Another former record store employee here. I disagree about music discovery being easier now. I find I got much better recommendations from other music nerds than I tend to get from algorithms. The depth and nuance of micro-nano-pico genres is something that hasn't really been well replaced by machine learning IMO.

I have a Google Play music subscription and its recommendations are pretty consistently bad. I don't get it. I have given it all my music and it monitors how often I listen to every song. Why can't it figure out what types of hooks I like? The human-curated playlists are almost always better; even if I don't like every choice, there's still some ineffable spark of a single human personality that gives unity to the selections.