6 ms·

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 tha

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

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