28 ms·

Ghost artists on Spotify

• timoth3y 2y ago
  The entire history of the music business is one of attorneys developing ever more inventive ways of screwing over musicians. 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.
  • amelius 2y ago
    It's a good demonstration of how the simple and seemingly solid foundations of our free market can still lead to extreme unfairness.
    • equestria 2y ago
      If a customer wants endless elevator music, then I don't think that Spotify is wrong to generate endless elevator music for them. The problem is deception. If you want to listen to human performances, then Spotify should give you choice instead of hoping you don't notice. 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.
      • text0404 2y ago
        "we" care - the businesses that have inserted themselves as middlemen to extract profit have found that it's cheaper to deceive consumers, drag the quality of art down, and eliminate artists from art completely (or at least what a business executive thinks art is). _those_ are the people who don't care if artists go away. we as human beings are worse off for it.
        • equestria 2y ago
          Well, then again: maybe Spotify was hoping you wouldn't notice, but by now, the problem has been exposed publicly a number of times. This article is one of many. 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.
          • amelius 2y ago
            You cannot blame consumers for the literal failure of the free market. Consumer psychology is what it is, you cannot change it, and actors in the free market will gladly abuse it where they can.
            • achenet 2y ago
              how is Spotify generating a bunch of of royalty free music in a way that kinda screws over the actual musicians making that music, which, for the musicians, isn't much worse than getting screwed over by record labels and may even be better in some ways [0], in order to meet the market's desire for "Chill Lo-fi Hip-hop background music"/"Music to Relax and Study"/"Gentle Relaxing Yoga Music" a 'literal failure of the free market'? 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 :) [0] https://thebaffler.com/salvos/the-problem-with-music https://thebaffler.com/salvos/the-problem-with-music
        • troupo 2y ago
          You mean the business that lets you listen to your favorite music on nearly any device in existence with seamless switching between them is actually a good business, and the actual middle men are these (quote from the article): --- 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 --- ?
      • harry8 2y ago
        Having trouble generating much ripoff sympathy for someone who wants to listen to elevator music and feels ripped off because they can't tell the difference between human and algorithm. They've lost what that wasn't already long gone for them? That I have sympathy for, how could we not?
      • the_af 2y ago
        > If a customer wants endless elevator music, then I don't think that Spotify is wrong to generate endless elevator music for them. 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...
        • equestria 2y ago
          Oh, come on. Not everything is addiction. I can accept that algorithmic doom-scrolling is somewhat habit-forming, but even there, we have agency. But background music? Yeah, I like it, but I don't get restless or frustrated when it's not playing.
          • the_af 2y ago
            Maybe addicting wasn't the right word, but more about reward vs effort. 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...
        • bee_rider 2y ago
          Depends on the situation. While working, I think lots of us listen to music where the main merit is being non-distracting. In this case, effort is not so important. If I’m actually listening to the music, I’ll want it to be good.
          • imajoredinecon 2y ago
            You should try working in a compiled language. I need good music to listen to while I wait for gcc to do its thing
            • bee_rider 2y ago
      • 09thn34v 2y ago
        i agree with you, but i also think that there are some things that are more important, and deserve to be protected outside of the dynamics of the free market. i'd argue that art is one of those things, along with housing, health care, social services, etc.
    • akira2501 2y ago
      The music industry relies on government supported copyrights. Music is often unsaleable unless you have an existing exclusive contract with the label. Royalty rates are set by the government. We're pretty far away from any actual "free market" here.
      • amelius 2y ago
        > The music industry relies on government supported copyrights. 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.
        • akira2501 2y ago
          > The government protects intellectual property rights and they protect physical property rights. 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.
        • occz 2y ago
          There's a crucial difference between intellectual property and physical property - in the case of physical property, someone else having it necessitates that you cannot have it. Intellectual property is infinitely reproducible and someone else having it does not mean you cannot have it.
  • grujicd 2y ago
    Well I care and I would rather use model where my subsbcription gets distributed only to musicians I listen to. As a side effect, all these ghost/fake frauds for milking money would cease to exist.
    • pavel_lishin 2y ago
      Same. I buy mp3s from bandcamp, and upload them to (currently) Google Music (or whatever they decided to call it now), after backing them up to my hard drive.
