Ghost artists on Spotify
harpers.org
harpers.org
Which is something I've always wondered! How does the Lofi Girl channel on Youtube always have so much new music from artists I have never heard from?
The answer is surprising: real people and real instruments! (At least at the time of writing). Third-party stock music ("muzak") companies hiring underemployed jazz musicians to crank out a few dozen derivative songs every day to hack the algorithm.
> “Honestly, for most of this stuff, I just write out charts while lying on my back on the couch,” he explained. “And then once we have a critical mass, they organize a session and we play them. And it’s usually just like, one take, one take, one take, one take. You knock out like fifteen in an hour or two.” With the jazz musician’s particular group, the session typically includes a pianist, a bassist, and a drummer. An engineer from the studio will be there, and usually someone from the PFC partner company will come along, too—acting as a producer, giving light feedback, at times inching the musicians in a more playlist-friendly direction.”
I think there's an easy and obvious thing we can do - stop listening to playlists! Seek out named jazz artists. Listen to your local jazz station. Go to jazz shows.
These are everywhere…
The masterpiece hanging in the museum was fully intended to be actively appreciated. The background on the box of cereal is ... just a background on a box of cereal. It's still art though.
A low effort watercolor by an amateur is still (an attempt at) art and remains a watercolor even if no one appreciates it.
art has no function except to be observed by an audience. if they enjoy it or not is immaterial. its purpose is to be observed.
the design of a box of cereal has a purpose - to sell you the box of cereal by making it attractive/stand out/fit the brand.
graphic design, when it has purposes beyond being observed, is not art — it’s a craft.
like engineering.
although graphic design/engineering can become art when it has no purpose except being observed.
edit — enjoyment is immaterial and the bits about graphic design can be art etc.
"The Bird showed up two hours late to a three and a half hour recording session. They recorded one take each of six tracks, but the recording engineer was surprised when they started so he missed the first half of the first track. And that's how we got the five tracks on <INSERT CRITICALLY-ACCLAIMED ALBUM HERE>."
Although, I’m pretty sure there’s a ton of really complex and difficult jazz out there (IIRC it is one of the most advanced genres, whatever they means; I don’t do music). But that isn’t what we’re looking for on the chill whatever ambient music channels.
And in the end, the real money for musicians is syncs, shows and merch anyway. Spotify streaming revenue is tiny in comparison.
A wether is a castrated ram.
My Discover Weekly from Spotify used to be awesome. I found a bunch of new artists that I really liked and tons of great new songs. Recently it's been a bunch of old stuff that I've definitely heard of before. So I've mostly stopped listening to it.
Discover Weekly went from something I was excited about every Monday morning on the train, to something I forget to check most weeks.
There's a handful of songs it puts on every few weeks, for literally years now, despite me skipping them every time and never once listening to the band or song by choice.
"jazz improv" is probably just that, start with a generic beat / atmosphere and improvise and noodle on top of that. Sounds great to me, I wish there was more low barrier to entry live music like that. But I suppose there's no market for e.g. an in-house band working shifts for background entertainment, and they can't compete with jukebox software.
Look: If you give a damn about what you're listening to, you can go over to Spotify and create your own playlists filled with music you care about (assuming they have the artists you like in their catalog). In that case, the artists will get paid accordingly.
But Spotify has realized that a lot of people use it for background noise and don't give two shits whether what they're listening to is a "real" band or music-like content squeezed out of sweatshop sessions in Sweden or whatever. I can't fault them overmuch for taking advantage of the actual listening preferences of its users. If you feel cheated by this, spend some time curating playlists on your own.
Tacking on the CEO-shooter's mantra to your message is shameful. This isn't healthcare. This isn't killing anyone. It's a fully optional service that happens to be popular. Trying to link it to anger over being denied healthcare is ridiculous.
I'm just rambling without much explanation sorry, but I'm gonna hit the reply button anyway!
They do not pay out per stream. They pay out a set % of their total revenue to rights holders. Spotify has to pay the exact same amount of money before and after that change.
The savings for Spotify is in not having the (not so insignificant) administrative overhead of trying to make hundreds of thousands of basically worthless payouts to different individuals that are worth <$5 or even <$1.
I think it's fairly reasonable to draw some sort of lower bound on the minimum you need to reach to get a payout, especially in a world where basically anyone can put music on their service.
For my part, I'm grateful for Spotify's "exclude from taste profile" feature. This lets me leverage my personally-curated "Flowstate" playlist ^1 for hours at a time while I'm working -- tracks that I've hand-picked to facilitate a "getting things done" mindset / energized mood / creativity or go-time vibe, and can stand to listen to on repeat -- without "polluting" my regular music preferences. It's apples and oranges, mostly - there's music I want to listen and attend to (as a guitar player and lifelong avid music listener across many genres including "serious" jazz), and there's audio (which could as easily be programmatically generated / binaural beats, whatever -- eg brain.fm) that I use as a tool specifically to help shape my cognitive state for focus / productivity.
I think it's kind of funny how some people get confused about the fact that there are many reasons to listen to many kinds of music.
When it comes to music discovery on Spotify, the "go to radio" option from a given track or album is a reliable way to surface new-to-me things. I usually prefer this proactive seeking to the playlists spotify's algo generates for me. (shrug)
1. https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6UScdOAlqXqWTOmXFgQhFA?si=...
This is my first time being made aware of this. Fantastic option that more websites should adopt
It has always boggled my mind that this point seems to be lost on every music streaming service.
Has that been shown?
Psalm Trees, an artist with them, just put out an interesting little 'double'-ish album here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmL9LvTYjMQ
He produced a whole jazz album just so he could sample from it for a lofi album. Absolutely mental workload.
There's a lot of crap in lofi, but also some real 'bangers' too : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IU3yBo2szD8 (yes, really, 10 hours of great work, IMHO)
This probably applies to most mainstream entertainment.
But that said, people massively underestimate the background entertainment market. Spotify Reddit is that for me a lot of the time, as is youtube. Netflix and co less so, if I'm watching something I want to enjoy it, not have it as background / comofort stuff.
I think the question is, what when inevitably someone uses that human music to train an AI generating the same ambient music? Especially when you acquired the music on the cheap using a monopoly position.
There are also websites and apps like Suno that make whatever you want on the fly.
> The answer is surprising: real people and real instruments! (At least at the time of writing).
Sorry to break it to you, but there's actually tones of AI lofi music from Suno all over YouTube right now.
See this video for an explanation: https://youtu.be/_oxtFP2UUyM
And here are some examples of the content:
The second track is more obviously AI, mostly due to the high frequency "dullness". Likewise, the second link iBT051 seems to have the same issue, it's low fidelity (but in a different way than the lo-fi style is).
actually, it's the same nefarious plan, just that AI wasn't yet up to the task. Now it is, and replacing those fake artists, who are still human beings as far as we know, with AI (and the same fake resumes) is the logical next step.
