The promise has for a very long time been that machines will free us from idle labor. They are to take the drudgery away from us so that we can turn our attention to the beautiful, pleasant and sublime things. And music machines have long carried with them the promise that they would enable everyone to make music. Any music that can be conceived and dreamed should be able to be sounded. But neither are people working less today, nor has the fascination with true virtuosity disappeared. On the contrary, the possibility of a world in which the apparatuses satisfy our basic needs seems almost a naive dream today. In his radio piece Frankfurt based composer Hannes Seidl listens to the machines. What has become of the promise? Various computer programmes generate the sounds, of which Seidl himself “only” selects which ones make it into the piece. With “Befreit die Maschinen” (“Liberate the Machines”) he shifts music-making from virtuosity towards “thoughtful listening”. These automated sounds are juxtaposed with samples from a lecture by philosopher Michael Hirsch. Hirsch ponders the question of a society in which wages and work are decoupled from each other. Central to Seidl’s piece is Hirsch’s call for “less work so that everyone can work and live better.”