Why would SPOTIFY ever want to be a label—as the company repeatedly makes clear it doesn't in fact want to be—when it's making it easier and easier to imagine a world where no one needs a label in the first place? At the beginning of the summer, it came out that Spotify was offering advances to select indie artists and managers for direct licenses; now, as autumn rolls in, the company has started offering artists a free tool to upload their music directly instead of going through a label or indie distributor. If you're a label, no matter how good your balance sheet is looking at the moment, perhaps you're looking at your calendar and taking note of the fact that winter is up next... At first glance, it might seem the companies most threatened by Spotify's most recent move are indie distributors like TUNECORE and CDBABY, who charge artists for the same service Spotify is providing for free. But artists want to be on APPLE MUSIC and TIDAL and YAHOO and AMAZON and dozens of other services around the world, too. Do they want to start managing their music across all those services, one by one, or will they continue to find it easier to hire someone to do it for them? Says LEE PARSONS of UK-based DITTO MUSIC: "So long as you want to be on all the services and get a level of expertise across all of them, as well as things like radio and press, you will always need a [third-party] partner." As for major labels, beyond any other worry, one wonders what happens when signed artists start uploading their own music directly without bothering to tell their label. I mean someone, somewhere, is surely going to try that one random day at 3 a.m., right? In the meantime, here's how the money reportedly will shake out for artists who take Spotify up on the offer... "How much fun is it to sing a song about CORONA, in Corona?!," PAUL SIMON wondered aloud on the final date of his farewell tour, Saturday night in QUEENS. How long before hologram Simon is on the road, perhaps with hologram GARFUNKEL? If ROY ORBISON can do it, if GLENN GOULD can do it, why not them? But until then: MusicSET: "Last Waltzes: Artists Say Goodbye"... In the wake of the explosive CBC and TORONTO STAR series alleging TICKETMASTER is way too cozy with ticket resellers, the company is now being threatened with class actions... As SHARON and OZZY OSBOURNE's antitrust suit against AEG is officially withdrawn, AEG takes one final shot against IRVING AZOFF, MSG and LIVE NATION... RIP DAVID DICHIERA and CHAS HODGES.