How Musicians Reclaim Meaning in a Meaningless Industry –

The Death of God, the Death of the Algorithm

When Jean-Paul Sartre wrote that existence precedes essence, he probably wasn’t thinking of musicians queuing to pitch their lives’ work to playlist curators who ghost like indifferent gods. Still, the sentiment fits. In a world where traditional institutions have collapsed and new ones like Spotify’s editorial machine or TikTok’s attention economy offer nothing but fleeting mirages of meaning, many artists find themselves chewing on Camus’ bitter orange: knowing it’s all meaninglessly absurd, yet needing to go on. Not because they believe in the system, but because belief itself is optional. Action isn’t. In the hollowed-out landscape of independent music, existentialism has become the only philosophy left that makes sense.

Yet we rarely talk about music in existential terms. Rock is dead. Rap is lost to commercialisation. Indie is paralysed by its own nostalgia. The press would rather pin movements to moods, subcultures to style. But existentialism isn’t a genre, it’s a posture. It’s what you find in the low-light hiss of a demo recorded in a bedroom that smells like decay. It’s in the refusal to quit, even as streams flatline and algorithms punish silence. It’s not in the numbers, and it’s not in the headlines. You’ll hear it in Lingua Ignota, in Ethel Cain, in Yves Tumor, in any artist willing to stand alone without the illusion of purpose or the crutch of recognition. The world may no longer care for sincerity, but existential artists keep creating because they’ve found something better than hope – freedom.

The Existential Mixtape: From Black Flag to Backxwash

You can hear the scream of meaninglessness in punk, metal, experimental electronica, and even stripped-back acoustic confessionals. Every genre has its prophets of existential fatigue. Look at Ian Curtis, who spun his suffering into bleak dance tracks that throbbed with futility. Or Trent Reznor, who dissects the hollowness of modernity with scalpel-sharp synths and self-loathing. Even Fiona Apple, with her wild-eyed poetics and refusal to be palatable, writes like a woman staring down the abyss and choosing, once again, to bark back.

In the underground, existentialism is the air we breathe. Backxwash’s noise-rap records howl against inherited trauma and gender dysphoria with all the weight of Camus’ rebel spirit. Danny Brown’s ‘Atrocity Exhibition’ is an auditory panic attack that captures the disintegration of self in a culture addicted to simulation. Artists like Jerskin Fendrix, Black Dresses, and Lingua Ignota translate dread into dissonance, blurring beauty and repulsion until the line collapses. What unites these acts isn’t genre or even theme – it’s their unwillingness to lie. They don’t build sandcastles of hope. They name the storm and walk into it, armed only with the will to scream.

Creating Without Witness: The Paradox of the Indie Artist

There’s a cruel irony in how modern musicians are told to be more vulnerable, more authentic, more ‘real’, while the infrastructure built around them devalues every offering unless it trends. Existentialist thinkers warned us of this: that commodification crushes the soul. In a digital marketplace obsessed with metrics, even grief becomes branding. You can write your pain into a song, but unless it racks up views, it may as well have never existed.

This is the trap. Sartre spoke of mauvaise foi – bad faith – the self-deception that keeps us chained to roles we no longer believe in. For the independent artist, this means faking optimism, pretending to be fine with a dying scene, or worse, constantly complaining online as though bitterness ever built an audience. The sour grape syndrome is spiritually toxic. No listener owes you applause. But they might join you if you stop seeking it. The only way forward is through radical honesty: you make the thing because you must. Not to be seen, not to go viral, but because your existence demands an output. That is the purest creative act – art born without spectators.

The Absurd Hero of Bandcamp

 Sisyphus rolls the boulder not because he hopes for a reward but because the act itself gives shape to his freedom. Replace the boulder with a lo-fi EP, and you’ll find the modern equivalent; philosophers with instruments. They know that attention is a slot machine. They understand that most listeners would rather scroll than sit with discomfort. And yet they upload, again and again, into the void.

The indie artist who accepts the absurdity of the industry and still chooses to create becomes something much rarer than successful – they become free. Not from struggle, but from illusion. The hustle, the grind, the constant self-promotion – all of it collapses when you realise that meaning doesn’t live in other people’s responses. It lives in the creative act itself. If no one listens, the music still exists. And so do you.

Existence Without Essence, Streams Without Strategy

Most artists won’t be remembered. This has always been true. But the idea that success must equal mass recognition is a lie sold to us by gatekeepers. Meaning is what you make when you stop asking if it matters. When you create without needing to justify it. That is existentialism in practice – not posturing in berets, but showing up to write, record, or scream into a mic when you could just as easily disappear.

If there’s a future for meaningful music, it won’t come from chasing trends or appeasing playlists. It’ll come from the artists who’ve torn down the scaffolding of expectation and started building from the rubble of self. They may never chart, but they’ll leave something real behind. Not a career, maybe, but a record of their refusal to submit to meaninglessness.

Conclusion: Stay Loud in the Void

Existentialism won’t save the music industry, but it might save the artist. In a time when attention is short, capital is tight, and community is elusive, it’s tempting to give in to despair. But if you understand that life has no inherent meaning, then everything you create becomes an act of rebellion – a middle finger to the void.

So stop chasing applause. Stop moaning about engagement. Write because it hurts not to. Sing like you’ve nothing left to prove. The world is indifferent, but that’s what makes your scream so necessary. You’re not here to be liked. You’re here to exist, absurdly, and that’s more than enough.

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Article by Amelia Vandergast