Spotify Is Not a Music Company Anymore

The world’s biggest streaming platform built a trillion-song jukebox, then became a data-harvesting machine tied to military AI investments and an economy that barely pays musicians enough for lunch.

In this Testset essay, Omar Afra examines how Spotify’s pivot away from being a music company reshaped the streaming economy — fueling soaring concert ticket prices, algorithmic culture, and the collapse of the music middle class. The full piece lives on Testset; this page is a short pointer, not a republication.