The smartphone app economy collapsed distribution across music, lodging, travel, and dating

Evidence

The rise of the smartphone then unlocked a sprawling app economy. Companies like Netflix pivoted from DVDs to streaming, while Spotify provided immediate access to nearly all the world’s music. Ride-sharing app Uber disrupted the taxi industry in 2009, and Airbnb upended hospitality two years earlier, letting anyone turn a spare room into a hotel. Instagram, launched in 2010, brought casual photography into the mainstream with its nostalgic filters and square formatting. Snapchat introduced disappearing messages in 2011, creating new avenues for intimacy and privacy. Dating apps like Grindr (2009) and Tinder (2012) redefined relationships for the digital age. — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 279

Categorization

• XREF: Direct evidence for the ‘internet-collapsed distribution’ mechanism at the center of Marx’s omnivore monoculture thesis — the supply-side flattening of taste.
• ADDENDUM: The collapsed-distribution mechanism here (Spotify ‘immediate access to nearly all the world’s music’) parallels how bark cloth, silk, and cedar distribution shaped material culture in the trees piece — universal access flattening what used to be geographically distinctive crafts.