      • modzu 2y ago
        recently discovered plexamp which is a pretty cool way to stream a local library to the app
  • killjoywashere 2y ago
    How much of my money am I supposed to fork over to streaming companies? Tidal, Qobuz, SoundCloud, YouTube Music, Deezer, Amazon Music, Apple. And how much work am I supposed to invest in migrating my playlists between them? I don't want to invest my time in digging through every new artist (SoundCloud?), at the same time, I occasionally find a deep rabbithole I want to go down. How do I go spelunking if the archive isn't deep and rich?
    • piva00 2y ago
      The same way as it was always done: through effort. 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.
      • nradov 2y ago
        I thought that technology was supposed to save humans from the torture of having to put forth any effort, so that we could just lay back and have all of our wants immediately satisfied. At least that's the utopia I was promised in Wall-E.
        • crtasm 2y ago
          "We have a [record] pool?!"
    • StayTrue 2y ago
      I just migrated my playlists from Spotify to Apple Music. Cobbling together the scripts to do that (without paying a third party service) was hard.
    • Aloha 2y ago
      This is part of why I basically gave up on this and just went with SiriusXM - I like linear programming - less effort for me to engage with.
  • CapsAdmin 2y ago
    Maybe very anecdotal, but I know a genz'er who mostly listens to music on tik tok in short loops.
    • piva00 2y ago
      I got a cab some months ago with a young driver, he'd play a playlist, scrub the song to jump around the 01:00 mark, listen to 30-45s of the chorus, scrub again to find the 2nd chorus, and skip the song afterwards. It was fascinating to experience.
      • justatdotin 2y ago
        I've always known people who do similar. it's weird, but it's not terribly new.
      • dylan604 2y ago
        It's like the exact opposite of the ol' skool DJs skipping all of the choruses to play just the breaks. The guys playing the breaks started a huge movement. Maybe this driver is ahead of the curve and might be making the next big thing in music?? (no, i don't really believe that)
        • anigbrowl 2y ago
          DJs playing records and DJs buying records are two different things. When you're looking for records, it's quick listens and gut decisions to keep or dump. The labor of love is only applied to stuff that makes the keep pile.
          • dylan604 2y ago
            What's you point? You think DJs don't have large collections of vinyl? Tell that to the 15 crates sitting in my room. You think that doing needle drops looking for breaks is any different than doing needle drops for the chorus? You can look at the grooves in the record and read the track. You can easily see where the breaks are, and you can see where the chorus would be. So I'm at a total loss on what you think is different
  • dylan604 2y ago
    > The sad thing (for artists) is that it seems like most Spotify listeners don't care. 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.
  • mattgreenrocks 2y ago
    > The entire history of the music business is one of attorneys developing ever more inventive ways of screwing over musicians. 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.
    • 7e 2y ago
      Look at the kings and chiefs of old. Power grabs are as old as civilization itself. In the case of wolves and lions, even older.
      • mattgreenrocks 2y ago
        For sure. I think what sticks out about now is how brazen those who grab power are now. For whatever reason there's a shamelessness/entitlement about the whole thing that is palpable.
    • anigbrowl 2y ago
      Yes, it's MITM attacks all the way down. Everyone knows it's a scam, but anyone who upsets the applecart is severely punished.
  • NoPicklez 2y ago
    "Most Spotify listeners don't care" 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?
    • ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
      That applies to the users of the software that I write. 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.
  • n144q 2y ago
    > it seems like most Spotify listeners don't care. 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.
  • circlefavshape 2y ago
    > The sad thing (for artists) is that it seems like most Spotify listeners don't care. 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
• doctorpangloss 2y ago
  > Spotify had long marketed itself as the ultimate platform for discovery—and who was going to get excited about “discovering” a bunch of stock music? Artists had been sold the idea that streaming was the ultimate meritocracy—that the best would rise to the top because users voted by listening. But the PFC program undermined all this. 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.
  • tommilburn 2y ago
    i’d argue yes, definitely. those blogs are, at least historically, written by real people with individual taste and preferences that you can use to understand their critique. one might find themselves agreeing with Siskel, and not Ebert. 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
    • doctorpangloss 2y ago
      Yeah. But it is meritocratic? You have to know somebody to get a review in a thing people actually read. My POV is that artists choose the collaborative filtering system because “knowing someone” suits them poorly, and the average musician knows no one, so the average musician is poorly served by nearly all reviewers in blogs.
