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The Ugly Truth About Spotify Is Finally Revealed
- Flemlord 2y agoHow is this any different than Walmart or Amazon having their own brands that are sold alongside name brands from other companies?
- bergen 2y agoYou know they are Walmarts brands
- almostnormal 2y agoThey do have different prices, too. And the supermarkets try to nudge people to buy the higher priced variants for greater revenue. The underlying problem that makes it tempting to promote cheap music is the flat rate.
- omcnoe 2y agoThere are two concerns here. First, that Spotify doesn't make clear when a track is produced by a Spotify "ghost artist". And second, Spotify is in an unfair position as both the controller of the marketplace/platform, and as a participant on it. The allegation in this article is that Spotify are using their platform position to promote their own PFC program tracks over third party artists/labels. To be clear, it's not necessarily consumers who are being harmed here. These tracks are supposedly targeted to cases where the consumer doesn't really care that much about the songs that are being played. Rather the party harmed are third party artists/labels who are competing for Spotify playlist space on an uneven playing field.
- galaxyLogic 2y agoThe consumer is harmed if they are given the impression that playlists contain tracks voted up by other listeners like themselves, when in fact they are voted up by Spotify. Not sure if this is the case but if so, it would be clearly misleading the users.
- boxed 2y agoThird: Spotify has been involved again and again in various outright criminal enterprises like money laundering. Organized crime is rising strongly in Sweden, we don't need Spotify to back them.
- dhfuuvyvtt 2y agoLiterally Amazon marketplace.
- ninkendo 2y ago> And second, Spotify is in an unfair position as both the controller of the marketplace/platform, and as a participant on it GP asked how it was different from what Walmart or Amazon are doing, but what you describe is precisely the same as what Walmart and Amazon do. I go to my local Kroger and there are a bunch of Kroger brand knock offs of the “name brand” stuff, being promoted heavily. Kroger makes more money off that stuff because they don’t have to split the profits. Nobody’s complaining that this is unfair. Your point #1 still stands though, and if the slop in question was clearly labeled as “spotify originals” or something and was something you could easily filter out, I’m sure far fewer people would have an issue with it. The issue is the deception, not that they are pushing their own slop on people.
- ramon156 2y agoDisclosure aside, would you say their own brand doesn't influence the original brand at all? It still hurts them
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- threeseed 2y agoIt was inevitable that if most of your user base is just listening to AI generated playlists that Spotify would look to cheaper versions of songs to save costs.
- punnerud 2y agoIt’s from the same country that have managed to automate most of service work at Klarna using ML, so not surprised
- mnky9800n 2y agoI don’t really understand what being from Sweden has to do with anything.
- labster 2y agoThe next obvious step is AI generated songs. Music will get much cheaper when we can completely avoid cost centers like record labels, recording studios, and bands.
- mcculley 2y agoWhen models are capable of generating music better than humans can, Spotify might be disintermediated entirely.
- throw646577 2y agoThe alarming thing in this little sub thread is that I am not wholly certain that none of you are joking. That is where we are now.
- mcculley 2y agoI am not joking. I am also uncomfortable accepting that humans will eventually not be the best creators of art enjoyed by humans.
- RA2lover 2y agoRelated: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42461530 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42461530
- HelloUsername 2y agoThat research is linked in this article
- JimmyWilliams1 2y ago[dead]
- punnerud 2y agoI forced myself to use YouTube Music 7 years ago and haven’t switched back (included with YouTube premium), also improved a lot the latest years
- KingOfCoders 2y agoWhy? (sounds interesting as a very very long Spotify customer)
- mstipetic 2y agoYou get YouTube premium and YouTube music with one subscription. For me it’s a no brainer, I’ve had it for years
- punnerud 2y agoLower price and just wanted to try. Forced myself to use it, started creating new playlists, listen to the radio created based on songs etc. Now my YouTube Music is more used by the kids and the family than Spotify
- mnky9800n 2y agoI did it because why pay for Spotify and for YouTube music if I was going to pay for YouTube premium anyways. The one thing it is missing is when you are at a party on Spotify can have a shared playlist where people can just add songs to it from their own phones. But YouTube can’t do that. It also won’t crossfade songs which Spotify does. But I don’t feel like I’m missing out because of those reasons.
