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> If the people who aren't providing value constantly win over the people that strive to

Not that I don't sympathize with your struggles, but aren't the people who are creating background noise tracks doing exactly that, providing value? The article talks about tracks with natural noise or ambient noises, so it's not exactly the same as turning a fan on. I can't see how this is a scam.

Also from the article, there's a team of five making some of these, so it's not even accurate to label them as low effort (though I'll admit they're probably admin and marketing roles...).

> I have about 30 songs up there, All in all I've probably only gotten about 1,400 streams

That's only 46 listens per song. That suggests to me that you're not self-promoting, or doing something wrong. Even if there weren't white noise tracks on Spotify with 100k listens, there are millions of songs with <100 listens; even if the Spotify exposure algorithms were "fair" you wouldn't get any more listens than you already have.

You didn't have to take it in a personal insult direction friend. It's such a common response to an issue you really do not understand.

I'll refrain from salty comments concerning the quality of my work because you're already sold on the ideal that the platform is totally ethical, despite many well selling artists saying the same things I have numerous times.

The platforms exist to promote artists, they do not do that at all.

It's really not for me to defend the merits of my work in response to expressing my experience on the platform... It's really not for you to insult someone you know nothing about, who says they've worked hard. You should really think about that... I have solid success in many other places than Spotify, and that's why I dedicate my time there and not to Spotify.

I find it odd that you seem rather adamant on the skill that goes into your own music, yet seem to disregard the noise genre as a whole and call it unfair that it gets that much attention. Indeed the world is not fair, but to discredit other peoples work that a lot of others seem to appreciate seems as a moot point.

I listen to a lot of music, mostly noise / ambient / drone and do so mostly during work, so the hours stack up quite rapidly. Per the Spotify model this is quite beneficial for the artist. But I am rather picky in the noise I appreciate so in the end it’s not that many songs I keep. Most I visit once and turn off halfway. So I definitely wouldn’t want to call it easy to create good ambient / noise.

Anyway the other day I saw a YouTube video with 116M views of 9 minutes long that showed hands going into slime. Now compared with a video from say Carfection or PBS EON, that’s quite odd than.

I never commented on the overall quality of the ambient drone genre... I don't know where you got that unimportant idea?

There are people literally recording ceiling fans and then putting it on Spotify, and using low-effort production techniques like play bots to steal royalties from hard working artists. That's what I'm referring to. The only way that Spotify can really fix that is to rely less on algorithms, ban payola, and bring back real curators... But for the sake of their profit, that's not likely to ever happen.

This article is about a platform of hundreds of thousands of artists (or more) and you're using 2-3 artists you loosely observed to say that everything is fair. Thats not a real conversation at all rooted in fact. Far off the topic of making it about me.

Oddly enough, I'm a performing musician, and an audience of 46 people would be fairly typical.

fraud? it sounds like your music just isnt very good

Even if their music is good it’s hard to get discovered in a world of millions (billions?) of tracks. Unless you’re lucky, you’ll need to do some marketing of some sort to pull in listeners.

Agreed...

Marketing is indeed a necessity, but Social Media was developed under the premise of providing free "social" marketing for artists that aren't profiting from their work yet... These platforms have undermined that now into requiring absolutely all artists to pay for ads in order to be viewed, which is completely contradicting their original EULAs... Spotify in a way is a social platform, but more-so it is also a marketing platform that despite allowing people to promote, also creates a dynamic where success is tiered and artificially hard-limited by their algorithms.

Content displayed on the front pages of sites like Spotify, YouTube, Reddit (etc.), get the most views and plays. These sites intentionally only have front pages, with pre-designated featured content. That means that only the artists that land there get the lion share of the revenue from those sites... They provide little to no relative potential for success or visibility to the majority of artists that contribute content that they benefit from, and that makes the entire industry a pyramid scheme.

Unknown and unsponsored artists cannot succeed in this model, and even if they do somehow find an opportunity, they are often subject to predatory contracts from record labels and the larger industry as well. It's really insane what goes on behind the curtains.

The ones I've seen get noticed and gain a big audiance have done so by making entertaining music videos that poeple share and post to Reddit and other places. Lil Dicky is a great example of that. He made a mixtape in his bedroom using GarageBand, then made a bunch of videos for YouTube. Many of them went viral... or at least viral enough to fund his Kickstarter for his first full album.

Tom MacDonald is another (without getting into any politics). He makes a ton of videos and his songs have content that makes people want to share them. He had several songs hit the Billboard Hot 100 last year according to Wikipedia. I don't think he was even on steaming until recently due to a collaboration, just YouTube and selling physical CDs himself. He won't sign any of those predatory contracts, so things may be more difficult, but actually owning your music has it's value.

Both of these examples had a mix of hard work, talent, and luck, but that doesn't seem differnet than pre-social media when people were trying to get a record deal. Eminem just happened to hand his CD to a guy who worked with Jimmy Iovine after the Rap Olympics, had he not done that... who knows if we'd know who he is (I think it was the interview with Mike Tyson where he talked about this). If you've watched Jeen-Yuhs on Netflix, it shows no one wanted to give Kanye a chance as a rapper. Even though he was in the business, everyone just saw him as a producer, not a rapper. He had to push hard and keep asking for people to give him shot and got lucky one day when somene let him to a verse (I think Jay-Z). Jay-Z is another... no one would give him a deal, so he started selling his own stuff and made his own label (from what I remember hearing).

Breaking into the music business as a top artist as never been easy. It seems like the differnce now is the barriers are down, so it's more about getting people to listen instead of getting an record executive to like your stuff. It's hard to now if the market is any more crowded or if it's just that the consumers have full access now, instead of having to go through the gatekeepers.

"Social Media was developed under the premise of providing free "social" marketing for artists that aren't profiting from their work yet..."

I don't remember this. It might've been a bullet point in some fantastical interpretation of potential, but you'd have to be naive to think this was how it would play out. Doesn't take much thinking to see that every free platform gets overrun with hopefuls and spam and the platforms need a way to either rank content or monetise it.

Spotify and co provide distribution, not marketing. If it was as trivial as "create social music platform, get coverage for my music", you and every artist could do it, right?

What kind of music do you like?

White noise and ambient sounds?

I worked at a record store in the 90's. It was right after cd's took over. I think we had 1 record in the store.

I was shocked over the amount of tranquility music we sold. Tranquility was nature sounds. I didn't know about white noise back then, but we probally had it. It was basically music produced cheaply that supposedly relazed people.

I got it. People are stressed. Did listening to calming nature sounds help me--no, but listening to AM radio on a boring station does calm me down, or keeps negative thoughts away.

My sleepy time music was Classic music. Pretty much everything.

Even then becoming a musician was as hard as becomming an artist. There was just no formula besides 1 in a million talent, like Elvis, or just sheer luck, and that meant exposure.

(I am thinking about leaving an old iphone strapped to a tree to record creek sounds tomorrow, and plop it on Spotify under "Songs to calm. Natural, and organic music."), or never leave my house and produce it digitally?)

> My sleepy time music was Classic music. Pretty much everything.

I never had luck with that to be honest.

I’ve tried all classical playlists including all “Classical for Sleep”. It’s just too emotional with a lot of peaks and crescendos. A lot of treble. Demands a lot of attention to itself.

“Sleepy” jazz on the other hand is often comforting, muted and warm.