They aren't even artists. They release content bought from third-parties, and at most their role is limited to market it. These "artists" are at best brands that are carefully managed and curated.
They are probably already doing it, slipping in a few AI-generated songs in with the gig-produced music to see how it’s performing.
Obviously, making ambient tracks is not quite the same as writing "Please Mr. Postman" and hearing your songs on the radio, but in the documentary the band talked about how they'd pump out songs during the day then go to a jazz club at night to make the music they REALLY wanted to make.
I think this is a red herring to try to convince people that it's in their best interests to be force-fed content produced by major labels behind the brand {INSERT_ARTIST_NAME}.
Which incidentally it's the business model from major labels.
I mean, check any major labels artist. Each and every single hit song they release has countless writers and producers claiming a stake, not to mention the fact that some major labels artists don't even try to hide the fact they buy all their content from third-parties to slap their name over it.
Is this the state of affairs that's being defended?
Give me a procedurally-generated playlist that I can listen all day long, and skip the content I'm not interested in.
Do you think this is a bad thing?
Yes obviously, if you're trying to complain about "ghost artists" by presenting these "artists" as the counterpoint when they are even faker.
Not a musician myself, but I am a live performer. I think live performance will come back into stride for things people do.
Then again, people do livestreaming all the time, but it's a different sort of entertainment compared to people putting up a live show for you for a lack of better term.
I am hoping to do it next year.
Yet people still come to my shows. I have to charge more than I want to, simply as a matter of real estate. People do still want what we can bring them live. I could not conceivably make a living at it, but there is still value in doing the work and bringing it to people.
Maybe AI will demotivate people from screens. I haven't seen a flood yet, to be sure, but we'll see.
The music was recorded by Seeburg's own orchestra, using songs either in the public domain or for which they had purchased unlimited rights. Just like the modern "ghost artists". So this business model goes back to the 1950s.
The records had a form of copy protection - nonstandard RPM, nonstandard size, nonstandard hole size, nonstandard groove width. So they didn't file copyrights on all this material. As a result, there are sites on the web streaming old Seeburg 1000 content.
Seeburg made jukeboxes with random access, but the background player was simpler - it just played a big stack of records over and over. It's rather low-fi, because the records were 16 2/3 RPM, which limits frequency response.
Their main competitor was Muzak, which started delivering blah music in 1934, and, after much M&A activity and bankruptcies, is still around as Mood Media.[2] Muzak won out, because they could deliver content over phone likes or an FM broadcast subcarrier, rather than shipping out all those records.
Here's a free stream from a Seeburg 1000, from Radio Coast.[1]
They are currently playing a seasonal Christmas playlist that gives me better vibes than any Spotify Christmas playlist.
Seeburg and its successors all went out of business decades ago, via court-ordered liquidation. The current "Seeburg 1000" site uses the name, but came along much later and does not seem to be a successor company. So these are now probably public-domain.
Their music was blah, but competently executed. Better than many modern low-end cover bands.
"As early as 1906, the Cahill Telharmonium Company of New York attempted to sell musical entertainment (produced by Dr. Thaddeus Cahill's "Telharmonium," an early synthesizer) to subscribers through the telephone"
The business failed miserably, but the Telharmonium is remembered as an early electronic music instrument.
History of pre-transistor electronics:
- If only we had voltage.
- If only we had current.
- If only we had rectification.
- If only we had gain.
- If only we had frequency.
- If only we had power gain.
- If only we had reliability.
- If only we had precision.
- If only we had counting.
Amusingly, even though the band existed for the purpose of supplying music for trailers, they eventually became popular enough on the Internet that fans convinced them to release a couple albums and even play live shows.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White-Smith_Music_Publishing_C....
Huh? I'm really surprised to see this misconception cropping up here of all places. You don't have to "file copyright". It's automatically attached to anything and everything anyone creates as long as it meets some threshold of originality.
The entire “wellness” music category is programming driven. Much of my energy is spent building and maintaining relationships with the programmers, even with our direct deals. We take a reduced payout on the master side in return for preferential treatment on playlist positions.
I have an active roster of extremely talented producers. It’s a volume play. I’ve made tracks that I’m quite proud of in 90 minutes that have done 20+ million streams.
It’s a wild system but we’ve made it work. Not really a critique or an endorsement - just making a living making music.
Edit: fun fact, Sleep Sounds is generally the #1 streamed playlist on the entire Apple Music platform.
Spotify seems to trigger the hell out of music purists...
It sounds like the kinda thing that'll earn you a paycheck, but not fame. Or the kind of fame that can land you work from e.g. Spotify, not the kind of fame that'll fill up concert halls.
I think it's a sobering look into the music industry (not just your whole comment but the article + comments); the perception is that if you're not filling up concert halls then you don't matter, but the truth is that good or successful music does not necessitate the accompanying fame or "interesting" personality / personal branding.
Is it that far from payola?
You & others may not like it. It may not align with your ethos or your peers' norms. But I see nothing ethically, morally or legally wrong with parent's comment...
While AI is evoked, this is not what is talked about here. The article mentions Epidemic Sound, and looking at their page, it "doesn’t currently use generative AI to create music".
It means that we are talking about real people here, there is nothing fake about them and their work, what they do takes skill and effort. That they focus on quantity over quality and are under-recognized does not make them "fake". Otherwise, I bet most of us would be called "fake engineers".
there are some genres in which making up artist names, even just for a one-off release, is almost the point and part of the fun of making music. should artists be forced to release music under one name exclusively as well?
He's not a fake musician by any means. But I think he'd accept the work he creates for this being described as fake 'art' specifically. There's no thought, meaning, or passion injected into it. It's a conveyor belt. It's based on analytics. It's soulless.
What makes art beautiful isn't plucking the strings or pressing piano keys. It is the expression of ideas, a communicative art.
The artists who do this are not evil, and must make a living. I would not call them or define them as "fake". There is absolutely fake work and fake output, though.
the people are indeed real (well, for now, but soon to be replaced with AI -- it's the logical next step)
what is fake is that the bios are not who those people are; it's like me putting on my bio that I went to Julliard
EDIT: If you think about this "scandal" in reverse, that is that Spotify was started as a background, inert restaurant playlist app that paid session musicians to record 50 songs a day for lo-fi chill ambient jazz playlists, and later tried to expand their reach by allowing musicians to upload their songs, it wouldn't be a scandal at all.
If a upscale steak restaurant is known for using quality meats and then they decide to include something like Beyond Meat but make it hard to tell that's what you're ordering.
Expectations were set.
Personally I have no issue with it.
That sounds like an analogy worth belabouring!!
I think this is more like if you had an upscale steak restaurant and then they opened up a series of food trucks that used the same branding but sold sausages instead.