- whoitwas 2y agoWhat is YT premium and why would you pay money to use YT? It's the best free service that still exists if you have an adblocker. A lot of content has baked in ads now, but you can skip or just view something else. I've learned what Youtube Premium is: "YouTube and YouTube Music ad-free, offline, and in the background" For me, that's nothing as I can already view with no ads, and download whatever I want.
- klabetron 2y ago> Our single best hope is a cooperative streaming platform owned by labels and musicians. Remember when the music labels themselves were the baddies?
- throwawayian 2y agoTencent Music own almost 10%, UMG and Sony own almost 5% together, there are vested interests here.
- motorest 2y ago> Remember when the music labels themselves were the baddies? I remember when the biggest problem in music was how middlemen like labels had an oppressive role on music and didn't allowed artists to express themselves or even earn a buck from their work. As far as I know, that didn't changed.
- hansworst 2y agoPlenty of indie musicians nowadays that self-publish on platforms like Spotify and YouTube. That just wasn’t possible 30 years ago.
- motorest 2y ago> Plenty of indie musicians nowadays that self-publish on platforms like Spotify and YouTube. That just wasn’t possible 30 years ago. Precisely. What changed between then and now is that major labels no longer control distribution, and thus they no longer hold a oligopoly over what music we can consume. This is clearly something that benefits everyone, except the major labels. This fact alone makes me very sceptical of this blend of blog posts. It clearly pushes to go back to a time where everyone was screwed over by the music industry.
- saint_yossarian 2y agoYou can't self-publish on Spotify, you have to go through a distributor like DistroKid. Not sure how this works with YouTube Music though, I guess for actual music (sans video) you have to use a distributor as well.
- KingOfCoders 2y agoMy main grief as as a very long Spotify customer, their app is still bad and doesn't progress. It has often problems when the [edit] phone is offline e.g. and it doesn't work beyond songs - radio play, audiobooks especially in playlists are PITA.
- LambdaComplex 2y agoSpotify has about 10,000 employees. Their software engineers make 6 figures. Their only actual product is, as far as I know, a music player. Despite all this, I had an issue for a while where some of the play buttons didn't work. I would click the play button and nothing would happen. Other users posted about the same issue in the "Spotify Support/Complaint Megathread" on Reddit's r/spotify. I don't know how to adequately describe how ridiculous it is that they managed to break their music player's play button, of all things.
- Mistletoe 2y agoIt’s just absolutely dreadful. Using it on desktop is a laggy mess. I mean this quite literally what do the 10,000 people do?
- iamacyborg 2y agoCome up with features no one asked for to justify their salaries. Seems to be rather common in product-driven tech businesses.
- Mistletoe 2y agoI can only imagine how many soul-searching meetings it took to decide to change the heart to the plus sign for liking songs.
- fredrikholm 2y agoJazz, apparently.
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- tinthedev 2y agoThe TLDR is that Spotify is flooding it's platform and padding playlists with cheap and generic music. They've went full "buffet" strategy, serving lots of fries so you stay away from the meats. I think calling this payola, as the article insinuates,is wrong. I was always more interested in finding artists than I was in finding songs. I've noticed Spotify recommendations being worse and worse, and I can happily say I've left the platform half a year ago. Didn't regret it a single bit.
- ethagnawl 2y agoI left when they gave Bro Rogaine hundreds of millions of dollars to promote harmful conspiracy theories and pseudoscience. Between Bandcamp, Tidal and YouTube (latter are more likely to face these same issues), I've never looked back. The odd exception is when a friend wants to share a song but I can usually find it elsewhere. For anyone considering leaving Spotify for Tidal but fearful of losing their followed artists, playlists, etc., there are a number of (paid) services which will programmatically export and link your data. They're not perfect but I think my success rate was 80%.
- Aachen 2y agoI don't think it says generated, but music made by people (presumably simply paid a fair wage by the hour or so) who don't then get royalties but it can just be played infinitely many times at no cost to Spotify besides bandwidth
- pluc 2y agoMp3s still work great
- StuffMaster 2y agoAnd you can use whatever software you want
- mahkeiro 2y agoThe only way for the music industry to fight back is to ensure diversity in streaming platform, and fighting for easy way for users to port their data between them. This for one will both benefit users and the industry.
- wodenokoto 2y agoThere’s another way, which HN’ers won’t like and that’s to borrow a page from the video streaming playbook and have the labels start their own individual services. Which of course will also eventually push Muzak on the bgm playlist/channels
- bornfreddy 2y agoSure, if they agree on a common interface (API) and open it to everyone. This way they would turn streaming services into commodity. I don't see that happening though.
