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What makes the artists fake is that they are publishing only a couple songs for the specific purpose of providing the streaming platform with royalty free music

by aimor 5y ago

What makes the artists fake is that they are publishing only a couple songs for the specific purpose of providing the streaming platform with royalty free music, and then they disappear. The example pictures in the article show artists that have published 6 minutes and 8 minutes of music. There's also a statistic that 20 people created 500 artists. These artists are shells, facades, illusory, fake. Go looking for them and it's a dead end because apparently all the artist did was publish two songs and dissolve. The author does criticize the title: "Even the term fake artists doesn’t really do justice to the scope of the situation—because, as we have seen, it’s not the musicians, real or otherwise, who are at the root of the situation, but the dominant players in the industry." If I were to run with it I'd say the streaming platform is also fake. People buy it expecting a curated playlist of music they want to hear, and instead what they get is a curated playlist of music that sounds similar to what they want to hear.

tyrfing 5y ago
> What makes the artists fake is that they are publishing only a couple songs for the specific purpose of providing the streaming platform with royalty free music The article has 3 examples. Two have easily identified 3rd-party labels, the last is unclear. Neither is a traditional label, but there is also no indication they are owned by Spotify. > People buy it expecting a curated playlist of music they want to hear, and instead what they get is a curated playlist of music that sounds similar to what they want to hear. What bands would people expect in a playlist of background music? In fact, one is from a provider of royalty-free background music - which seems like exactly what you would expect in such a playlist. You could argue that it's not really jazz, which is understandable, but I'll file that gripe along with my anger that "New Metal Tracks" features lots of metalcore.
- aimor 5y ago
  I definitely had the wrong impression of how much music was produced by the examples given. It's not just "two songs and dissolve".
- Semaphor 4y ago
  > but I'll file that gripe along with my anger that "New Metal Tracks" features lots of metalcore. Metalcore is the top 100 music of metal, I doubt it’s going to change anytime soon. I’d guess what ever is not metalcore, is probably cheesy power metal like Sabaton or Gloryhammer.
larkinnaire 5y ago
If these people create real music, "fake" seems like the wrong adjective. It's very common for musicians to be involved in a bunch of different bands, or even for the same group of people to release music under different band names, for when they want to experiment with stuff that isn't their normal band's "brand". What's being described sounds like SEO optimization to me. A recent Reply All episode interviewed someone who is very successful at Spotify SEO: https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/j4he7lv https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/j4he7lv
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- galaxyLogic 4y ago
  But what if Spotify pays somebody a salary to create this music, then artificially pushes it up their search-results so people will play it which means they will play less of the music created by independent artists, which means Spotify has to pay fewer royalties to the independent artists. It would be a bit like if Google-search for some product showed products created by Google on top of the list, but not really even revealing they were products by Google. I have no information about if this kind of thing is happening but the article suggests there is evidence to suspect it is. Weird artists nobody knows about being on top of the list. How did they get to be top of the list?
vintermann 4y ago
> People buy it expecting a curated playlist of music they want to hear, and instead what they get is a curated playlist of music that sounds similar to what they want to hear. Streaming services betray their users expectations in many ways. For instance, Spotify has playlists that are called "This is [artist]" for many artists, and you could reasonably believe they were human made, or at least partially human made (unless Spotify served you up one for a very obscure artist, but they rarely do). But they aren't even looked at by a human. If you have several artists with the same name, it all gets mixed up in the "This is X" playlist. "This is Glenn Jones" contains music both by the guitarist Glenn Jones, the soul singer Glenn Jones, and the Australian country singer Glenn Jones.

by aimor 5y ago

tyrfing 5y ago

> What makes the artists fake is that they are publishing only a couple songs for the specific purpose of providing the streaming platform with royalty free music The article has 3 examples. Two have easily identified 3rd-party labels, the last is unclear. Neither is a traditional label, but there is also no indication they are owned by Spotify. > People buy it expecting a curated playlist of music they want to hear, and instead what they get is a curated playlist of music that sounds similar to what they want to hear. What bands would people expect in a playlist of background music? In fact, one is from a provider of royalty-free background music - which seems like exactly what you would expect in such a playlist. You could argue that it's not really jazz, which is understandable, but I'll file that gripe along with my anger that "New Metal Tracks" features lots of metalcore.

aimor 5y ago
I definitely had the wrong impression of how much music was produced by the examples given. It's not just "two songs and dissolve".
Semaphor 4y ago
> but I'll file that gripe along with my anger that "New Metal Tracks" features lots of metalcore. Metalcore is the top 100 music of metal, I doubt it’s going to change anytime soon. I’d guess what ever is not metalcore, is probably cheesy power metal like Sabaton or Gloryhammer.

larkinnaire 5y ago

If these people create real music, "fake" seems like the wrong adjective. It's very common for musicians to be involved in a bunch of different bands, or even for the same group of people to release music under different band names, for when they want to experiment with stuff that isn't their normal band's "brand". What's being described sounds like SEO optimization to me. A recent Reply All episode interviewed someone who is very successful at Spotify SEO: https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/j4he7lv https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/j4he7lv

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
galaxyLogic 4y ago
But what if Spotify pays somebody a salary to create this music, then artificially pushes it up their search-results so people will play it which means they will play less of the music created by independent artists, which means Spotify has to pay fewer royalties to the independent artists. It would be a bit like if Google-search for some product showed products created by Google on top of the list, but not really even revealing they were products by Google. I have no information about if this kind of thing is happening but the article suggests there is evidence to suspect it is. Weird artists nobody knows about being on top of the list. How did they get to be top of the list?

vintermann 4y ago

> People buy it expecting a curated playlist of music they want to hear, and instead what they get is a curated playlist of music that sounds similar to what they want to hear. Streaming services betray their users expectations in many ways. For instance, Spotify has playlists that are called "This is [artist]" for many artists, and you could reasonably believe they were human made, or at least partially human made (unless Spotify served you up one for a very obscure artist, but they rarely do). But they aren't even looked at by a human. If you have several artists with the same name, it all gets mixed up in the "This is X" playlist. "This is Glenn Jones" contains music both by the guitarist Glenn Jones, the soul singer Glenn Jones, and the Australian country singer Glenn Jones.