I'd argue this is not as you say, but rather another step towards decentralised marketing. Because Spotify has its own ranking system and social media/last.fm

I'd argue this is not as you say, but rather another step towards decentralised marketing. Because Spotify has its own ranking system and social media/last.fm scrobbling, while a bad song will merely be skipped over, a good undiscovered song with get saved to playlist and exposed via networks to a much greater extent than it had a chance of being before.