      • Vegenoid 2y ago
        I think that “meritocracy” is not such a useful concept in the realm of art, where there are not good objective measures of what makes something have “meritocracy”. 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.
• Spivak 2y ago
  The article is far far less bad than I think most people would assume. The meat of the article is one single sentence. > 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.
  • legitster 2y ago
    I think more to the point, there's not a lot of artists who would intentionally and willingly make forgettable ambient music.
  • juujian 2y ago
    As if labels weren't treating 85% of artists bad enough. This just seems like the further corporatization of music, with even more money going to suits.
  • norir 2y ago
    It's bad because these types of practices directly contribute to the degradation of culture and is destroying the market for quality music. Putting aside TikTok for a moment, spotify is largely filling the role that radio used to play. The problem is that by doing this kind of thing, they are taking advantage of a largely captive audience to feed them derivative, second rate music, knowing that many can barely tell the difference. 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.
• kerblang 2y ago
  If one could get sufficient AI for Muzak (not that challenging) into the footprint of a white noise box like LectroFan, would fun & profit ensue, with the bonus of killing spotify? The author acts like this ghost thing ruined spotify for artists. I think artists realized it was a ripoff long before that.
  • smitelli 2y ago
    > LectroFan Ah, somebody who appreciates the finer things in life. Our LectroFan will more than likely remain at our bedside until our dying days.
    • mattgreenrocks 2y ago
      Our son has ours currently, but it sounds so good I might have to get another.
• ausbah 2y ago
  i think there really needs to be a set of laws prohibiting marketplace providers like uber, amazon, and spotify from also offering their own products on the same platform
  • legitster 2y ago
    Despite the headline, it's not actually Spotify creating the music, but third parties taking advantage of their playlist model.
    • Miraltar 2y ago
      > third parties taking advantage of their playlist model. Not really, it's a collaboration since Spotify actively promotes these third parties because they cost less royalties
  • phonetic 2y ago
    Just a question—not meant to sound rude or offensive in any way—but would you also apply this logic to supermarkets offering their own generic brands‽
    • ricardobeat 2y ago
      Why not? That can be construed as abusing their 'monopoly' over shelf space and foot traffic, it's unfair competition that displaces other legitimate businesses. 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.
      • sureIy 2y ago
        > I don't know what they do Common products are actually not that expensive if you don't have to pay leeches like marketing agencies and investors.
    • arnvald 2y ago
• legitster 2y ago
  This article is fascinating. But what's on display here is less of a nefarious plan from Spotify to replace famous Katy Perry with AI - instead we get to see something much more specific: a behind-the-scenes of how those endless chill/lo-fi/ambient playlists get created. 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.
  • CocaKoala 2y ago
    Ah, see, my experience is exactly the opposite of yours; I don't listen to the ChilledCow streams, but I do listen to the Chillhop playlists (and in fact purchase the seasonal essentials collections on vinyl) and one of the reasons I like them is because there's a lot of curation that goes into the playlist and they tend to feature artists that I end up liking - Blue Wednesday, Purple Cat, Joey Pecararo are all reliable artists in the genre for me.
    • nicky0 2y ago
      I like how you called it ChilledCow to show how OG you are.
  • Gigachad 2y ago
    I’m not even mad about it. It’s background music and clearly people are enjoying it. Just because they smashed out 15 tracks in a single session doesn’t make it unfit for purpose. That’s just how Jazz music is.
• juujian 2y ago
  They might work explain why Google home plays anything but the original when my kids ask for baby shark on Spotify? I was wondering why Spotify wouldn't go to the most highy listened artist, that seemed easy to implement.
  • legitster 2y ago
    >the original FYI Baby Shark was basically a public domain song when PinkFong made their version.
• ricardobeat 2y ago
  This is not surprising. Most curated playlists on Spotify feel soul-less, I avoid them almost completely, and this might be one of the reasons. 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.
  • _1ts3 2y ago
    The other DSPs are much more creative and allow room for more interesting music. My experience has been that Amazon is my personal favorite from a curation standpoint. I discovered Yonatan Ayal via amazon meditation programming and his solo stuff is arguably the most interesting ambient record of the year.
