Yes, I experienced this last year. I wrote an article on the pitfalls that you don't think about before owning/operating a cargo trailer.
Their problem was that my link did not link to further information about the subject I was writing.

I clearly stated in the author box that I had gained my insight into trailer ownership from being a traveling musician that owned/operated a trailer and that you could go to the link to find out more about me (and my music).

Apparently, they were of the opinion that if you were writing about trailers, your link should lead to where you were selling trailers...

So, I decided since I have at least an article a week in me, and they clearly did not need my quality content. So I started my own blog and did ok attracting traffic to my site. So, I'm of the opinion to generate unique content for myself.

Yes, and in fact, with respect to the "similar artist" strategy, I had one blog post in which I detailed 6 artists/bands (entitled "Darkwave Bands" so I could link back to that keyword) that had influenced my sound. Then, I was going back to write one unique article dedicated to each artist. Each article would be linked to this original post in order to form a "pyramid" which supposedly scores higher in the search engines.

So, you can not only create your own unique content, but also combine this with other strategies (site structure) in order to gain "authority" status in the search engines.