sergeeo's personal capsule

Where Did the Music Enshittification Start?

This question was posed yesterday by Ericka Simone while chatting a little bit in Mastodon.

This is what I wrote (I want to keep it here somehow):

When big tech entered the digital marketplace, it began a process that has been getting worse for consumers and artists. In the era of Napster and Audiogalaxy, music lovers had access to a lot of stuff that was hard to get before; at the same time, for new artists, it was a very powerful window to connect with their potential audience. This was also helped a lot by MySpace, which at least in my country, had a great weight for young people to connect with the local scene. I would say that there was still no enshittification there.

When that generation of users grew up, their way of consuming changed, and lacking the old downloading tools, they succumbed to the elegant proposals of corporations: devices that stored hundreds of songs (with DRM), digital stores, streaming services, etc. When users got comfortable with these new platforms (uberification of music), it was impossible for them to go back, and the progressive degradation of terms and conditions is what has led us to the current pathetic state of affairs. Artists only have very limited self-distribution alternatives: soundcloud is irrelevant, bandcamp is increasingly abusive and nobody visits a band's own website anymore: you have to be on social networks to reach people.

Also: the way younger generations listen to music is so different... it's hard for me to understand it, but I guess they are happy without the desire to own the music they listen to.

Many other tooted about many facts (some of them unknown to me): the transition from tapes to CDs, DRM in CDs, labels, some legal stuff that Bill Clinton signed, etc. It's such an interesting topic! I would like to read some book on the subject. Any suggestions?