• default-kramer 2y ago
  > Discovery Mode, its payola-like program whereby artists accept a lower royalty rate in exchange for algorithmic promotion. Like the PFC program, tracks enrolled in Discovery Mode are unmarked on Spotify; both schemes allow the service to push discount content to users without their knowledge. 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.
• mlsu 2y ago
  Another thing that happens with Spotify playlist is that someone will post something like: "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.
  • crtasm 2y ago
    I don't know if it's still common but I used to run into this with album playlists on Youtube: all the tracks from something famous and then the creator's tracks tacked on the end.
    • montag 2y ago
      I think something like that would be easily detected and penalized. Might explain why you don't see it any more
  • orblivion 2y ago
    Honestly I can't hate random guy, that's a pretty clever tactic. If he's good it'll take off and he deserves it.
  • Eduard 2y ago
    > 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. 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.
    • 2y ago
• marcus_holmes 2y ago
  > This treatment of music as nothing but background sounds—as interchangeable tracks of generic, vibe-tagged playlist fodder—is at the heart of how music has been devalued in the streaming era. 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.
  • munchler 2y ago
    Yes, and this is what Brian Eno had in mind when he coined the term "ambient music": "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.
    • klabb3 2y ago
      There is a problem though. If you mix high effort with low effort content you will get a distortion compared to the perceived initial market. The economic equilibrium in any platform is the bang for the buck in effort-per-engagement. This holds true for YouTube as well, where the most serious channels (like MentourPilot) can’t rely on YouTube rev-share alone. So they use different revenue channels, like Patreon etc. Without it, we would not see the amount of quality content that we do today. The highest engagement per effort is clickbaity. Now, go to LinkedIn or Facebook, where the dials are tuned differently, and observe a barrage of absolute garbage. 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.
• dools 2y ago
  Isn't this just like how supermarkets have their "house brands" that compete with name brands? If your consumption of music amounts to "whatever Spotify tells me to listen to" then chances are you were the type of person who used to just have the radio on for background noise anyway. 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.
  • pests 2y ago
    Its not in reverse though. 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.
    • dools 2y ago
      > 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. 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.
    • big-green-man 2y ago
      If you walk into a steakhouse and order the porterhouse and you get taco bell Beefy™ meat, that's one thing. If you pay the restaurant a monthly retainer to feed you steak whenever you feel like wandering in and you get such treatment, you weren't really ripped off. 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.
• mholm 2y ago
  I encountered this last Christmas: My parents were running a Christmas music playlist. All the bangers, the Mariah Carey’s and Mannheim Steamrollers, and maybe 1/10 songs were this really soft yet bad piano playing. So I look into it and this guy gets $200,000 per year, just slipping his inoffensive slop into popular playlists he created and got to the top of Spotify search
  • sitkack 2y ago
    I'd love to see their Settlers of Catan game.
    • foota 2y ago
      Huh?
      • pinkmuffinere 2y ago
        The implication is that the artist has very creative strategies. It would be fun to see what they come up with in settlers
        • foota 2y ago
          That's a lot of leaps for me, but seems like a possible interpretation (certainly better than any I came up with).
  • pinkmuffinere 2y ago
    Wow this is brilliant. I’m on the fence about whether I should be mad — they’re providing a service (curating “all the bangers”), and they have discovered a way to profit from the service. On net I think they’ve made the world a better place???
  • circlefavshape 2y ago
    $200,000 per year from running Spotify playlists? Citation needed - that is wildly implausible
• big-green-man 2y ago
  I'm not a Spotify user, but I've got to go against the grain here and say "who cares?" 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.
  • Vegenoid 2y ago
    I agree. I have left streaming services, and rely on purchasing digital downloads of albums to obtain music. I am very into a niche subgenre of electronic music where many artists don’t have their music available on streaming services. I pay for those albums (if I like the music, obviously) and I am happy about it. I also fairly happily pay $3-5 for an album that is available on streaming services. But when I encounter albums that are on streaming platforms, but cost $10+ for the digital download, it’s a hard pill to swallow. I want to give them money for their music, but to do so I must give them vastly more than their listeners on streaming platforms give them. 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.
• _1ts3 2y ago
  I run a label that has direct deals with certain major DSPs. We do over a billion streams a year. 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.
  • ksynwa 2y ago
    What's the wellness category about?