Someone tells Spotify "I want to listen to the latest Lil yachty album" and it plays, expectations were met. Someone says "play whatever I just need background noise", expectations were also met. You can't ask for elevator music and be upset that that's what you get. The fact that you can still pay a flat monthly rate and get access to almost any music you'd want to hear, that's like still getting the porterhouse every day for a monthly fee. That's amazing and fantastic. Don't expect it to last much longer. And don't ask for the soup of the day if you want something fresh.
Nowadays you make money with live gigs not snorting coke in a studio making concept albums. And Spotify saved the industry from Napster- yes I still remember.
A better alternative would be a steak restaurant known for using quality meats and then they decide to include cheap meat to reduce cost, and not make it clear that that's what you're ordering.
Unlike here the topic in question, I'd assume cows too would prefer you having a beyond meat instead of them. But I'm just projecting, I'm not actually sure about that.
1) A supermarket does not bill itself as a neutral discovery platform. It's not comparable to Spotify.
2) A supermarket can't make up fake information about the provenance of its products. The information on the cereal box is regulated to be truthful (well, we hope).
3) Most importantly, this is about discovery. The store has its brand of cereal next to some other non-store brands on the shelf, the customer has the opportunity to discover both. What Spotify is doing is taking the non-store-brand cereals off the shelf and putting them in the stocking room where you only get them if you happen to ask one of the store employees.
That's a terrible analogy.
Spotify has tons of ways to access the real artists. Often including dedicated playlists for each one of them. They show up in search. In related arists. In radio playlists. In top music playlists. Etc.
Spotify isn't taking anything "off the shelf". A more apt analogy is a grocery store with a dedicated section for store-brand goods only. Where everything's still normally on the shelves where you expect -- nothing has been taken off the shelf -- but you can also visit the store-brand-only section.
It's hard to see why that would be a bad thing for a supermarket to do.
yeah, they're available by search if you know what to look for; that's the same as asking the store employee if they carry X, as opposed to seeing it as you browse the aisle
> A more apt analogy is a grocery store with a dedicated section for store-brand goods only
No, that's not the right analogy and not what Spotify is doing. That would be like having a section for "undiscovered artists" on the front page where you can browse through them, alongside another section for "Spotify-sponsored artists" which you can also browse through.
The point of the article's argument is that unless you know you want Artist X and search for them, you're not going to come across them because they're not being added to Spotify playlists and content discovery mechanisms (obviously you can add them to your own playlist manually). You'll instead come across the content that Spotify owns, allowing it to keep a greater share of revenue and pay less to artists trying to distribute their music through its platform.
Most people aren't browsing Spotify as if they were browsing the store. They're browsing the promotional magazine of the store - and that one is very selective indeed, focusing on what the store wants to promote at any given moment. Which is OK, too - promotional magazine is where the best deals are anyway.
The problem is people confusing promotion with discovery. Advertising and promotional materials are stupid way of doing discovery. They're literally meant to do the opposite of giving you a broad and clear picture of things.
(It's the same thing like if you browse for stuff on Amazon and think you're doing discovery. You're not, you're just setting yourself up for wasting money.)
No, that's not the point of the article because the article doesn't say that and that's not what's happening.
Real artists are still being added to all those things. Probably 99.99+% of Spotify playlists and content discovery is for real artists.
This is about a couple of very specific genres of background music where they've specifically sourced their own music for their own playlists. That's all.
Spotify has discovered there is a big market for music where the quality isn't that important and they can serve it themselves. Same as supermarkets do with many products.
Neither does Spotify? It's the "pay once, listen to anything, more convenient than Torrents" thing; discovery sucks everywhere anyway.
> 2) A supermarket can't make up fake information about the provenance of its products. The information on the cereal box is regulated to be truthful (well, we hope).
Yeah, but then if you read it carefully, you may be surprised to learn that the Premium Brand Cereal X, and the Value-Add store-brand cereal, are literally the same thing, made in the same factory, differing only in packaging and price (and perhaps in quality brackets).
Perhaps like with supermarkets, if Spotify users cared more about provenance, they'd realize that the same people are doing the 'high art' hits and cranking out supermarket music - that the preference for "high art" of specific bands may have nothing to do with quality of art, but rather is just falling for the brand marketing.
So perhaps musicians were better off with Spotify not drawing users' attention to the in-store background and to who made it.
> Most importantly, this is about discovery. The store has its brand of cereal next to some other non-store brands on the shelf, the customer has the opportunity to discover both. What Spotify is doing is taking the non-store-brand cereals off the shelf and putting them in the stocking room where you only get them if you happen to ask one of the store employees.
I can't help but think that this is not a problem that actually exists, because a supermarket that keeps brand products forever in the stocking room in favor of in-house brands, would be much better off not ordering the brand product in the first place. Why pay money for product that you're not going to sell anyway, and lose the storage space too?
The dynamics of what's happening with in-house vs. outside brands in stores are quite complex, as are the underlying reasons, but I argue it all has very little to do with discovery.
Good point. But where Spotify and the store differ is that Spotify doesn't pay for the music upfront. It distributes a portion of its streaming revenues up front. So unlike the store, it can keeping thousands of titles in the stocking room without losing money.
In reverse: Many dictators killed millions of their own people, but then completely stopped and began building roads for the people instead.
A few key points with albums:
- You are listening to the artists vision/journey. The songs are not played in isolation but as part of a collective arrangement.
- Artists get payed more per play than individual songs.
- Albums don't degrade like playlists which can be changed by users or spotify to inject some newer commercial push.
I think this is less of the case nowadays. The latest albums I've listened to have all been just a complication of the artist's latest EPs with a couple of new tracks.
If we're talking popularity vs indie, those bands seem pretty mainstream. In my head indie artists that put out single songs on Soundcloud etc don't do albums until they grow big, so pretty much the opposite (more popular = more album focused).
I don't know what is normal, but releasing singles or EPs before the full album seems like a common way to generate hype beforehand. Also, the Spotify model - assuming against what the previous comment says and every stream counts for the same revenue - doesn't differentiate between singles, EPs or albums, so it's whatever from that point of view. I've seen a few artists start releasing demos, songs-that-didn't-quite-make-it, and all kinds of unusual material that wasn't good enough for a full album onto streaming platforms, which then ends up in the long tail of their repertoire. It ties in with the article though, in that these songs will also start appearing in the playlists related to those artists.
Another interesting one is a single artist releasing songs under different names; Devin Townsend comes to mind, who can fill up a related playlist with songs released under his own name, Strapping Young Lad, Devin Townsend Band, Devin Townsend Project, Casualties of Cool, etc. And given he does many different genres, he'd appear - theoretically - on many different styles of playlists too, although I think the algorithm would get confused when the artist name gets associated with both hourlong ambient tracks and seven minute chaos metal genre mashups.
