Who can afford to make music if no one pays for it?

Cory Doctorow’s enshittification thesis describes how platforms exploit their markets by luring consumers (with low prices) and businesses (with mass adoption) into an inescapable trap. Once we’re hooked, they reduce their costs, increase ours, and extract all the profits.

You may also know this playbook as “Privatise the profits. Socialise the costs.”

Enshittification harms more than the people and companies using their services. We all pay the price.

When Spotify gives away music for free or next to nothing, it severs the monetary connection between us and our favourite artists. It also dilutes the value of music for everyone.

I know not everyone follows these dynamics, and I appreciate that most people see music as the background track for hanging out with friends, commuting, and doing chores.

But the system we have today is unfair and unsustainable. It is a direct result of how Spotify seduced consumers with easy and inexpensive access to all music and promised artists better pay, only to turn into a naked power play for their sole profit and power.

And for the minority who care about music and want to live in a world where artists can survive and thrive because of their passion and creativity, Spotify’s assault on artists and fans is a five-alarm fire.

After all, who can afford to make music if no one pays for it?

Spotify “saved” music from piracy, only to become a pirate on an unimaginable scale. Who will save it from them?

We will.