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I 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 encou

• Propelloni 2y ago
  Same 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 ago
    Maybe 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 ago
      If 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 ago
        If 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 ago
    This 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.
• noelwelsh 2y ago
  It's a problem if Spotify is giving preference to its lower cost slop over other artists. If Spotify is going to be a marketplace for music it has to be a fair one.
• keybored 2y ago
  It’s a problem if the algorithms are bad and try to nudge you towards slop (path of least resistance). But I don’t really get the part about “someone should tell Congress”—sir, this is an IKEA.
  • izacus 2y ago
    I bet they're pushing towards "slop" because they don't want to pay that much to the record label parasites which have been extorting a lot of money out of them. And I think that's the core of the "problem" here - one group of rentseekers being angry at another because they don't get enough of their cut.
    • keybored 2y ago
      Sure. Both Spotify and the Music Industry are just trying to maximize their profits. The term “slop” is deliberate—music that sounds bad. Now, if Spotify manages to make music that is better than the music that they can get from the Music Industry? Good for them. I’m a music listener. I just want good music.
    • tmountain 2y ago
      Then focus on brokering deals with the zillions of independent artists out there. I worked at Grooveshark (a long time ago), and this was a big part of our strategy, and it showed a lot of potential.
      • izacus 2y ago
        Spotify already directly publishes plenty of independent artists as far as I know.
  • hex3 2y ago
    [dead]
• Dylan16807 2y ago
  "these almost identical tracks were attributed to different artists and composers" doesn't sound like real musicians making real music to me. And honestly I don't want anyone making cheaper music directly for spotify. I want an even playing field where everyone gets the same rates. (But preferably with a way to kick out spammers.)
  • sandworm101 2y ago
    >> I want an even playing field where everyone gets the same rates. So no freedom for artists that want to market themselves with higher or lower rates? Should the Taylor Swifts of the world not be free to negotiate higher rates? Should not the upstart be able to accept a lower rate in hopes that doing so will get their music more recommended/played by the service?
    • kazinator 2y ago
      Wouldn't the Taylor Swifts of the world get more money at the same rate, due to being streamed more? The unknown upstart's stuff is not being searched for and played. Is that not already the lower rate that they accept? Does the revenue also have to be lower from those few plays they got?
      • lotsofpulp 2y ago
        Theoretically, it does not have to be. Practically, the big names are not going to accept less than the maximum they can get. Just like almost all people would if they were negotiating multiple equivalent job offers.
    • iamacyborg 2y ago
      This is further complicated by how Spotify actually divvies up payments. If they did it proportionally per subscriber you’d suddenly find money being distributed in a much fairer way. Instead they divvy it up on a global aggregate basis so even if I were to pay the subscription and just listen to indie artists, my money goes towards pop megastars and artificial slop.
• tmountain 2y ago
  If they are paying musicians to create what is essentially “filler” and using this filler to lower their per song streaming costs, they’re simultaneously denying real artists, producing real music, an opportunity to appear in the stream. For listeners that care, this represents a reduction in the quality of their content, and aligns the platform towards pure profit, as opposed to being an ecosystem where working artists can try and carve out a living.
  • throw646577 2y ago
    Exactly this. Musicians do not have a choice but to engage with Spotify, but any hope that the discovery systems it offers will occasionally playlist their work in return is being cynically -- and secretly -- diluted with slop.
  • surgical_fire 2y ago
    That only works if people, actual users, actively choose to listen to filler. If they do, what is the issue?
    • _yb2s 2y ago
      Exactly- It seems pretentious to say it’s “filler” or not real music if people are happily listening to it, on a platform that provides any music you ask for.
      • surgical_fire 2y ago
        Maybe my stance is derived from the fact that I consider many of what is extremely successful in anything to be shit anyway. Music, movies, vídeogames, you name it. People are fine consuming shit, they always were. Why would I be surprised that they are fine consuming shit music that Spotify add to slop playlists with the purpose of increasing their own profits? This is just a logical consequence of how things always were.
