Spotify Sees a Future Where Music Genres Don’t Really Matter - NYTimes.com

A playlist paradox of abundance

"Until recently, because of the narrowcasting ethos of terrestrial radio, music was fiercely segregated by genre. In an era less bound by those niches and instead dominated by an online free-for-all, we may discover new artists more quickly than in the past — though, on the other side of the coin, we may also develop less fierce attachments to certain artists, flitting, as my children do, between anything and everything. For better or worse, streaming services may turn us into cultural nomads.

Spotify’s effort to program beyond genres is also a canny bit of salesmanship. The company’s biggest hurdle may not be competing services but rather artists, many of whom have been vociferous about their disappointment with the economics of streaming music. Last year, Taylor Swift — whose nimble crossing from country to pop offers perhaps the clearest proof of Spotify’s argument that we are less bound by genres — pulled her music from Spotify."

Spotify Sees a Future Where Music Genres Don’t Really Matter - NYTimes.com