I think this arose in the radio-and-CD era of music. Maybe even earlier?
The radio stations that drove sales of new music wanted to play the latest releases. By releasing three singles before your 12-track album, you got more radio play, more shots at doing well in the sales charts, and hence raised your album sales.
I would recommend switching to Apple Music if you want to stream. They're continuing to lean into the idea of human curation (with the launch of three new live radio stations this month) and I find their human curated playlists lead to me discovering a lot more music I like than Spotify's. Apple Music also works well with local files so music you purchase of Bandcamp, bootlegs etc. will work across devices.
For all of spotify's faults, it runs on EVERYTHING and Spotify Connect is effectively borderless.
it's a continuation of apple's legacy of barely putting in the minimum to ship anything for windows.
there's a reason i won't use their password manager, etc. i still interact with windows, and basically any key app i use can't be apple-made because the windows experience will be utter trash and the linux experience will be nonexistent.
i make do with the windows apple music app but it is objectively a bad experience.
The Windows app is ok, but I haven't used it as much, so I can't provide much feedback.
Is it as simple as per play? I only know what’s posted on the loud and clear website but stream share isn’t quite the same thing from what they’re saying in the FAQ.
In the end, why waste time listening to something you only half enjoy?
"epic hip hop bangers"
Song 1-13 will indeed be epic hip hop bangers. Then song 14 is some random guy's track, which picks up the playlist momentum from its neighbors. Song 15-23 is epic bangers, then song 24. and on and on. The person who made the playlist is, of course, random guy or one of their friends.
That's why I typically only listen either to whole albums on spotify, or DJ sets on soundcloud or youtube. There are too many individual human beings out there with great taste to bother with the algorithmic stuff.
Not sure if I understand your argument. Is it the following: "epic hip hop bangers 1-13 and 15-23" are the boring millionth replay of all the genre-defining tracks of the past 40 years, and only tracks 14 and 24 are the precious new finds? If that is the argument, I totally agree.
I’ve noticed it a few times, I was listening to something like “best of 80s” and a few tracks were from the same band that I couldn’t find any info about. So my guess was that the creator of the list put some of the songs they (or their friends) made, then those songs got millions of streams just because they were on that playlist even though they had nothing to do with the expected content. It’s either for the money or maybe PR to make an impression that the band is popular
What I really don't like is the spam where they add a random well-known artist's name to their song to make it look like it's a collaboration, but it's either a low effort cover or has absolutely nothing to do with it. At least I've stopped gettring random basement mumble rap in generated metal playlists.
The sad thing (for artists) is that it seems like most Spotify listeners don't care.
Most of our music consumption today seems to be as a kind of background vibe rather than an appreciation of the music itself.
Free market means you can vote with your wallet. If you don't, then it says less about markets and more about our stated vs revealed preferences. Maybe we just don't care if real artists go away.
How many of us are canceling their Spotify subscriptions over this? It wouldn't be some huge sacrifice, it's about the least we could do. Most of us won't. The "caring" is just lip service.
People want comforting background noise, the market gives it to them. They never asked for ethically sourced, organic, gluten-free comforting background noise, although if they do, I'm sure the market will be more than happy to provide them with that, and we can look forwards to "Chill Study Music Made by Adorable Orphan Children in Kenya Using Only Recycled Materials And Biodegradable Recording Equipment" or whatever :)
--- start quote ---
In reality, Spotify was subject to the outsized influence of the major-label oligopoly of Sony, Universal, and Warner, which together owned a 17 percent stake in the company when it launched. The companies, which controlled roughly 70 percent of the market for recorded music, held considerable negotiating power from the start.
... Ek’s company was paying labels and publishers a lot of money—some 70 percent of its revenue
--- end quote ---
?
Do people really want low effort things, or are they addicted to them in a loop that businesses are only too happy to reinforce?
I think public tastes are at least partially trained (or "learned"), they are very prone to addictive feedback loops, and they are not entirely shaped by something intrinsic but heavily influenced by what's on offer. And if what's on offer is intentionally cheap garbage...
Regardless, I think it's not the full picture to say businesses simply give people what they want; businesses actually shape people's wants. That's what advertising is about...
If I’m actually listening to the music, I’ll want it to be good.
If you'd like to increase your income, you can try making formulaic smooth jazz for Spotify playlists instead of pretentious concept albums about your childhood trauma that no one will actually listen to ;)
people settle for "mediocrity" all the time. be it just what you deem "mediocre" (out of cluelessness and/or disrespect), if it's not a "generic idea of a song with lyrics and all" and just some mild electronica, or if it is really just kind of mediocre, which is a good fit in some situations nonetheless, and does actually have wider appeal due to its mediocrity.
"low effort" may overlap, in perception or in how things are actually made, with some simpler, subtler, not overproduced music. it really isn't a bad thing at all, so it's bizarre to see it get shaded so much.
I specifically referred to algorithmically generated elevator music, aka "low effort music". Not chill music or music without lyrics.
My point is that people do not want garbage, but get used to it. So we shouldn't let companies producing this shit off the hook because it's "what people want". That's not the full picture, and is far too generous to businesses and advertising.
Surely you're not objecting to the notion that public tastes can be shaped to some degree?
We're pretty far away from any actual "free market" here.
The government protects intellectual property rights and they protect physical property rights. In a completely free market, you'd have to own an army to protect your company building. The people with the biggest army would own everything.
Intellectual property laws are in the constitution and are structured to allow the government to preemptively act on potential violations. For example seizing shipments that would violate patents or trademarks before any actual sale occurs. They can also create registration offices to certify claims publicly for the holders.
At the same time you were, and often still are, expected to physically protect your own property and the government largely can not preemptively act on potential issues. You must be a victim to receive service. To a large extent most property dispute /resolutions/ are handled through the civil courts. A criminal prosecution for theft may or may not be perused by a district attourney or certified by a grand jury, and even if it is, it does not make your injury whole.
You would still need a civil judgement to reclaim your property or it's claimed and adjudicated value. Once you have this judgement you are again personally responsible for enforcing it. You can file paperwork with the sheriff to audit their property and sell it or garnish their wages but you take all responsibility for this. Including finding their property or identifying their employer. None of this will happen on it's own simply because you were a victim of an actual property crime.
Intellectual property is infinitely reproducible and someone else having it does not mean you cannot have it.
Besides, physical property law is also just an abstract concept. If _you_ own a swimming pool, who says I cannot use it also?
Again, this does not apply to intellectual property, which is infinitely reproducible.
Before you'd need to visit different record stores, hitting one every few days to check their latest in catalogue. Find the hidden boxes with low print releases, listen on a player and skip the needle around track grooves. Or have good friends recommending you stuff.
