From The Twitter Vaults: The Music of Bomm Plaketty

I used to post a lot of stuff on Twitter when it was good. It’s all still on there somewhere, and I have archives of it all, but I’m reposting this thread, which I originally wrote back in 2019. Partly because I dug it out of some archives tonight and thought “hey, that’s not bad”, but also because, along with the rest of the internet, I recently discovered the astonishing microtonal art-math-prog-fusion band Angine de Poitrine and I think Bomm Plaketty would approve.

2014: YouTube develops algorithms that automatically detect copyrighted music based on a corpus of digital signatures submitted by copyright holders.

2019: any recording, performance or composition containing melodies or excerpts of copyrighted material is flagged immediately.

2020: Muzaquity PLC uses AI to generate every possible lyric, melody and musical arrangement under five minutes long, and claims copyright on all of it.

2021: Jemima Fig, aged 3, is recorded singing a song she made up. It goes viral. Muzaquity sues her seeking $75M in royalties.

2023: underground noise artist Bomm Plaketty releases the first original music anybody’s heard in two years. Nine minutes long, it eschews rhythm, harmony and the even-tempered scale. It goes triple platinum. Within days, Muzaquity copyrights every noise audible to the human ear.

2024: After a night of heavy drinking and Mexican food, Bob Rochester farts on a bus. At 31 seconds in length, Bob’s flatulence exceeds the limitation on fair use of copyrighted recordings. Fellow passengers’ phones notify Muzaquity of the violation automatically.

By the time Bob gets off the bus, he has already been served with a court summons by one of Muzaquity’s legal drones. They claim his unlicensed public performance of “Atonal Symphony KV/AAF4463-5646755-AGGJFVJ” is in breach of copyright.

Lawyers acting for Bob argue that his “recital” was an involuntary biological process and cannot be deemed to constitute performance. They win.

Fart music becomes the biggest thing since the Beatles. Taco Bell start selling music in the form of precisely calibrated “meal kits.”

All the noble endeavours of the last twenty years to reverse the effects of climate change are undone, in a horrific global orgy of refried beans and methane. By the time the aliens arrive, it is too late. The seas are dry, the world is dead.

Nothing moves except for the legal drones, scouring the dead planet, waiting, and listening…

Endlessly listening.