An interview with Stephen Witt appeared on Pitchfork today, and it's well worth checking out. Witt is the author of How Music Got Free, an immensely readable account of tumult that surrounded the music business in the late '90s and early '00s, when MP3 technology and piracy changed the shape of the music economy. (My review of Witt's book is here.) Now we've entered an entirely new era that was shaped by the one that preceded it—in this new era, streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music have, in large part, stanched music piracy, and now MP3 files appear to be declining in favor of cloud technology.

In some ways, streaming services have put the control of music distribution back in the hands of rights holders (i.e., record labels) but with streaming services poised to dominate all music distribution, Witt theorizes that the record label itself may become a thing of the past:

WITT: From some perspectives, streaming is great for musicians, but it gives the streaming services a ton of fucking power—more than labels, actually. Getting sponsored on the front page of a streaming service could be a massive thing if there’s a lot of subscribers. And they will seek to control that channel of distribution and play favorites—every radio station does that already, and these services will too because they’re not even regulated by the F.C.C. concerns that govern classic radio play. So there’s a huge moral hazard, and that’s a problem.

... Major labels have to be very concerned about Apple Music specifically because while all of them bought equity stakes in Spotify, their deals with Apple probably aren’t as favorable. At the same time, they sort of can’t afford not to be on Apple. But it may eventually make them go away. I mean, why is it called a “label”? Because, historically, you smacked a label onto physical copy of something you shipped. Now that whole concept is obsolete. If you’re moving to a purely streaming economy, which will happen, why does an artist need a music label at all? Why don’t they just have the streaming service do it? If all the music labels disappeared, I don’t think it would be the worst thing in the world. We’d still have great music.

It's a worthwhile read, one that'll make you examine how you currently consume music in the streaming era. Check out Ryan Dombal's full interview with Witt over on Pitchfork, and the Mercury's review of How Music Got Free from a few months ago here.