It got easier but I think we need to realise to find the signal on a sea of noise will probably require effort for a long time. Given time enough every new information discovery tool gets flooded by the noise, almost like a form of entropy.
Pick a random place on earth and then search for nearby radio stations.
Though thats not all, I also have a receiver feeding into an 1/2w FM modulator and providing whole house music at home.
It was fascinating to experience.
Why would/should they care? They are touted a service where you pay a monthly fee, and you get to consume anything they have. So now you're suggesting that music consumers are going to look for sustainably sourced music too?
As you've said, most people "like" music to have in the background, but are not music aficionados that look for anything other than whatever their influencer of choice says is trendy.
Meta: this feels like a similar problem as doctors and nurses vs administrators, teachers/professors vs administrators, devs vs management, and I’m sure there are others. The latter group takes a disproportionate share of profit, and claims it is justified because of the responsibility.
I see these asymmetries everywhere now.
In all honesty, do you think most Spotify listeners or even Apple music listeners have a decent understanding of the model in which artists are paid? Or an understanding that isn't from the mouth of said company?
To say we don't care is akin to saying most people don't care about how they contribute to child labor/exploitation, wage theft, global warming by buying and using products that contribute to those things. It's not that people don't care its that people don't have a reason to suspect is nefarious, nor do they feel the impact of it.
I see musicians on music videos, on radio and touring, how am I supposed to know they're severely disadvantaged when I listen to their music on a streaming platform?
It's not their job to care. They like what they like, regardless of how it got there.
If they prefer junk software, shat out by dependency-addicted clowns, it's usually because it gives them what they need/want. I can get all huffy and elitist, but it won't change the facts on the ground: users prefer the junk. That's their right, and there's always someone willing to drop the bar, if it will make them money/prestige.
It's up to me, to produce stuff that gets users to prefer mine, over theirs. That means that I need to take the time to understand the users of my software, and develop stuff that meets their needs, at a price (which isn't just money -if my software is difficult to use, that's also a price) that the user is willing to pay.
Of course, in today's world, promotion and eye-candy can also affect what users prefer. Marketing, advertising, astroturfing reviews or GH stars, whatever, can affect what end-users prefer. I also need to keep that in mind.
I am the kind of listeners that care, but to be honest, indeed most people don't care, and what Spotify does is taking advantage of that fact which makes business sense.
Most people just listen to "chill music" and never care to find out the musicians behind the tracks. They may not even realize that lots of tracks sound very similar (for good reason -- they are created by the same musician[s]). They just need some music while studying/working.
I play instruments myself, and I force myself to listen to many different styles of music and delve deep into artists' works, so that I can be a better (amateur) musician. I don't listen to Spotify "chill" playlists, not just because of the practice described in this article, but because I could actually tell that the music was repetitive and low effort, and I can never find more albums made by those musicians when I occasionally find a track that I find interesting. Can you expect other listeners to think this way? No.
The standard risk model for a musical artist is massive-upfront-investment-for-a-tiny-chance-of-payoff-someday. A different model with smaller rewards and lower risks isn't "sad" - if it had existed 30 years ago I might be a professional musician today instead of an engineer
I definitely noticed this aspect of Discovery Mode but didn't know that it was confirmed or public knowledge. Spotify's recommendations have been terrible for a long time now.
No, $200,000 per year slipping his inoffensive slop into popular playlists
"He who collated created"
A ton of fake artists take widely used commercial sample packs and copyright-free music, create simple songs and then register them via companies that submit them to ContentID databases. They then use it to monetize content created by other people on Youtube. There is no way to report these because the listener is not the copyright owner.
Just two of the countless cases I've come across:
JasoN SHaRk - Let the Music Play. I've heard a track from an indie artist predating the release by more than half a year. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEGgea4Z2co
Anitoly Akilina - A Nightmare (on My Street). This is a bold one; it uses a free track from Kevin MacLeod, also used in Kerbal Space Program. This means KSP gameplay videos get monetized. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVbZT1iFnlM
Somebody made a bad rap song that samples the title screen music from Super Metroid, and goes around sending automated copyright claims to everyone who streams the game on Twitch. Every speedrunner and randomizer player has to deal with these bogus claims every couple of days.
A few months ago, the speedrun community held a 47-way race on the game's 30th anniversary: https://racetime.gg/sm/dynamic-plowerhouse-1749 It took a little while for everyone to ready up and start the race, so we all just sat on the title screen for ~10 minutes until everyone was good to go. The next day, dozens of copyright claims went out.
This has been going on for like 5 years; we dispute the copyright claims every single time, and people have contacted Twitch support many times. Yet, they won't do anything to stop the same person from filing thousands of false copyright claims for music he doesn't even own.
Sorry musicians, but approximately 50% of the time, this is exactly what I want. I'm not actually listening to the music, it's just aural wallpaper.
I see this as two separate markets:
- there's music I actively want to listen to, even sing along to, maybe even dance to, that needs to be full of emotional resonance and relatable lyrics. Stuff I'll talk to my friends about, or ponder the meaning of at length, and dig into.
- then there's the background stuff that should be (in the words of the article) "as milquetoast as possible". It's just there to cover up incidental sounds and aid my concentration on some other task (usually coding). If it makes me feel anything or it snags my attention at all then it's failing.
So it's not a devaluation of music in the streaming era, it's just a different, possibly new, way of listening (or not) to music.
I really don't see the harm in Spotify sourcing this background stuff cheaply and providing it in bulk. As the article says, this is not "artistic output" from a musician expressing their soul.
It's the difference between an oil painting and wallpaper - both are pictures put on the wall, but they serve very different purposes and have very different business models. We don't object to wallpaper being provided cheaply in bulk, without crediting the artist. But we would consider treating an oil painting in the same way as borderline immoral.
"Ambient Music must be able to accommodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular; it must be as ignorable as it is interesting."
I think the only semi-valid complaint here is that some (most?) of Spotify's ambient music isn't actually interesting, so it only works at the level of background music. But if people are happy listening to that, I don't see a problem with it.
Profit seeking will land you in blandness, and here Spotify is even exacerbating by playing in a conflict of interest market, through playlists with massive reach that they control. Not even Zuck does that (afaik), but rely on high volume content farms that at least he has plausible deniability to claim that it’s not his hand moving the needle. It’s well known musicians pay a lot to be featured, so the monetary value of playlist placement is really high.
Anyway, this may not be enough to cause an exodus yet. But artists will become more aware and rightfully complain, and perhaps find different platforms. It also weakens Spotifys own market position since algorithmic low effort music is fungible and much easier to disrupt (although Spotify still incredibly dominant today). It’s not impossible that ambient music streaming breaks out to a cheaper alternative service, with white noise and yoga tunes. That may be a better tradeoff in the long run.
Erik Satie coined the term "furniture music" for this.
