Source: Rachel Karten
Eliza McLamb's essay exposes how modern music marketing has inverted the artist-fan relationship: platforms and labels now engineer artificial engagement through paid playlists, bot followers, and algorithmic manipulation, turning music discovery into a transactional system that benefits intermediaries more than creators. Emerging artists face a paradox—they must pay for visibility to gain real listeners, yet the metrics that matter to platforms (streams, playlist placement) are increasingly decoupled from actual audience connection or revenue. The outcome is binary: artists either game the system or remain invisible, which consolidates power among those who can afford marketing infrastructure while eroding the organic discovery mechanisms that once allowed breakthrough talent to build genuine fanbases.