- Aachen 2y agoOh god please no. I'm already needing like seven video subscription services on a rotating basis to see the various nice things people talk about, music is such a good counterexample of where it just works to aggregate everything on several platforms and people can choose which service works best
- izacus 2y agoOf all the options, how did you decide on the most user hostile one?
- wodenokoto 2y agoI just asked myself “What would EMI do?”
- ilrwbwrkhv 2y agoYes, this totally tracks with what I know about Spotify. I am in touch with numerous employees of Spotify and they all said that the biggest threat to Spotify are the music publishers who have them by the balls. I think they have now realized that the only way to make it into a successful business is to deploy AI generated music or at least music in which they are not paying extremely large royalties.
- amiantos 2y agoDoesn't seem any different to me than when Netflix started making original content, or as others have said, Target having their own in-house brands that they stock alongside everything else. It's just good business sense. If the product is bad, people will stop using Spotify, and Spotify will stop doing it. I'm not sure why discourse around this seems to be coming from the perspective that people have no choice but to use Spotify and that Spotify will secretly replace all the good music with bad music and no one will be able to do anything about it, all musicians will be out of work, all will be lost. Spotify is just one music service, and we don't even need to use a music service to enjoy the music we like. If Spotify destroys itself with slop music, what's the sinister plot, the "ugly truth", really? If Spotify does this, and a majority of people do not care, do not notice, and keep using Spotify until label-owned music is totally irrelevant, I think it would be more interesting if the musicians who are put out of work by this consider why their high quality music lost out to such mass produced "garbage"...
- throw646577 2y ago> Doesn't seem any different to me than when Netflix started making original content, or as others have said, Target having their own in-house brands that they stock alongside everything else. It's just good business sense. If the product is bad, people will stop using Spotify, and Spotify will stop doing it. And yet it is different, because of the production scale involved. Own brands are actually hard work, especially own brand food, which has to be reverse-engineered at some expense. Own brand food provides price discrimination and usually does not particularly impact the sales of the headline brands. Netflix’s own content, presumably, pays a large number of creative people’s wages and is of a quality. It is often scratching a creative itch that major studios won’t risk. Music and music tech, on the other hand, is such that if your audience doesn’t care, it’s quite easy to churn out songs —- one person who particularly hated human culture could write half a dozen fully produced songs in a day. > If Spotify does this, and a majority of people do not care, do not notice, and keep using Spotify until label-owned music is totally irrelevant, I think it would be more interesting if the musicians who are put out of work by this consider why their high quality music lost out to such mass produced "garbage"... I do wish this particularly nihilistic new form of argument was considered to be toxic itself. But to answer the point: many outstanding, culturally significant musicians have small fan bases for their personal work. They know they do. That is in the nature of diverse culture. They rely on complex chains of discovery systems —- word of mouth, eclectic radio, old style auteur playlists, live gigs, to find their people, and they often support that by writing songs for major musicians who love their work and who want to do one song they wrote. It is not their failure at all if the system that is supposed to deliver some of that discovery starts cynically acting against them. While every musician wants a hit and many will dedicate at least some time in their lives to exploring what is necessary to write a hig record, “You should have had more mass market appeal” is not universal creative guidance. It is not that listeners have no choice in music services. Musicians have no choice but to engage with Spotify. If it is secretly working against all musicians simultaneously at the most basic level —- drowning them out with slop that is deliberately inserted into playlists to water down everyone’s incomes —- then how is it you are more interested in the way musicians are somehow failing, when nothing they do can stop it? Honestly I am terrified for culture that so many people in the tech world seem to be so aggressively jealous of creativity that they are taking the "anti-anti-slop" stance (to borrow a phrase from politics used for the "yeah well all this criticism validates the choice I am not in any way saying I am making" argument).
- noelwelsh 2y agoI listened to a few ambient playlists on Spotify and Youtube and they were just slop. Even when I was doing something else (e.g. programming) I became annoyed that the background music was so bad. Same with the lo-fi beats channel that is so popular. I'm not sure there is a problem if a proportion of the listeners don't recognize they are listening to slop. I do, however, think its a problem if Spotify is giving preferential treatment to slop, as is claimed in this post. I also would prefer a system that better supported musicians, while having the ease of use of Spotify.
