[saaaaaam]

“The consumer has virtually the world's entire musical output at their fingertips and far more free content than they even have time to listen to.”

This is true, but the flip side is that people will take more risks because there is no financial consequence to sampling previously unknown music.

Additionally there are still a lot of gatekeepers. When I talk about music distribution and consumption I always make a point of emphasising the difference between active consumers of music - those people who will actively search out new music, or even those who know what they want to listen to and will (for example) make their own playlists, and those people who just want a “make music happen” experience. The latter are more common and will typically fire up their stramaing platform of choice and select a playlist that matches their taste. For these people music is often somewhere between background noise and accompaniment to other activities, but inclusion on “premier” playlists (those with high visibility on platforms) is lucrative but quite rigidly controlled. You are probably less likely to be included on one of these if you don’t have a track record, or if you don’t have industry contacts. If you are included it can be a powerful way to gain new fans and get your music out to a much broader audience.