My favorite band in the entire world is Nine Inch Nails. Years ago, they broke up and @andypeters, and I traveled hours to see them for the last time. I was devastated they were over. But luckily, they came back.
Every once in a while over the years, Trent Reznor would make a remark about NIN maybe being over and my reaction was always "NOOO!"
But I've been watching the music landscape change so rapidly over the years. And I hate it. I get saddened when I think about NIN trying to play that game. A version of this band that only releases singles to try to get on top of Spotify playlists and make it big on TikTok would kill me. If Trent Reznor had to update his "IG OMG" every day to please the algorithm, I'd probably literally vomit. Not figuratively. Literally. And because of that, if they were to quietly walk away at this point, I think I'd finally be ok with it. This version of the music world is completely awful, and I don't want them to have to be a part of it if they don't want to be. They've given me so much already.
I know the music industry is an industry, and the marketing business is a business, and maybe I'm just used to what I'm used to. But I can't imagine this is it. It's the worst of the music world and the internet in one.