Basically - the 'real' artists do exactly the same thing. They use ghost writers and producers that make the song and then the 'brand name' just records it, without crediting the producer.
> David Turner had used analytics data to illustrate how Spotify’s “Ambient Chill” playlist had largely been wiped of well-known artists like Brian Eno, Bibio, and Jon Hopkins, whose music was replaced by tracks from Epidemic Sound, a Swedish company that offers a subscription-based library of production music—the kind of stock material often used in the background of advertisements, TV programs, and assorted video content.
I really don't see the issue with this. We can talk about AI or whatever but there's no indication it's anything other than a company that makes b-roll music realizing that there's a niche of listeners who desire their content and then partnered with Spotify through an intermediary (a label perhaps) to get them on official playlists through a sweetheart royalty deal.
This ultimately lowers the quality for everyone, in no small part because it makes it so difficult to make a living as a musician (not that it was easy before streaming). This then makes a feedback loop where in order for most musicians to make money, they must feed the algorithm. Then of course the streaming services get to say, look, people can't tell the difference! In fact, they prefer the algorithmically generated music, our listening stats say so! This increasingly just becomes a circular argument. Feed people the algorithm and then say that the algorithm is just giving them what they want which is a good thing.
Really what they are doing is capturing whatever little profit exists in the industry and redirecting it from artists to executives. It's really not very different from what uber did to cab drivers except that there is far, far more intrinsic value in music than in cab driving.
I dislike almost all pop music with vocals and rock and metal and all that overly guitar-y stuff. I very much prefer the music available to me today compared to what I had an option to listen to in the 1990s.
Now you can chose to listen to almost anything: https://everynoise.com/
If that isn't payola then it's pretty damn close.
--- start quote ---
In reality, Spotify was subject to the outsized influence of the major-label oligopoly of Sony, Universal, and Warner, which together owned a 17 percent stake in the company when it launched. The companies, which controlled roughly 70 percent of the market for recorded music, held considerable negotiating power from the start.
But while Ek’s company was paying labels and publishers a lot of money—some 70 percent of its revenue—it had yet to turn a profit itself, something shareholders would soon demand. In theory, Spotify had any number of options: raising subscription rates, cutting costs by downsizing operations, or finding ways to attract new subscribers.
--- start quote ---
This is what so infuriating about all these articles: they never ever address the actual problems in the music industry
Not really, it's a collaboration since Spotify actively promotes these third parties because they cost less royalties
Incidentally, in the Netherlands a lot of supermarkets stock a 'shared house brand' called Gwoon. Usually the cheapest option by far and decent quality. I don't know what they do to keep prices as low as actual house brands, but it seems possible.
Common products are actually not that expensive if you don't have to pay leeches like marketing agencies and investors.
However, if it was possible, I would set a threshold maybe based on an annual revenue. Let’s say I run a small board game store, where I sell games from other producers, but also my own games that I published. I’m a small entrepreneur, should I be prohibited from exposing my products more?
Amazon, Spotify and some supermarket chains have such a dominant position in some markets they can abuse their position, they should be under scrutiny, but not small retail companies that want to try to create something on their own
Such a downfall for what could've been a nice company in the long run. And disrupting them is now harder than ever due to consolidation.
I know of at least one record label that specialises in releasing game music and I’ve seen Amon Tobin (producer who make the soundtrack for a Splinter Cell game, amongst other things) live.
Movie and game composers are literally work for hire. It's their employers who may or may not release a record related to that employer's work that may or may not credit the people involved.
Even the extremely successful and popular composers are not necessarily releasing records or doing live shows. Even John Williams is primarily a conductor and a classical composer who didn't really start "touring" until 2002 or so. Same for Hans Zimmer. He doesn't release "records". Studios hiring him release movie soundtracks for which he was specifically hired. Etc.
According to your definition of "legitimate artists" these artists are not legitimate.
For example, I'll say: "OK Google, Play 'Hey Jude' by 'The Beatles'". Sometimes I'll get that song. But many others I'll get "Hey Jude" by a Beatles tribute band... I wouldn't be surprised if the version by the tribute band is cheaper to play.
However, whenever I used Spotify's own voice control via my Spotify Car Thing before they bricked it, it got me the exact song I wanted every single time, so I doubt there's some nefarious scheme on Spotify's part.
But sometimes, I want to put something on in the background that doesn't call attention to itself, but just sets a mood. I don't want Brian Eno or Miles Davis because then I'd be paying attention -- I just want "filler".
And I have absolutely no problem with Spotify partnering with companies to produce that music, at a lower cost to Spotify, and seeding that in their own playlists. If the musicians are getting paid by the hour rather than by the stream, that's still a good gig when you consider that they don't have to do 99% of the rest of the work usually involved in producing and marketing an album only to have nobody listen to it.
The article argues that this is "stealing" from "normal" artists, but that's absurd. Artists don't have some kind of right to be featured on Spotify's playlists. This is more like a supermarket featuring their store-brand corn flakes next to Kellogg's Corn Flakes. The supermarket isn't stealing from Kellogg's. Consumers can still choose what they want to listen to. And if they want to listen to some background ambient music that is lower cost for Spotify, that's just the market working.
How does Spotify decide what you listen to? Does Amazon _decide_ what you buy on their website too?
Spotify is a different type of situation given the mode of consumption, but there is absolutely an argument to be made that we shouldn't, as a matter of ideology, allow distributors to also be producers.
I totally agree that Amazon doing this when they claim to be an open market is way scummier, but I am divided on the Spotify example. If they were somehow stopping you from playing non-house-produced music that would be one thing, but it seems fine for them to put together playlists with house-produced music and offer them to users?
I agree with that. The big difference to me is market share. Amazon and Spotify are both 800 lb gorillas who want to control the market. Trader Joes has a business model that's intended to compete in the market. Amazon and Spotify should have to play by much more strict rules in order to maintain their market dominance - that's healthy for a capitalist system, it prevents our current dilemma with consolidation and oligarchy.
> If they were somehow stopping you from playing non-house-produced music that would be one thing, but it seems fine for them to put together playlists with house-produced music and offer them to users?
Yeah, I also agree the Spotify example is more nebulous and harder to define. IMO they should not be allowed to produce the music or cut preferential deals to promote one artist over another, but the should be free to package and distribute the music they have the rights to however they see fit. I.E. they can promote <some artist> over <some other artist> they just can't do it because they made a preferential deal with the former.
Edit: I have not looked into market share deeply but others in this thread have said the Spotify market share is ~31%, which does not seem obviously overwhelming to me.
That is more a result of how insanely the US structures intellectual property rights. The problem is that one company having that much marketshare usually creates a defacto private regulator of the industry, which goes against the whole notion of people being governed based on consent.
