Quick Hits: The Wild West. Spotify as MySpace.

Brief news items and worthy reads from around the web:

Music’s wild west frontier: Billboard explored the seismic shifts happening in how artists are choosing to work with labels for the release and distribution of their music. “It’s the Wild West today, because artists can do more on their own,” said Joshua Binder, partner at Davis Shapiro, which represents legal needs for many entertainment clients. Streaming services have allowed artists more options for where and how they choose to put their work in front of listeners depending on their own values and where they’re most likely to reach fans.

Spotify, the new…MySpace? Talk about a clickable headline. Quartz is making the unusual case that Spotify is building itself up to fill a similar role as social network MySpace once did. It posited that the focus on sharing and collaboration, such as the new Group Playlists for Messenger deal with Facebook, is cultivating an identity around user creativity. And given MySpace’s role as an early source of music discovery, maybe the comparison isn’t quite as wild as it first sounds.

Anna Washenko