One of the big differences between the old days and today is that you have exponentially more musicians releasing music every day due to how easy it is for bedroom producers to create and release tracks with very little barrier to entry. I can create 10 songs in a weekend on my laptop in my basement and send them out to all of the major streaming services for about 20 bucks.

This floods the market with many, many independent musicians trying to get heard. And the only way to get heard today is to make it onto curated Spotify playlists, build a following, and hope that someone at a record company somewhere hears you and takes interest. Not only is Spotify a tool for consuming music by the public, it is also the main way that musicians have to promote themselves anymore.

As a musician (who gave up the dream of making this a job long ago), it really sucks. There is infinitely more competition out there now, and when you factor in all the AI crap making it on to Spotify (some of which they are responsible for), it is even worse.