    • _1ts3 2y ago
      Outcome based music generally - sleep, meditation, yoga, focus, etc.
  • eleveriven 2y ago
    On one hand, it’s a way to guarantee visibility and streams... On the other, it seems like another symptom of how streaming has commodified music... (I'm talking about the reduced payouts for preferential playlist treatment)
  • chr15m 2y ago
    > I’ve made tracks that I’m quite proud of in 90 minutes that have done 20+ million streams. Regardless of the ethics that's quite incredible!
  • Yeul 2y ago
    I honestly don't give a shit about music nor artists. Never have. But I'm at the gym about 3 hours a week and need a soundtrack so I like to listen to synthwave that the Spotify AI recommends me. Spotify seems to trigger the hell out of music purists...
• Animats 2y ago
  “music commissioned to fit a certain playlist/mood with improved margins” Ah. So that's where all those appallingly bad covers of Xmas music heard in stores are coming from.
  • bee_rider 2y ago
    I mean we had appallingly bad Xmas songs in the 90’s as well. They just had a more limited selection.
  • onemoresoop 2y ago
    Imagine working in a store and hearing that over and over. It’s pure torture
• DoingIsLearning 2y ago
  If you are a Spotify user please make an active effort to seek and listen to artists _albums_. Playlist are a worse experience (unless you make them) and only play into Spotify's pocket. 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.
  • eptcyka 2y ago
    Also consider paying for music on bandcamp or elsewhere.
  • Kiro 2y ago
    > - You are listening to the artists vision/journey. The songs are not played in isolation but as part of a collective arrangement. 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.
    • thequux 2y ago
      This tends to be true of mamy of the artists that chart, but less so for indie bands. I see Major Parkinson's Blackbox and Magna Carta Cartel's The Dying Option as two of the best albums of the century so far, for example.
      • Kiro 2y ago
        I don't think that's an accurate distinction. I think maybe it has more to do with the genre (e.g. more common in rock and less so in the electronic music that I listen to, where it's mostly EP driven). 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).
    • 2y ago
• tivert 2y ago
  > It puts forth an image of a future in which—as streaming services push music further into the background, and normalize anonymous, low-cost playlist filler—the relationship between listener and artist might be severed completely. 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.
  • onemoresoop 2y ago
    It’s already happening all over social media
• Animats 2y ago
  This business model goes way back, to long before streaming. The Seeburg 1000 [1] was a background music player sold to restaurants and stores. Like Musak, it was a service, but used a local player. New sets of disks were delivered once a month or so. 1000 songs in a set, hence the name. 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. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2Y6OKy4AMc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2Y6OKy4AMc
  • nitwit005 2y ago
    I was not aware that dated back to records. Appreciate the YouTube link.
    • Animats 2y ago
      Seeburg had the whole concept - blah music intended only for background use, total ownership of the content, several different playlists for industrial, commercial, and dining settings, and their own distribution system. 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] [1] http://198.178.121.76:8157/stream http://198.178.121.76:8157/stream [2] https://us.moodmedia.com/sound/music-for-business/ https://us.moodmedia.com/sound/music-for-business/
      • Eduard 2y ago
        > Here's a free stream from a Seeburg 1000, from Radio Coast: http://198.178.121.76:8157/stream http://198.178.121.76:8157/stream They are currently playing a seasonal Christmas playlist that gives me better vibes than any Spotify Christmas playlist. https://radiocoastcom.godaddysites.com/ https://radiocoastcom.godaddysites.com/ https://tunein.com/radio/RadioCoast-s248470 https://tunein.com/radio/RadioCoast-s248470
• eleveriven 2y ago
  It’s particularly concerning that Spotify’s actions prioritize cheaper, anonymous tracks over legitimate artist contributions
  • nicky0 2y ago
    What makes an artist "legitimate"?
    • iamacyborg 2y ago
      They release records and play shows.
      • nicky0 2y ago
        I hear what you are saying but that's kind of an established-music-industry centric view. There are all kinds of musicians, not just "recording artists" in the 20th century industry mold.
        • eleveriven 2y ago
          There’s a rich diversity of musicians beyond the traditional "recording artist" mold. My concern is less about sticking to the established industry model and more about ensuring platforms support creators whose work reflects genuine artistic effort and expression
      • troupo 2y ago
        That somehow makes people who create music for games and movies not legitimate artists.