- blipvert 2y agoGive Pye Corner Audio, Craven Faults and Warrington Runcorn New Town Development Plan a go
- iamacyborg 2y agoSee also Lustmord, Detritus, Rafael Anton Irisarri, Poppy Ackroyd, Moon Ate the Dark
- iamacyborg 2y agoJust because I know RAI has talked about the crappyness of Spotify for artists for a number of years, here’s a snippet from a 6 month old interview that’s relevant to the original conversation. https://igloomag.com/profiles/five-questions-with-rafael-anton-irisarri-black-knoll https://igloomag.com/profiles/five-questions-with-rafael-ant... > In this day and age, it is incredibly challenging to start a label. Streaming has massively depleted the revenue potential for artists and labels, and even those with a good following are struggling. For those starting out, it’s an uphill battle to build an audience and be successful. > Only a small percentage of songs make a decent amount of money with streaming, so recording budgets for independent artists are next to none. I remember when an album had the support of a team of people devoted to realizing the artist’s vision. Something magical happens when you get that collaboration of people working together to achieve the same goal. Nowadays the artist/producer does the recording, the mixing, and in some cases, even the mastering. Consequently, the production quality has declined drastically over the last decade, and it’s not helped by how most people consume music (illegally downloading it, YouTube lo-fi, or paid streaming subscriptions) but rather contributes to the decline. > For those who remember the world before streaming took over, this is a very different one in which we now live. Music is no longer the product being marketed or sold, instead, it’s the listener’s data. The artist is a “brand” and they create “content.” We are in a time where we are constantly bombarded with “content” on social media and streaming platforms. Take the so-called “Spotify Ambient.” This sound has become watered down and generic, thanks partly to all the Muzak clearing houses creating material for most of the “sleep” and “stress relief” style of playlists. > Whenever an actual artist shows up on those playlists, let’s say the great Otto A. Totland for example, you can immediately hear the difference between his music and Muzak. Otto writes music that conveys rich and nuanced emotions with many layers of meaning. His music wasn’t solely written for the sake of playlisting it. His music was written because it genuinely meant something special to the composer. Muzak clearing houses have been discussed ad nauseam in many industry exposés about “Spotify fake artist” trends with companies like Epidemic Sound and their catalog of ambient rip-offs. > Some companies exist solely to create content for playlists. Think about that for a moment! Composer staff are paid to make royalty-free clones of well-established artists. The companies see which songs are performing well on Spotify-curated playlists, and the clearing house creates a similar-sounding song so Spotify can remove the original from their curated playlist without paying royalties. This practice exists in advertising, when agencies create music for an ad “inspired by” (i.e. ripping off) the music they don’t want to pay the licensing fee for. Somehow, this is legal. You end up with “artists” like Jonci (yes, that’s Jónsi with a “C”) who have millions of plays, sounding exactly like Sigur Rós, and you have zero information about the artist. > Clearing houses can now easily create thousands of meaningless ambient-adjacent tracks to be put on playlists with the unsuspecting consumer having no idea. AI technology makes this all even easier. The lack of credits on streaming platforms is another massive problem, particularly for music workers like myself who depend on album credits/credentials to generate business and get gigs as engineers, producers, etc. The music is stripped of production, artwork, recording, mixing, and mastering credits. I could go on, but the point is that there are many challenges for artists, labels, mastering engineers, and anyone making music now.
- _yb2s 2y agoI don’t get the problem here. You can listen to whatever you want on Spotify. I listen to it everyday, already knowing what I want to listen to, and never encountered this. However, it sounds like they are paying real musicians to create music directly for Spotify, to bypass record labels. That sounds like a good thing all around- record labels don’t seem to do anything useful.
- Propelloni 2y agoSame here. I don't use Spotify as a radio (I have radio for that) but as a very big record collection. I listen to records or my own playlists. You can switch off the auto-play feature in the settings, so that Spotify stops after the record or playlist ends. I learn about new music the old school way, opening and supporting acts at concerts and recommendations by friends. Sometimes I read a music magazine.
- surgical_fire 2y agoMaybe I am old, but I am surprised people use Spotify any other way. I think I never even clicked on anything on the app front page. I only ever go to library or playlist tab.
- jstummbillig 2y agoIf you never click on anything of a front page, that's a good tell that you are exactly not the average user.
- surgical_fire 2y agoIf the average user is alright with consuming whatever Spotify puts on the app frontpage, I fail to see what the issue is. They are being given what they are promised.
