The rise of algorithmic curation and AI-generated content has sent this into overdrive: On Spotify, music is detached from its human creators and flattened into algorithmically-generated playlists with hashtag-able labels like “Lo-Fi Chillwave Anime Vibes.”

There is an overload of music. 60,000 songs are uploaded to Spotify every day. Over 20% of those don’t get streamed even once. The ubiquitous access to almost every piece of recorded music in history has led to a paradox of choice, promoting passive and playlist-driven music consumption and creating winner-take-all effects for the biggest artists.