The NYT published a long profile on Rick Rubin yesterday. It’s a innaresting piece and Rubin’s a helluva producer, executive producer, A&R man, and new-age exec — but he’s not gonna save the music industry.

DJ Nate (via s/fj), on the other hand, provides a good glimpse at the new non music industry. On his MySpace, he shows himself to be an expert uploader-promoter, stacking YouTube videos w/ feet wurkin’ to his beats and embedding an auto-play imeem playlist of his own hopped-up, bass-propelled, fruityloopy productions —

— deese are HEAVY jams, making my laptop speakers vicariously feel woofish, as if the tiny speakers hope to emulate bass with the way they shake, all pathetic plastic tryna vibrate along at lower frequencies than their polymers permit.

DJ Nate’s music is deeply entwined with, engaged with, and inspired by the local scene. It could care less, it would seem, about anything beyond Chi-town & the suburbs. imeem and YouTube are visible from space, sure, but these tracks and vids are for the kids on the block. They’re about burning the nextman footwurker nem, ending his career, and no doubt, if more implicitly, launching one’s own.

This is not the music industry. It’s music industry. It’s how music works, the cultural work that music does, how we work it. We don’t need executives for that. In the words of the wise Rick Rubin, “too many people make and love music for it to ever die.” Even capitalism can’t kill it. Cue ominous outro —