Every year the President gives a “State of the Union” speech to a joint session of Congress—and millions of viewers at home. This is actually required by the US Constitution.

It’s a big deal. At least for some folks.

But I’m not much of a fan of politics. What I’d really like is a “State of the Culture” speech—a hard-hitting look at music, writing, arts, media, movies, and all that. And delivered with brutal honesty.

I’d pay to hear that.

The culture is just as important as politics, maybe even more so. And right now, some harsh truth-telling is needed. But who can you trust to give our ‘State of the Culture’ address?

Can you ask the media to evaluate the media? Can you expect the music business to assess the music business? Will truth bombs fall on the red carpet on Oscar night?

That’s like expecting Hell to have an ice hockey team.

You need an outsider to give this speech. But we need an outsider who understands what the insiders are really doing. I’m not sure who to turn to.

So, as a last resort, I’ll give my own ‘State of the Culture’ address. Until somebody better steps up to the podium, you will have to make do with me. For all my limitations, at least I speak up.

[Taps the microphone, which makes a boom sound] Is this working? Can you hear me? Okay, that’s good. Will somebody start the teleprompter.

Let’s begin….

It’s boom times in culture, my friends. [I hit the mic again to get a boom sound.]

Hey, don’t look at me that way—it really is boom times. At least the numbers are huge:

• A hundred thousand songs are uploaded daily to streaming platforms.

• In the last year 1.7 million books were self-published.

• 2,500 videos are uploaded to YouTube each minute.

• There are now 3 million podcasts—and 30 million podcast episodes were released last year.

• 86% of youngsters want to grow up to become influencers, and contribute to these impressive numbers

A hundred years ago, you folks didn’t even own a radio. Just last year, you thought TikTok was a breath mint. And now look at all those big numbers.

The metrics for our culture have never been. . . well, they’ve never been larger.

And that’s just what the humans do. We’ve got to add in all the robot stuff, too. We now have music, writing, and visual art from artificial intelligence—and it can create a theoretically infinite number of works.

Everybody can have their own theme song. Or get a custom-made poem from ChatGPT. Or if you want a painting of Drake in the style of Rembrandt, AI can deliver that too.

Our culture is one of abundance and instantaneous gratification.

Do you want a cubist painting of the Star Trek spaceship. It’s yours for the asking, my friend.

Never before has so much culture been available to so many at such little cost.

There’s just one tiny problem.

Where’s the audience? The supply of culture is HUGE and GROWING. But the demand side of the equation is ugly.

In many cases—newspaper subscribers, album purchases, movie tickets sold, etc.—the metrics have been shrinking or even collapsing.

For books to flourish, for example, you need a culture that promotes reading. But most people happily live without those reprocessed trees. As a result, only 28 books sold more than 500,000 copies last year—and eight of them were by the same romance writer.

The money in music is even more slippery. The list of highest earning musicians last year is filled with artists who either got rid of their song catalogs—they made the list by selling out to corporations and investment funds—or had side deals in other industries. You can be the greatest musician on the planet, but still need to peddle sneakers or cosmetics or tequila to be a top earner.

Sure, there are a tiny number of high paid performing gigs, but be prepared to go to Dubai or Las Vegas to pick up those oversized paychecks. Of course, you can do something cool like set up shop on Broadway, but check out the ticket prices.

What a crazy world we live in. If you’re a wealthy musician, you play for the wealthy too. Everybody else can suck eggs—at least, if they can afford them.

But somehow this doesn’t feel right.

In this stratified culture, millions of songs are released, but the rewards go to a few dozen superstars. Everything else is lost in the noise. It’s a culture by the elites, for the benefit of the elites.

Of course, none of this should be surprising. The huge mismatch between supply and demand has been created deliberately by the leaders of our culture infrastructure. They give grants to create more songs and poems and plays and books. But they hardly care one jot about building a smart, discerning audience for culture.

But what good does it do to fund more songs if nobody is listening?

(A passing, if somewhat biased, aside: my brother Dana was a refreshing exception to all this—see here and here and here. When he was at the helm of the National Endowment for the Arts, he pushed more than anybody in the country for outreach programs that create a grassroots infrastructure and audience for artistry. Sure, I’m biased—he’s my bro. But it’s true, and what Dana did ought to be imitated by other institutional leaders.)

Building an audience is hard work, and doesn’t make for a fancy press release. You get status in the culture business by hanging out with famous artists. And if you give them enough money, they really do show up at your party.

But let’s turn around and look at those folks in th