to white hipsters anyway) among other things. At the same time the genre saw a shift away from its roots towards original composition and a more "experimental" sound, which in turn increased the rate of its commercialization even faster. Fast forward to today and you have vaporwave labels by the hundreds, endless vaporwave "fashion" (including an actual in-store location in LA), and the transition away from a loosely interconnected movement into a DIY "scene". Not to mention vaporwave aesthetics ironically being appropriated by corporations like Facebook and MTV among other things.
Among these sample free vaporwave artists, the majority come from a petit bourgeois background, having access to thousands of dollars worth of instruments, equipment, and gear. As you might guess, there's an air of elitism among them,
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