Spotify Is Not the Future: Neopatronage and the End of Platform Serfdom

Joel Gouveia recently relayed Jimmy Iovine’s blunt assessment that streaming platforms are “minutes away from being obsolete.” Coming from a man who co-produced U2’s 1980s breakthrough and helped build Interscope, Beats, and Apple Music, that remark lands like a thunderclap.

Most artists have spent the last decade kneeling before digital service providers. But while musicians begged for playlists, massaged the robot, and prayed for fractions of a cent, the platform was harvesting listener data.

Spotify guards the customer relationship and trains the audience to think of music as tapwater.

Gouveia sees the fragility in the math. 70 percent of Spotify’s revenue flows straight back out the door. Their margins tighten even as their subscribers grow. But while Apple and Amazon can treat music as a loss leader to sell hardware or Prime memberships, Spotify cannot. So when pressure mounts, it’s musicians who feel the squeeze.

Nothing in this comedy of errors surprises anyone who has paid attention to publishing, film, or gaming. Centralized platforms always promise frictionless distribution. Later, the artist discovers he has become an interchangeable content supplier feeding someone else’s money engine.

For years, I have argued that creators must own three things: Their intellectual property, their customer list, and the means of distribution. Remove any one of those pillars, and the whole operation tumbles.

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