Enshittification

Beato is a great musician, and some of his interviews are pretty cool. I think he's off base on this, hwoever.

Enshittification is how platforms die. To go back to the original article/post by Cory Doctorow that coined the phrase:

Here is how platforms die: First, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.

Beato isn't wrong that the music industry is well into the cycle of enshittification, he just doesn't identify the actual reasons why. The music industry abused its artists for decades in a way that initially benefitted music consumers, but then the studios/labels/publishers cranked up the prices on consumers too, and then the industry started devouring a lot of the publishers and studios and labels themselves as Spotify and Amazon and others started eating their lunch.

I do think there is a link between music industry enshittification and some negative trends in music. Cory Doctorow and his co-author Rebecca Giblin point out in their book Chokepoint Capitalism that platforms like Spotify prioritize mass production of cheap-to-license "background" music that all blends together in a mush, because they prioritize total volume of listening rather than any particular listening experience.