This isn't really much different than Amazon using sales data from third party products to decide what Amazon Basics products to create, and then also featuring those products higher in search, recommending them over third-parties in recommendations, and so on, and then never featuring those third parties in any of their lists or categories unless you explicitly search for them.
If Spotify's behavior wasn't inherently sketchy and full of underhanded motive, they wouldn't be hiding what they're doing and lying about everything. They wouldn't be manufacturing fake artists and publishing one artist's creations under a dozen other names. They'd just create a store brand playlist, like "Spotify Essentials", label everything that way, pitch it as "a curated selection of tracks produced and mastered exclusively for Spotify listeners", and then maybe make a cheaper subscription tier for just essentials, or stream those tracks at higher quality.
Instead, what they're doing is one step better than just mass-generating AI slop, but I guarantee you that as soon as the technology is there that's what they'll be doing: training an AI on all this music that they own the rights to and using that to produce more music so that they don't have to pay anyone else for theirs.
[0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/653926/music-streaming-s...
Like, I get why this feels scummy, but I use Spotify often and have literally never used one of these playlists. They haven't forced me to listen to anything.
Spotify doesn't decide a thing. Everything I listen to on Spotify is based on what I chose to listen to. I have to choose to listen to background music, and choose a Spotify playlist over someone else's.
> I use Spotify to find new artists so I can follow their artistic journey and see them in concert.
So do I. This doesn't take away from that at all. That's "real" music which is most of my listening. But when I want "background" music, I can put on one of these Spotify playlists if I want. But that doesn't affect my ability to find new artists and follow them. If I'm putting on background music that I don't want to draw my attention, those are not artists I'd be following to begin with. It's like a different category of music entirely. What's wrong with Spotify providing both?
> What's wrong with Spotify providing both?
Spotify shouldn't be anything but a dumb pipe. Corporate money should not be dictating what art we gets produced and we have access to. It does, of course, across multiple industries, but that's generally a very bad thing.
That's the absolute last thing I want.
I've found so much music through its radio recommendations, it's "artists like this", getting into a new genre via its curated playlists.
The primary value proposition to me of Spotify is to not be a dumb pipe, but to actively assist me in discovering new music I like.
There are lots of services I could choose to access music through (Apple, Amazon, Tidal, etc.), if all I wanted was a dumb pipe. I pick Spotify because of how much better its recommendations are over the other services, in my experience.
But that's not taking away any choice, it's only adding to it. Sometimes I choose to listen to stuff I know I like, and Spotify algorithms play zero part in that. Sometimes I want new stuff, and Spotify algorithms and playlists are a huge help. They're not "dictating" anything to me, because I'm actively choosing to use them.
> Everything I listen to on Spotify is based on what I chose to listen to.
I'm not saying these contradict, but you are in fact allowing a corporate entity to dictate your music taste on some level. Payola means certain artists pay to get prioritized to you. Maybe it doesn't work on you! Maybe you like this. Maybe your taste surrounds an area of music where payola isn't a problem. All of these are possibilities.
To me, that's a very large problem. To you, that's what you're paying for. That's fine, but we're going to continue to disagree over whether or not Spotify is destroying the music industry and music culture. To me, this is exactly the opposite of how technology should assist in connecting artists to listeners and paying artists.
But whatever; we really have no say at the end of the day, we're kind of just stuck with what we have.
I think that's a very weird way of characterizing it.
That's like saying, when I choose to watch a movie at the theaters, I am in fact allowing a corporate entity to dictate what I watch for the next two hours.
True in some sort of technical sense I suppose. But I still chose to watch the film in the first place. So I don't really know what there is to complain about.
(And I haven't noticed any kind of payola in Spotify radio recs or related artists -- but that would definitely be a decrease in quality that could send me to another service. In their editorial playlists, I don't mind though -- I assume it's editorial rather than algorithmic from the start.)
You absolutely are. That's the entire point of trailers.
EDIT: my reading comprehension is poor. Yes, you have to opt in to watching the movies and in this sense you're 100% correct that corporate money isn't dictating what you watch. I think it's a little different in that it's much easier to miss out on music whereas movies can spend more on advertising than they do on production.
I'm not saying this is even avoidable, either. It's just super depressing.
Incidentally the author also grumps that they avoid working with union artists for this purpose—I may be wrong but I thought part of the point of ASCAP and their lot was to require its artists to hew to a uniform, royalty-heavy compensation structure industrywide. So you can’t just go throw them $1700 a song (as Spotify is alleged to be doing in TFA) and call it a day.
It sounds like your critique might apply more squarely to the generative music startups. Suno for example has gotten completely surreal, sounding spookily “real” in no time at all. Insipid, but stunning as a simulacrum.
I imagine if we asked them, they’d counter that they’re expanding and democratizing access to creative tools, just as Snapchat filters satisfy dilettantes but don’t reduce pros’ need for Photoshop. And that to the extent they threaten to cannibalize any part of the status quo, it’s precisely the commoditized, sync/stock/“background music” end of the industry that needs to worry. That is, the ones who need to worry are the people doing the kinds of work that make this author uncomfortable.
So I don’t disagree with your basic point. But it seems to me that nobody has ever been putting their concert dollars toward the Bossa Nova stylings of Spotify’s Chill Jazzy Fireside, live at a corporate canteen near you…
If you don't like what Spotify gives you, you can use another service that does. Clearly most people don't seem to mind.
An aside—I firmly believe that there's a genetic component to this or something. I can sleep to structurally complicated metal music or jazz or symphonic stuff—in fact these genres are fantastic for entering productive flows—but if you throw on pop music with lyrics I can't focus at all.
More enshittification on the altar of selfish growth.
I'm not surprised in the least.
this is similar to Apple creating an app that does the same thing as your app, and then strategically promoting that app in the App store rankings while relegating your app to be very hard to discover and fall into oblivion
or Microsoft making it hard to use Netscape on Windows by pushing IE on you
it's called using your position as a platform to push your own products; a typical monopoly play
> This is more like a supermarket featuring their store-brand corn flakes next to Kellogg's Corn Flakes.
No, it's not like that at all. firstly, a store doesn't promote itself as a neutral discovery platform. secondly, their store brand sitting next to some other brand on shelf is equal discovery opportunity for the customer. Adding their own tracks to playlists and pushing them to the top of the rankings is not equal discovery. It's like having your non-store brand flakes in a back room where if you happen to ask the store employee they'll go back and find them for you and otherwise you don't even know they exist
many users were not coming to the platform to listen to specific artists or albums; they just needed something to serve as a soundtrack for their days, like a study playlist or maybe a dinner soundtrack
Production music is booming today thanks to a digital environment in which a growing share of internet traffic comes from video and audio. Generations of YouTube and TikTok influencers strive to avoid the complicated world of sync licensing (short for music synchronization licensing, the process of acquiring rights to play music in the background of audiovisual content) and the possibility of content being removed for copyright violations. Companies like Epidemic Sound purport to solve this problem, claiming to simplify sync licensing by offering a library of pre-cleared, royalty-free production music for a monthly or yearly subscription fee. They also provide in-store music for retail outlets, in the tradition of muzak.
a lot of the 'ghost' tracks also come from actual ghost producers who moved from making ghost productions for labels to doing it indie.
not all producers are some kind of artist brand or make consistently the same theme of music every track. i got tons of projects i out stuff under, like categories.. some have 1 track, others lots. (no i dont make money from it, but often ppl do... just a few buck on the side)
All of these things suck for artists but they also suck for consumers. The product is slowly getting worse but at a rate where nobody notices until there will be little quality left.
