Sawtooth blog

Posted on Jul 2, 2025 at 05:43 by scott truitt

Modern music has always had someone or something—labels, agents, lawyers, managers, publicists, distributors, and more—between artists and fans. Many are thoughtful and transformative. Some are dreadful and destructive. However, even the worst of all is no match for today’s dominant intermediaries, social and streaming companies. They emerged over the last decade with weaponised technology, unprecedented reach, and brazen leaders willing to do anything for power and profit. And they are destro

Posted on Jun 30, 2025 at 08:46 by scott truitt

I didn’t go to Glastonbury this weekend, and I’m sad to say I’ve never been. However, the combination of an exhausting week and extreme heat led to a lazy weekend spent watching much of the spectacle from my sofa, courtesy of the BBC. And I was treated to a show unlike any other, blending genres, genealogies, generations, and genders on stage and in the crowd. It was a celebration of humanity, focused on the immense creativity of a few thousand artists and shared with a massive, momentary com

Posted on Jun 28, 2025 at 08:23 by scott truitt

“We bring music to fans and fans to music.” That sentence came to me on an otherwise routine morning walk with the pup last weekend. Bear in mind that I have spent the better part of the last year writing about our purpose, product, and plans for the future at Sawtooth, as well as over 25 years thinking about the ideas behind it. I never, ever approached anything as elegant or straightforward as this one sentence. It says everything in nine words. And it reminds me of a favourite anecdote ab

Posted on Jun 26, 2025 at 07:30 by scott truitt

I waited in line by myself to buy the first Apple iPod in 2001. I arrived about 20 minutes before the Apple Store in my hometown of Columbus opened. It was the debut of Apple’s first handheld device at one of its first retail stores in the US. Two experiments at once. Less than six years later, I queued for hours with thousands to buy the first iPhone at the Apple Store in San Francisco. The line stretched down Stockton St and around O’Farrell St. People dressed in costume (never a surprise i

Posted on Jun 15, 2025 at 07:51 by scott truitt

“Start with the customer experience and work backwards to the technology. You can’t start with the technology and try to figure out where to sell it.” Yep, Steve Jobs. In 1997. Here we are in 2025, almost 30 years later, watching tech companies spend wildly to embed AI in the customer experience without regard to human needs. Indeed, human needs seem to be last on the list of their features and benefits. And they’re not even trying to sell AI, much less charge for it; most are forcing it on u

Posted on Jun 5, 2025 at 06:03 by scott truitt

“We pay a fortune for such a poor experience.” That was one of the first problem statements I wrote in the early days of Sawtooth last year. It referred to the enshitification of Spotify and other social and streaming services. It still resonates today for unexpected reasons. Now it’s the proliferation of mindless AI-generated art, music, and writing. Nothing prepared me for how quickly this slop would invade these human spaces, how willing so many would be to welcome it, and how much it wou

Posted on Apr 24, 2025 at 23:00 by scott truitt

The online spaces we use to be with our friends and family, know what’s happening in the world, hear music from our favourite artists, do business, and more no longer serve these fundamental needs. People crave authenticity, connection, and genuine community with other humans. Instead, they receive an increasing feed of engagement bait, time sinks, algorithmic gruel, and AI slop. Look around, and you’ll see it everywhere. Even here on LinkedIn. Same with Spotify. Meta is the worst. It’s even d

Posted on Apr 15, 2025 at 07:39 by scott truitt

Social media promised to bring people together, but the powers that be decided it was more profitable to tear us apart. Streaming media promised to help artists live off their art, but the powers that be decided it was more profitable to cheat them out of a living. People who wanted absolute power and profit at any cost made these decisions. They built systems to exploit the rest of us. They did not care about humanity or take any personal responsibility. However, people with different values

Posted on Apr 8, 2025 at 06:12 by scott truitt

Spotify likes to tell its story about the democratisation of music and money, but its strategy of rewarding only those at the top hides in plain sight. Last week’s Loud and Clear report noted that 12 million artists uploaded music to Spotify in 2024, but only 0.6% generated more than $10,000 in royalties. Let me be clear: artists who generate $10,000 in royalties do not earn $10,000 in income. They likely receive a tiny fraction of that after all their costs. And even if they did earn $10,000

Posted on Apr 5, 2025 at 23:00 by scott truitt

Ad-supported and subscription-based monetisation business models punish the music industry, especially indie artists and labels, for its success. How? Both limit how much money artists, labels, and rights holders can earn on their music. Why? It’s more profitable for Spotify and the like to collect money from everyone and reduce artists, labels, and rights holders to fighting for leftover scraps in a royalty pool model. They also hurt users, but we’ll cover that one next. Let’s dig in. Ad-

Posted on Apr 5, 2025 at 23:00 by scott truitt

No restaurant can legitimately sustain an all-you-can-eat buffet for £11.99 per person per month. This business model can only work by shifting the cost of serving unlimited food to their workers and suppliers. In other words, the restaurant can only profit when everyone else loses, including its customers, who likely receive substandard meals and an awful experience to make the numbers work. Does that sound familiar? Because that’s what’s happening with streaming music. Artists and labels ear

Posted on Apr 4, 2025 at 06:23 by scott truitt

Sawtooth is an idea I first had in the early 2000s, and it even has some elements of a project I wrote for Warp Records in 1999. It has since expanded and evolved, but the core ideas remain. It all started one afternoon at my home in Columbus, Ohio, when I sorted my iTunes library by how many times I played each song. I quickly realised I had played my favourite tracks over a hundred times. And yet, I spent at most the cost of a CD, $9.99 for the album, or 99¢ for a song. (I was never much for