        • iamacyborg 2y ago
          Do those not also get released as records and do those artists not also do live shows? 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.
• caporaltito 2y ago
  So what? We are talking about low-fi, chill music and smooth jazz; these genres already sound AI generated from the start. And this won't stop people from making music as well, maybe just deny them to get paid for making a track in half an hour on Fruity Loops.
• notpushkin 2y ago
  I've met a guy doing this a fee years ago, way before AI boom. He said it's a pretty easy way to get some cash if you know how to automate things. I'm wondering if it's even easier now, or the competition made it harder actually.
• wodenokoto 2y ago
  I find the PFC program utterly unsurprising. 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.
• nprateem 2y ago
  Artists paid upfront to write songs they'd never write that only get millions of listens when forced on users can't really complain they aren't getting big enough royalties. The whole point is their music is bland. 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...
• anilakar 2y ago
  The whole ContentID system is irreversibly broken as long as people are allowed to submit content for registration over the internet and not in person under penalty of perjury. 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 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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVbZT1iFnlM
  • NobodyNada 2y ago
    > uses a free track from Kevin MacLeod, also used in Kerbal Space Program. This means KSP gameplay videos get monetized. 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 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.
• 2d8a875f-39a2-4 2y ago
  Yet another article that purports to show concern for artists being exploited by big bad streaming providers, but is in fact written out of concern for the record labels and distributors who are no longer able to exploit said artists as completely as possible. "Legacy rent seeker is alarmed that a newer rent seeker is cutting them out" would be a more accurate title.
  • Eduard 2y ago
    you didn't read the article.
• sim7c00 2y ago
  its a music platform where u can find music... don need to be some fancypants 'artist' to make music.. often music from libraries like some mentioned there are simply ppl makin music for money, not like an artist but like a job... they offer u the ability to make ur own lists if u wanna be elitist on whos an actual artist and 'who deserves to be on spotify'... 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)
• Aeolun 2y ago
  Why do artists feel that Spotify is obligated to put them on their own playlists? This whole argument rings hollow. They’re basically salty that nobody cares about their music in specific, and that any slop sounding vaguely like the genre is apparently good enough for people.
• EastSmith 2y ago
  Wait, the music mafia industry is finally getting out-mafia-ed?
• GuB-42 2y ago
  I am the only one to be a bit upset by the term "fake artist"? 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".
  • sickcodebruh 2y ago
    They are given fake names and identities in the platform in a deliberate intent to mislead the audience, deprive the real author of credit, and hide the real source of the work the major record labels. “Fake artist” is a generous term.
    • RandallBrown 2y ago
      Lots of artists use "fake" names and don't write their music. Occasionally they don't even perform it.
    • pxoe 2y ago
      what is an artist name, alias, etc. if not a fake name? should people be forced to put their government id name on display to be deemed real artists? 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?
      • diggan 2y ago
        Indeed, ghost writing/producing being so popular in the ecosystem that if a "Real-name mandate" happened over-night, much of the industry would be in shambles as people realize most superstars don't write and/or produce their own music.
        • 2y ago
• Concrete3286 2y ago
  This is a really interesting look behind the scenes. I don't have a problem with algorithmically generated playlists or even music, but I also enjoy human curation and have found it essential for discovering new artists and sounds. Music drives people - there will always be human makers and curators. Seek them out and pay them if you believe it is worth it.
• basisword 2y ago
  Surprised to see most of the comments here defending this practice. It's more Enshittification and it's only going to get worse. They've already stopped paying artists who get under 1000 streams (per track per year I think) and they offer 'marketing' opportunities for artists where they'll show your track more but pay you a cut rate. They also changed some terms recently (I can no longer find the article) to make clear that curated playlists can include tracks that have paid to be there. 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.
  • greenie_beans 2y ago
    we need a better word than "enshittification". reading that word is like fingernails on chalkboard to me.
    • basisword 2y ago
      tbh I also hate it :)
    • onemoresoop 2y ago
      Like what, worsening? Enshitification is context specific, it’s not a beautiful word for sure but the situation is not beautifil either so it matches this word IMO
      • greenie_beans 2y ago
        does it need to be like an onomatopoeia? the word "precariat" was invented to describe a specific flaw of capitalism and at least it has good phonemes
• luisgvv 2y ago
  I feel cheated, will definitely look into curated playlists by users rather than the generated garbage.
