What the Joe Rogan deal most vividly illustrates is how unimportant music is in popular culture today. And this is largely because, as a whole, musicians are more interested in enriching themselves than leveraging their influence for social and economic change.

Music today is mostly a lifestyle accessory. Even among the more daring artists there is little more than platitudes in the political messaging that exists. Almost no one is willing to risk alienating a section of the audience to make an important point.

The result is cultural irrelevance.

A radio show host outmuscling the entire music industry in this way would've been unthinkable pre-2008. Rot set in earlier, but like much of social/political economy, the fallout from the GR and policies implemented to correct it entrenched the problem into an intractable one.

Goes without saying that, without a fundamental collective shift, Covid-19 (which in many ways is the GR turned up to 11) is likely to accelerate this phenomenon.

So to be clear, this isn't (entirely) a diatribe against musicians. Central bank policy is largely to blame for the concentration of wealth and power within a tiny elite. Political caution is partly an understandable reaction to that.

But we should be clear when an artist leaves the stage, they will always be replaced. And that is what has happened to music as a cultural influence.