- _yb2s 2y agoThis is also how I use it, but I am not even sure exactly how one would use it any other way. The whole UI is organized around “Your Library” which is a list of artists you like.
- xg15 2y ago> At this point, I need to complain about the stupid major record labels who have empowered and supported Spotify during its long history. At some junctures, they have even been shareholders. I’ve warned repeatedly that this is a huge mistake. Spotify is their adversary, not their partner. The longer they avoid admitting this to themselves, the worse things will get. I think this confuses record labels with artists. I don't see labels having a problem with replacing their artists with AI, as long as they still get the royalties.
- harry8 2y agoYou’d need labels at all then why?
- lotsofpulp 2y agoBecause copyright lasts an obscenely long time so record labels can continue to rent seek and grab a large share of spending on music for work performed many decades ago.
- harry8 2y agoThis is not replacing artists with ai which is what is being discussed. Spotify replaced artists with ai, they have no need to pay labels to do it.
- lotsofpulp 2y agoPeople like to listen to the music of their youth, record labels would still be needed for many decades to come to provide a comprehensive streaming catalog. Any service without the biggest music acts of ~1970 to 2020 isn’t going to go far.
- iamacyborg 2y agoRecord labels, particularly indie ones are a great way to curate and discover particular music. I’ve discovered a ton of great stuff I never would have otherwise come across by looking at what a record label I’m familiar with is releasing.
- surgical_fire 2y agoI mean, the actual problem is that people listen to playlists and recommendations from Spotify itself. They voluntarily eat turds, then complain that what they just ate tastes like shit. The solution is simple - curate your own playlists, or find people with tastes similar to yours that shared theirs. Don't give a company power to pick music for you, then complain that they have such power.
- ethagnawl 2y ago> The solution is simple ... Another worthwhile solution is to listen to independent radio -- locally or online. You'll find more new interesting artists and music in an hour of listening to (quality, non-Clear Channel/i-heart) radio than you'll ever find using Spotify or any other service's suggestion algorithms.
- surgical_fire 2y agoThis sounds like a sensible advice too. I never tried it myself though.
- whiddershins 2y agoif true, beyond the pale. actively making music worse for everyone.
- raincole 2y agoThe ugly truth is that most people (I dare to say 99%+) don't care much about music. They just need to listen to something while doing their jobs.
- BoingBoomTschak 2y agoWell, it's not a secret, no? I mean, if you use Spotify with big holes in non-mainstream music and only the latest butchering known as "remaster" of your favourite albums, you definitely don't care much about music. Which is why you'll never see me get off the comfy "local only" train, buying CDs and sailing the high seas with my skull & crossbones flag if needed.
- pas 2y agohow people know when a remaster is good or bad?
- BoingBoomTschak 2y agoWith their ears. Though the most egregious examples are simply brickwalled when the original master wasn't, so it's easy to "see".
- catlikesshrimp 2y agoBroadcast Radios (FM and AM) did a much better job. Their music was real and each station was more or less an algorithm. There were ads, but as you mention, people don't seem to care much. The quality check was the non personalized streams cathered to please its audience and competition among stations. So, the solution is to kill targeted algorithms and monopolies, ha.
- ckrailo 2y agoI dislike ads even more than slop. Ads drove me to change stations to music I didn't care for and listen to the same CDs more times than I would have otherwise. Ads made broadcast radio unplayable as interaction-free background music.
- freetonik 2y ago> Our single best hope is a cooperative streaming platform owned by labels and musicians. There’s a coop Bandcamp alternative being built right now: https://subvert.fm/ https://subvert.fm/ Hopefully
- badgersnake 2y agoIs Bandcamp evil now then?
- JTyQZSnP3cQGa8B 2y agoThey were bought by Epic Games and then Songtradr. There were layoffs, and the company is not recognizing the union of the employees. It hasn’t changed yet, it’s still good, but it’s scary for the future.
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- jbs789 2y agoThis seems analogous to a supermarket selling its own private label product. Should be disclosed though.
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- phony-account 2y agoThere are so many “so what?” responses to this that I can’t help wondering what an analogous situation would be for programmers? Maybe something like “I don’t see the problem with this app being buggy and almost unusable - I just like having nice icons on my HomeScreen. I don’t see anything unethical about this [MEGA-CORP] fixing the market with their own cheap and poor quality programmers - most people don’t care if their apps work anyway”.
