We will throw money at artists and record labels, said the investor/entrepreneurial class, in the form of royalties in the hopes that one day these investments will pay off through the perceived value of user growth. We will give you user growth, said the American public, as long as you don’t ask us to pay money while we destroy our brains with the ghostwritten output of Drake. We have always been, we will always be, said the record labels. We have the survivability of cockroaches. Free money sounds great. And fuck the artists.