• paradygm 2y ago
  I've made a game out of my Discover Weekly and Release Radar playlists, seeing how good I am at detecting the AI stuff. "Bad music" comes from both machines, and humans. 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-criticized-for-letting-fake-albums-appear-on-real-artist-pages/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/10/spotify-criticiz...
• crazygringo 2y ago
  I see absolutely no problem with this. Look, I love music, listening to an album through, learning about artists, etc. 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.
  • dclowd9901 2y ago
    Is there nothing troubling about the fact that the company who _decides_ what you're listening to decides that you only listen to their music? I didn't sign up for that. I use Spotify to find new artists so I can follow their artistic journey and see them in concert. Perhaps some folks see music as shallow background filler but for people like me who value its contributions to my mental health and a big part of my social interactions, this kind of thing just scoops the soul out of it all. I'll be canceling my subscription.
    • kylebenzle 2y ago
      Spotify doesn't decide what I listen to at all but I use it almost daily. Listen to albums and audiobooks. How does Spotify decide what you listen to? Does Amazon _decide_ what you buy on their website too?
      • arrosenberg 2y ago
• aggieNick02 2y ago
  I wonder if the same kind of thing is at play when I ask my Google Home Mini to play a song (on Spotify) and it plays a version by a cover band instead of the real thing, despite my stating the song and band name. 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.
  • danudey 2y ago
    Someone in another comment said that artists don't even get paid if they have <1000 streams. I wonder if Spotify does anything to spread things around to try to keep as many artists as possible under that 1000 streams cap so that they don't have to pay for them.
  • ejj28 2y ago
    I think this is just Google Assistant being Google Assistant - It's awful at playing music, I've had Google Assistant play remixes, cover versions, or the right song but playing out of a 'Top Hits of x Year' or whatever compilation album instead of the original album. 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.
• cess11 2y ago
  Spotify lost me when they cleared out the warez and at least a third of my carefully curated playlists disappeared. 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.
• ess3 2y ago
  I think this is a hard problem to solve for a couple of reasons. - 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.
• GraphWeaver23 2y ago
  Reminds me of ghost restaurants where a kitchen would be used to prep food for dozens of virtual restaurants on food delivery platforms like DoorDash, grubhub, etc. They would artificially create what looked to be an array of choices, but in fact just a single kitchen taking on multiple brands. It's really evident when you look at these food delivery apps late at night.
• imp0cat 2y ago
  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 Sounds like me! 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. I actually kinda like some of those backing tracks, they are quite recognizable.
• NoRagrets 2y ago
  Suno is the new streaming kid on the block. 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=PL6CFiKHtsvsntUmyVe6VSm302Rt_qSz4c&si=n-vGnkuloHVB-1JV 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.
• kbrisso 2y ago
  I don't like Spotify's business model. This is why I use Deezer as my streaming service. Deezer pays the artist more and has Hi-Fi streams. Streaming is killing the music industry and quality because it pays crappy royalties.
  • Kankuro 2y ago
    I also subscribed to Deezer, and the fact that it is still not profitable makes me wonder why. Is it because they pay more artists? Or because the labels get a larger share of the revenues? Or because they have a smaller market share (so larger fixed costs in percentage of their revenues)? Or they are less efficient than Spotify? 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-artists-in-2024/ https://www.lalal.ai/blog/how-much-streaming-services-pay-ar...
• RajT88 2y ago
  I'm glad I'm a grumpy self-host guy who still rips CD's and DVD's and plays my .m3u playlists with Winamp 2.95, and streams movies with Jellyfin. It's glorious, being a digital prepper.
• jakubsuchy 2y ago
  Here is a 20k Hertz podcast about Ghost artists behind the real artists: https://open.spotify.com/episode/7ll2fKycYLy2KZxm12toS4?si=pAHNCGPrT7-UOX1vi-x5tQ https://open.spotify.com/episode/7ll2fKycYLy2KZxm12toS4?si=p... 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.
• dankle 2y ago
  So many misconceptions and misunderstandings in this article. One has to wonder who are paying them. Maybe just the collecting societies at it again.
• NN88 2y ago
  this article might win an award