If musicians' priorities were for the world to share in their musical indulgence not just in listening but also in like-minded creation, they would release as much of their mixing tools/backgrounds/stems/etc as possible. Since the capitalist framework is a foregone conclusion, they need to keep some secrets in their sauce to produce scarcity to justify a price for their labor so they can eat... Because the farmers and butchers all keep gates of their own kind, too :)
I disputed a specific mistaken proposition, that "holding up industry secrets is deemed more important than fostering a community of personal growth". It's a mistake on several levels: there's no dichotomy as it's presented in this sentence, and the reasons for not providing multi-tracks and project files are different.
> If musicians' priorities were for the world to share in their musical indulgence not just in listening but also in like-minded creation
So? They have other priorities so this is not what they do. Teaching is an industry that's only an adjacent and derivative activity to the cultural sphere of arts. It's of no concern for the artist, unless they choose to capitalize on their skills/knowledge/experience.
They do. For a price. When you know how to ask.
The thing is, if you really want to « like-minded create », you do not need, not even want their stems (you can find most of them anyway online, if only for learning).
If your thing is not « consumption » but creation, your own voice/process/way matters more (and is more fun) than starting from the studio separate tracks.
As for the music _business_ side of things, attention (hence scarcity management) on and availability/capacity to provide are the two main levers you have if you want to live from it. As with any other business actually.
This is absolutely not the reason and it's surprising to read this opinion stated as a fact.
First of all, not revealing multi-tracks doesn't prevent personal growth. Human ear is pretty good at discerning individual elements of a mix. It's all in the final product. If you can't learn from it or can't hear something, either it's an unimportant part of the mix, your ear is not good enough yet to distill any meaningful information from the balances of the mix in question, or it's just not a good mix.
Secondly, multi-tracks are not the source code. Putting it in relevant terms, it's just the assets. What's important are processes and artistic decisions made while processing them and combining them in their final form.
Not revealing stems/multi-tracks is not a matter of gatekeeping, it's a safety measure to prevent unauthorized use of individual composition elements and creation of "alternative" mixes which break artistic integrity of the piece.
Music is art (at least a considerable portion of it), and and artist needs as much control over the final product as possible. Mixing is a part of it.