Is buying beats online the new writing songs to CASIO presets? Is the existence of "OLD TOWN ROAD," with its nonexclusive $30 beat, any more or less weird, or any more or less a sign of the end times, than this dancehall classic ghostwritten by a Casio MT-40? Or this indie-rock landmark born in a button on a PT-30? Is it high time you and your band sold your drums and bought a bunch of type beats? Or can you save pop music, and perhaps the world, by trashing those type beats and buying back those drums? The answer to all the above questions, if you're asking me, is yes. Also, no. The way writers write and producers produce is ever changing, with watershed events showing up every few years (along with new tools and new crutches). LIL NAS X isn't the first pop star to light up the charts with some online beat-shopping, but the outsize success of "Old Town Road" serves as notice that we might have just crossed one of those watersheds. In their invaluable SWITCHED ON POP podcast, CHARLIE HARDING and NATE SLOAN enlist ABE BATSHON, CEO of BEATSTARS, the enormous online marketplace where Lil Nas X found his career-making beat, and a couple of BeatStars producer/sellers to examine how it works, why it works and whether or not we should be worried. I was struck by producer BREANA MARIN's insight that the most successful sellers in this market, where hundreds of thousands of beatmakers are vying for the attention of the next Lil Nas X, are those who are as much entrepreneurs and influencers as they are musicians. Which may sound noncreative, but it's also how much of the rest of the music industry works, isn't it? Batshon tells the hosts his site's biggest stars track their sales closely, know which kind of beats are doing best and "they're super in tune with what their core audience is listening to." In other words, they're basically acting as A&R reps. For themselves. This is a disruption that honors, in almost every important way, the thing that it's disrupting. Some mediocre music will come of it. Some great music, too... The online beats marketplace is also, not surprisingly, susceptible to samples and other elements of questionable legality, like, say, the NINE INCH NAILS sample that powers the YOUNGKIO beat that Lil Nas X bought. It wasn't cleared at the time; it is now, and TRENT REZNOR and ATTICUS ROSS are getting paid. It goes without saying that any existing music that's sampled, interpolated or otherwise baked into a new production should be cleared, credited and compensated. But as to the creativity of YoungKio and Lil Nas X's usage? Let's not start the whole sampling debate from scratch, please. It's a great sample of a great original... Music biz to new British PM BORIS JOHNSON: "You may be happy to leap off the edge of a cliff, but please, please don't throw the British music industry over there with you"... MTV adds a K-pop category to the VMAs and K-pop fans are not happy... TAY-K sentenced to 55 years in prison for 2016 home-invasion murder... RIP TODD-1.