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In this landscape — where songs are interchangeable, indistinguishable commodities, and artists are unrecognizable to the average ear — it’s arguably larger content aggregators and curators, not artists, who are at the top of the food chain. And now several companies, some with venture-capital funding behind them, are racing to claim their own share of the lo-fi aggregation market.

Musical trends produced in the streaming era are inherently connected to attention, whether it’s hard-and-fast attention-grabbing hooks, pop drops and chorus-loops engineered for the pleasure centers of our brains, or music that strategically requires no attention at all—the background music, the emotional wallpaper, the chill-pop-sad-vibe playlist fodder. These sounds and strategies all have streambait tricks embedded within them, whether they aim to wedge bits of a song into our skulls or just angle toward the inoffensive and mood-specific-enough to prevent users from clicking away. All of this caters to an economy of clicks and completions, where the most precious commodity is polarized human attention—either amped up or zoned out—and where success is determined, almost in advance, by data.

Why You Shouldn't Feel Guilty for Using Spotify

Drag any movie file onto Beamer and it will start streaming wirelessly to your TV with Apple TV instantly. No jailbreak required.

Damon Krukowski of Galaxie 500 and Damon & Naomi breaks down the meager royalties currently being paid out to bands by streaming services and explains what the music business' headlong quest for capital means for artists today.