In May 2025, Microsoft and Google held a major developers' conference where they announced predictions for the development of AI, AI agents, web search, and the broader internet landscape. Some of these forecasts highlight the looming threat to small and medium-sized businesses that could become “invisible” in this new digital environment. In the near future, it is predicted that AI will control search engine results, determining which brands, companies, and products are presented to end users.
If you think these alarming changes are still far off, you're mistaken. Google has already integrated AI recommendations into its search results, predictably placing them right at the top of the page. This means AI is indirectly guiding users on what—and whom—to pay attention to when searching online.
Google's AI aims to search for information on behalf of users, providing data that it deems relevant. Additionally, it's poised to purchase travel tickets and concert passes, book restaurant tables, and more. It's shaping up to be the first step toward an all-in-one super-duper AI assistant that massive numbers of people will follow blindly.
AI agents from big corporations are gearing up to dictate what people listen to, read, watch, and buy services and goods from. And there's nothing anyone can effectively oppose this trend with over the next few years.
Social networks have long forced users to consume algorithmically curated feeds. You can't even take a five-minute break from scrolling through still wildly popular Facebook before your feed refreshes itself automatically.
Small businesses, including music artists, have been hostages to social media reach for quite some time now. On one hand, an artist can potentially send direct messages to their devoted fans. But here's the catch—they don't own those fans’ email addresses; instead, they're tightly bound by the platform’s functionality.
And what's worse? A social network, including video platforms like YouTube, can slash your message reach, shadow-ban you, or outright block you temporarily—or permanently—without any explanation whatsoever. When that happens, you'll lose access to your entire fan base within that specific platform.
Here's what we're witnessing: Social networks have erected a digital "wall" between artists and their fans—a barrier whose permeability they alone control. This imposed intermediation creates dependency.
Simultaneously, search engines and video platforms are introducing AI-powered recommendations and assistants, erecting yet another layer of intermediary walls in the digital realm.
As an artist—whether you're just starting out or not—you only have conditional access to your audience. If you're counting on streaming platforms' recommendation algorithms, prepare yourself for another disappointment.
Early in 2025, a book authored by Liz Pelly, titled Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist, was released in both the U.S. and Britain. Packed with disheartening facts, Pelly's investigation, conducted alongside Swedish journalists, uncovered evidence that as early as 2017, Spotify had implemented a program called Perfect Fit Content (PFC).
This program targets the displacement of real artists' tracks from hundreds of popular playlists known as "mood music." These include genres such as lounge, ambient, cocktail jazz, smooth jazz, lo-fi hip-hop, certain electronic styles, and instrumental background music often played while people relax, unwind, work, or study.
Liz Pelly discovered that the streaming service created fake artists multiple times, fabricating biographies for them. However, the crux of the matter lies in the fact that Spotify commissions music for these "artists" from production music companies explicitly avoiding composers affiliated with Performing Rights Organizations (PRO)—a strict condition for collaboration. One prominent example is Epidemic Music, a giant in the field that received investments amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars in recent years.
The author found several musicians who initially sold the rights to their master recordings to producer companies but later discovered that their tracks had amassed millions of streams on Spotify. Naturally, the original creators either received no royalties at all or were paid laughably low amounts.
Concurrently, over the past few years, major stock music platforms began distributing their content onto streaming services, flooding them with utilitarian tracks originally intended for small businesses, advertisements, vloggers, etc.
These catalogs now offer over 200 million tracks, many of which constitute informational-musical clutter. Breaking through this noise becomes exceedingly difficult for genuine newcomer artists and experienced independents alike.
It's almost as if artists didn't face enough challenges already. Over the last few years, enthusiasts of AI-generated music have begun pushing artificial compositions onto streaming platforms. Major music distributors, such as DistroKid, seemingly don’t verify these releases.
Thus, streaming platforms and music spammers have constructed yet another digital wall separating musical artists from listeners.
Let's return once again to the developer conference hosted by Google and Microsoft, specifically focusing on public reactions to some of the statements made there. For instance, Marcus Jerräng, the chief editor of CIO.com, bluntly tells readers: "AI agents mean the death of the web."
What does he mean by that? Here's his point: unsolicited and intrusive AI intervention across every aspect of people's digital lives.
The threat directly affects musicians who aren't signed to major labels—that is, the vast majority. Moreover, the new AI-dominated web will push thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of writers, visual artists, craftsmakers, small-scale manufacturers of musical equipment and instruments—all those who don't align with hyper-commercialized mainstream culture and tech giants—into the digital underground.
It seems that in the coming years, part of the Internet (the most creative, rebellious, and freedom-loving segment) will revert to a pre-social media state. Domain names of websites belonging to independent artists will circulate via word-of-mouth. The same fate awaits their communities, pages, and channels on major platforms.
In this era of dividing the web into glamorous AI-internet and marginalized underground, awareness among small businesses, including artistic ones, about their loyal followers' email addresses remains the sole antidote against corporate domination.
First and foremost, you must have your own website that you fully control—hosted on servers under your command. All roads leading from social media, video platforms, and search engines should converge towards your site, echoing the famous saying about Rome.
The experience of other artists who have already started gathering emails boils down to a fairly concise set of actions.
Here’s the type of creative value you can offer in exchange for emails:
Perhaps the lists above seem daunting and dry, but this is exactly what seasoned independent musicians continuously focus on. To put it more emotionally, our advice is simple: Be honest and don't hesitate to ask for emails.
Explain to your fans why maintaining contact matters so much to you. Show them that you're flesh-and-blood, just like them, experiencing similar emotions, but you've chosen the path of creating music, facing challenges along the way.
Those fans who’ve connected with your music, image, or approach to the world are practically your advocates already. They won’t label you as a spammer; they'll likely respond positively to your proposal of exchanging creative value for their email addresses.
Naturally, a portion of your audience—typically those who stumbled upon you accidentally on social platforms—might shower you with negativity. That's okay; stay resilient. Haters gonna hate, and that's not your problem.
As Kevin Kelly, creator of the "Theory of 1000 True Fans," advises, always engage openly, honestly, and fearlessly with the core of your audience. This inner circle will support you in the ghetto of tomorrow's digital underground when the monstrous AI-web takes complete control.