re: Spotify, "The playlist model meant listeners didn't have a relationship with the artists"

The sentence above is the money line from Elizabeth Lopatto's piece about Spotify for The Verge.  She's ostensibly writing a book review about Liz Pelly's "Mood Machine", but she spins it off into her own analysis and some thoughtful criticism on what the book isn't, rather than what it is.  

I like playlists.  Even back in the days of Pandora, I loved the "if you liked that, maybe you'll like this too" approach to sequencing and recommending music.  I have discovered a lot of great new music through playlists.  But it's hard to argue with the notion that many people have outsourced their taste in music to algorithms.  Spotify playlists may be the 21st century muzak -- always in the background, never commanding the listeners' attention.  

Nobody wants to return to the bad old days of $20 CDs and no outlet for buying anything less than the full album when it's only the single that you want.  Having hundreds of thousands of songs available on demand is a minor miracle that was unimaginable to my former teenage self.   But it has created a different problem.  Music is now an accessory, not a commodity.  It's too cheap, and cheap things have little value by definition.  During the peak of file sharing, many noted that music collections had lost their value.  Nobody was going to proudly display and treasure a CD of burned mp3's or an iPod hard drive whose contents were always changing.  And now?  With streaming, most people don't even have a music collection anymore.  The result is that songs drift in and out of our headspaces, and listeners don't connect to the artists who create the music.  Beyond their so very cheap subscriptions to streaming services, listeners feel no loyalty toward artists, and don't spend the money to support them financially.  

Pelly and Lopatto don't have the solution to this problem, and neither do I.  Their central theses appear sound (I haven't read Pelly's book) -- the complex monetization policies of streaming services are a disaster for all but the most successful contemporary and legacy artists.  Lopatto doesn't see why indie labels should matter, but to me it's clear.  The labels are a stamp of quality.  Association with a cool label is just about the best marketing strategy available to an up and coming non-mainstream act.  The labels don't always need to supply the production expertise and studio time, not when many DIY musicians can record at home.  Being with the label means the artist instantly becomes part of a history and a legacy.  That's a powerful marketing tool and a provides a big incentive for listening.