> Spotify had long marketed itself as the ultimate platform for discovery—and who was going to get excited about “discovering” a bunch of stock music? Artists had been sold the idea that streaming was the ultimate meritocracy—that the best would rise to the top because users voted by listening. But the PFC program undermined all this.

True, but there is more music than any group of people can ever listen to. Is aggregating blogs like Hype Machine, or reviewing songs like Pitchfork or the New Yorker, any better? The alternatives to collaborative filtering are different shades of nepotism; or, making barriers to entry much, much higher.