I also find it staggering how little empathy my fellow software developers have for artists. If AI does eventually decimate the number of software dev jobs I'm sure you'll be as pragmatic as you expect others to be.
Take all the easy listening covers that every single cafe seems to be playing on end. It’s the perfect storm:
Cafe wants quiet music and music customers know. Spotify wants to pay only songwriting royalty instead of both songwriting and performance royalties.
According to this article musicians get $0.022 from Qobuz per stream when Deezer pays $0.0064 ($0.00437 for Spotify).
https://www.lalal.ai/blog/how-much-streaming-services-pay-ar...
The real fraud Spotify hasn't done enough to address is when these AI-generated albums show up under real artist profiles https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/10/spotify-criticiz...
I don't think this is limited to streaming. I think other companies have similar schemes for other types of media and interactions, and one of the main uses of generative AI will be to create it.
At some point, the path of least friction will guide us into having chatbot friends, read AI-generated articles, and consume either anonymous filler or outright AI generated artistic media.
And it makes decent music. In multiple languages and musical styles. Helps if you know a bit of music theory.
Shameless plug: My musical - in - progress : https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6CFiKHtsvsntUmyVe6VSm302...
These are the farm animal characters that I have been writing for kids about my farm except kids don’t want to read anymore. I think I can make this work.
- Skew of supply and demand. There will be always be another musician willing to earn less money because they still get to do their ”dream job”.
- The need for background music. No matter how joyless it feels to produce this stuff, there’s a need for it.
I think companies like Epidemic offers an alternative route for musicians to earn some money on the side of their artistic vision.
Biggest issue which is more a philosophical one is how Spotify is shaping how we consume music.
The author acts like this ghost thing ruined spotify for artists. I think artists realized it was a ripoff long before that.
Ah, somebody who appreciates the finer things in life. Our LectroFan will more than likely remain at our bedside until our dying days.
FYI Baby Shark was basically a public domain song when PinkFong made their version.
It's glorious, being a digital prepper.
Ah. So that's where all those appallingly bad covers of Xmas music heard in stores are coming from.
True, but there is more music than any group of people can ever listen to. Is aggregating blogs like Hype Machine, or reviewing songs like Pitchfork or the New Yorker, any better? The alternatives to collaborative filtering are different shades of nepotism; or, making barriers to entry much, much higher.
reading a review is not the same level of passivity as something being algorithmically inserted into your existing Spotify playlists (“smart shuffle”) or something else that will inevitably be used to shut out artists to juice quarterly reports
I think you’re on to something with “consolidation/centralization is bad”, and that’s what this article is about: the centralization of music discovery into Spotify resulting in a situation where they choose what people get to discover, in an unnatural way. Unless I’m misunderstanding, the article is about Spotify putting their thumb on the collaborative filtering scales, to the benefit of themselves and their business partners.
Spotify put its thumb on the scales by changing the contents of named playlists, which are more like radio stations. They are Spotify creations and curations, and they are choosing to curate more explicitly.
The alternative is that the New Yorker authors a playlist of its daily new tracks you should listen to. 100% of those tracks that belong to nobodies / bonafide new artists, those artists would have to know someone at the New Yorker to appear on such a playlist. In radio, this took the form of pay to play.
The practice described in TFA aligns with their union busting and they are fundamentally a politically activist organisation rather than a business trying to serve a market. Piratbyrån, which started the Pirate Bay, was a rather socialist project, and Spotify did basically the same thing but as reactionary activism that subsequently was accepted by the entertainment industry elites.
If you enjoy background noise, just go for some web radio, there are tens of thousands of channels, many ad free. When you hear an artist you like there's a good chance they're on Bandcamp so you go there and give them ten bucks. Try Transistor in F-Droid for example.
Unless, of course, you support the politics Spotify represent. Then your monthly fee is a more direct donation than going through a political party that will then use state bureaucracy and so on to funnel money and power from work to owners.
This is no different to working for a salary and not getting equity. And being a star has always been more about exposure than talent.
It's a shame for the real artists trying to write bland crap though. But the fault is with listeners. And let's face it, most musicians are probably only doing it hoping to one day become a star and get loaded... which is why there's so much competition.
All we can really say is Spotify etc and powerful DAWs have broken down barriers to being able to make and release music, which should be a good thing shouldn't it?
But yeah, Spotify stuffing playlists with their choices instead of popular music sounds bad... except only playing popular music would only reward the early birds on the platforms, so that's a tricky one too...
Have you ever bought a CD in the days of CDs because you heard a song or two from the album on the radio and found that only those that you'd already heard were any good? Hair metal was particularly rife with this. Flower power stuff from the 60s stands out, mostly utter hot garbage, you can find entire mixes of the low quality knockoff crap getting sold at night on PBS. There are people that have every motley crue album (and not just the first 2 like more cultured people such as myself), and listen to them regularly. There has always been a massive market for low quality garbage.
Radio stations used to get paid to put crap in rotation. Anyone remember Limp Bizkit? They got famous by buying slots on Seattle radio stations. Who didn't grow out of that garbage? A lot of people, unfortunately.
You've got playlists, played by lazy people that don't care about anything but the mood or vibe, that they didn't curate, going on in the background while they ride the elevator and youre surprised that it's elevator music? How often do you hear billboard top 100 hits while on hold with the cable company? Complain when someone tries to play one of those tracks and a cover band plays instead, that's when someone is getting screwed over.
Subscription services have always been and will always be a race to the bottom. Quality art has always had to be manually curated by the enjoyer. The best stuff has always been hidden behind the stuff people were trying to sell you. People looking to squeeze out an extra buck were always willing to sell lower quality to those who would tolerate it. So if you don't want low quality crap in your life, take the time to pick what's in your life and pay fairly for it. There was never going to be a miracle cure to the downfall of the music industry for the low low price of ten dollars a month.
I know that artists often just treat digital download sales as a donation mechanism, akin to a busker’s money can. But I want to pay for music, not donate to artists who are then handing that along to streaming services by giving them their music practically for free.
I’m not sure if my feelings about this are justified, or if they’re irrational.