I joined Steemit the very first day. I've used it a bit and checked back occassionally since. There are plenty of flaws with Steemit that goes beyond the obvious pumpNdump/pyramid/inflation/whatever you want to call it economic problems.
The problem with a platform like Steemit is it caters to the okayest and the most, not the best. What I mean by this is the way the voting/payment system works, everyone is looking for the most "good" content to upvote, because others will upvote it as well. Tits and walls of text are dominating trending day in and day out. You can read these posts, and many of them are riddled with errors and generally average quality. Why? Because everyone involved is there to make a profit (look at the dozens of monetization guides that get voted to the top). It's not about having something new, thought provoking, or different, it's about circlejerking anything and everything that the community can agree is worthy of votes.
The result is a feedback loop and a subsequent echochamber of the same recycled garbage over and over again under new names. Steemit claims to seek to provide a curated news source. That isn't going to happen because the only things getting votes will be in line with the community's opinions. FFS, look at how every other god damn post is an introduceyourself post. There is no value in this platform other than getting rich off of the efforts of others. It's a top heavy ecosystem and everyone disillusioned with the thought that they can make money are lining the pockets of the dev team and the top posters/botters.
I should have realized that because the more high reputation votes on a post that one votes on, the more curation reward they receive. Thanks. That is the most astute post I've read. Thus as you say, it becomes all about the game and not some other quality of the content, thus the content will become dysfunctional w.r.t. (unrelated) to any criteria other than the game.
And this result will apply to their plans for Peertracks also. It won't be about the quality or social diverse matching of the music. It will be about driving pumps to shares.
I'm surprised more people haven't already mentioned this. It's already a huge problem with twitter (feeds are universally cluttered by garbage "parody" accounts that just repost the same tweets and videos, regardless of if you follow any of them or not). With a site that rewards users for voting with the majority and hurts them for voting incorrectly, this problem will only be amplified. Even already the content on steemit is incredibly monotone. The trending page can be summed up as guides, "steemit is my lord and savior" circlerjerks, and introduction posts. Sometimes you get crypto personalities who make posts as well, but that's rarer.