- daft_pink 2y agoThe questions is really are the other platforms doing the exact same thing? You have to use playlists generated by other users. Any playlists or radio generated by the platform is obviously going to direct you to the music the platform wants you to listen to.
- Lio 2y agoAll I know about Spotify is their embedded player, that gets added to music articles, has been designed to nag you. A popover will randomly cover the controls with a signup banner so that you can’t play the next song without saying no. It’s a subtle tell but when you see even a small dark pattern you know the company behind it has no moral compass. Have nothing to do with them.
- nkrisc 2y ago> the company behind it has no moral compass. The people behind it. Companies have no sense of morality, everything you see was conceived and implemented by individual people.
- huguesdk 2y agoi agree that we need a cooperative streaming platform. well, it already exists: https://resonate.coop/ https://resonate.coop/. please give it some love. in addition, its original stream2own model allows you to automatically spend more on the artists you listen to more and even own (= stop paying for) and download the tracks you listened to at least 9 times. i think that it is a much fairer revenue-distribution model than “the big money pot” model used by spotify (and almost all other music streaming platforms out there) where people listening to the highest amount of tracks decide where other people’s money goes.
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- ribadeo 2y ago[dead]
- computerthings 2y ago> nobody in the history of music has made more money than the CEO of Spotify This seems vaguely important?! Yet this story got utterly nuked off HN (can't find it on the first 10 pages). Meanwhile this still lingers on page 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42461530 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42461530 Yeah I know discussing votes and flags and rankings and all that stuff is very boring. However we're dealing with people who throw money around to manipulate what people see and hear so they can make more money, so.
- nextworddev 2y agoI’m not defending Spotify nor do I like the company but I have two problems with this article’s rhetoric: 1) the word payola isn’t technically correct to describe Spotify “optimizing” its cost of goods sold by replacing with mass produced, farmed content. It’s more similar to Amazon Basics category of goods. So payola is not the right term, since no one’s paying them to promote some music on the platform. Actually there’s real payola and that’s from companies like Universal music promoting drake etc 2) calling the Spotify owned content “slop” is kinda unfair to the creators. Afaik it’s not AI generated and there is real musicians making money off of this (albeit little) 3) I’m almost positive that Spotify will just start using AI exclusively for creating this slop very soon
- summermusic 2y agoTo directly address point #2, this may be music played by real musicians, but it is produced in a way that systemically forces it to be slop. Consider these quotes from the Liz Pelly investigation cited where a musician who created some of this music described how the process went: > As he described it, making new PFC starts with studying old PFC: it’s a feedback loop of playlist fodder imitated over and over again. A typical session starts with a production company sending along links to target playlists as reference points. His task is to then chart out new songs that could stream well on these playlists. “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. The most common feedback: play simpler. “That’s definitely the thing: nothing that could be even remotely challenging or offensive, really,” the musician told me. “The goal, for sure, is to be as milquetoast as possible.”
- rrrrrrrrrrrryan 2y ago> calling the Spotify owned content “slop” is kinda unfair to the creators. No artists are proud of having to create Muzak.
- keyle 2y agoThere are a lot of people here who don't seem to have a problem with the bait and switch business Spotify is doing here. As a former (paid) composer, I know how, pardon my words, the music industry is utterly fucked up today. That said we shouldn't just be cool with what Spotify is doing. Let me put it this way, what is happening is similar to Embrace, Extend, Extinguish. Personally I don't think much of Spotify today, and hope that we go back to buying music on medias and owning the music purchases. That is the key, to bringing back some sense to the Music (and Game btw) industry.
- scoofy 2y agoThis is obvious rent-seeking behavior, along with probable false advertising. I’m not sure people are fine with it.
- amyames 2y agoJust leave Spotify 1-star reviews with excerpts of this article in it.
- from-nibly 2y agoIt had become increasingly clear that "You are not the customer, you are the product" extends to all public companies.
- mrinfinite 2y agoPeople are complaining cause pandora is being paid to put in frank sinatra songs in their smooth jazz playlist.. .anyone who outsources what they listen to to spotify has already lost.. oh spotify gets paid by barry white to put his song in... dum dum dum... listen to music you want to listen to. "duh, i thought spotify was going to only promote music that matched my profile without recieving any comopensation."
- wappieslurkz 2y agoI don't get why so many people fell for Spotify. To me, from the moment it launched there were so many red flags, like dark patterns everywhere and terrible UX-design decisions. Clearly a business that does not care at all about quality or their contributors/customers.