    • rocqua 2y ago
      If the supermarket slowly adds more fat to their products, people will probably continue eating without noticing. But calling that an active decision is quite a reach. Similarly, this isn't an active choice of users. And the harm isn't that they are listening to filler, it's that during their random listening, they aren't coming across any new good music. They are prevented from widening their horizons. They aren't actively choosing this. Spotify deceives them into thinking this is music chosen because it is likely the users will like this music.
• darkwater 2y ago
  The problem is: Step 1: create a music service and get on-board as many musicians as possible with attractive rates and the promise of a future with big audiences and less intermediaries Step 2: the business grows because you have many famous/good artists in your catalogue Step 3: Congrats, you are now the #1 musical service in the world! Many people associate "music streaming" with your brand. You get a lot of "musical normies" as customers in the process. Step 4: start lowering royalties you give to musicians. They will stay anyway because you are the #1 brand and bring listeners Step 5: add your own music to places where normies just listen to music, without caring who the hell the author is. So, you have to pay less revenue to the rest of artists, because they are now getting less listenings, even if the royalty per listening stays exactly the same.
  • loupol 2y ago
    You've outlined the steps but not named the process outright : This is basically establishing a dominant platform and then abusing the dominant position that comes with it.
  • _yb2s 2y ago
    I get that is what they are doing, I still don’t see the problem. Hopefully they will gradually cut out the record labels entirely, and pay the artists the full cut directly that is currently going mostly to the record label. People can listen to whatever they want- artists that are not being listened to aren’t being stolen from if the money is instead going to other artists that are being listened to. If people don’t care who the artist is but like what they hear, that seems great.
    • darkwater 2y ago
      The dominant platform might eventually cut out the labels and afterwards earn their margins. That's why (I assume, I'm not in the music biz) labels stay relevant for now, because they act or sell themselves to artists as some kind of union to protect them from draconian streaming services. But I might be totally wrong on this.
      • 2y ago
• whoitwas 2y ago
  I'm not a Spotify user, but people are really wild about it. The process is deceptive as Spotify has tried to hide this and pretend they serve music from "real" artists. It's enshitification. It used to be better, now Spotify is trying to squeeze out as much profit as possible.
  • lotsofpulp 2y ago
    > now Spotify is trying to squeeze out as much profit as possible. Not the worst idea for a business that has lost money every year for 20 years: https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/SPOT/spotify-technology/net-income https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/SPOT/spotify-techn...
    • whoitwas 2y ago
      They should try to profit. People seem to take issue with deception. They should just label the spotify songs as what they are and stop trying to trick people. It's weird and abusive.
• james-bcn 2y ago
  If I have a playlist and I get Spotify to add to it, I expect it to add things that people who like the things that I like also like. I do not expect it to add whatever is most profitable for Spotify. Especially since I pay for the service.
  • surgical_fire 2y ago
    I have a few playlists on Spotify. I never had it add any track to it. Been using it for years. Does it actually happen?
    • rocqua 2y ago
      You can enable it. Either through 'smart shuffle' or by looking at the suggested added songs. There is also 'song radio', discover weekly, and automated playlist based on mood or Genre. I presume those playlists based on mood and Genre is what these songs have been added to.
  • rented_mule 2y ago
    How bad this is depends on the time-horizon over which they are trying to maximize profit. If the time-horizon is the next listen, it's terrible, as it doesn't care if it revolts the user so badly that they leave the platform immediately. This is bad for the platform, too, so they won't do it for long. If it's very long term, then it's not as bad because it takes into account users listening more often and over a longer period of time. One way of getting additional longer term listens is including signals like tastes of similar users and other things many of us music-lovers would consider "good". And the profit part means including signals like cost-per-stream of each song. A very long time-horizon requires finding good tradeoffs between all these signals. My guess is the time-horizon is monthly to quarterly. This is because of market pressures (public markets demand quarterly results) and the practicality of measuring the results. You can't measure/improve infinite time-horizon optimization. This will still have the effect of selecting for users that aren't as sensitive to what they are hearing. They will not leave as quickly. These are the users the platform wants, as these users afford the platform more leeway in shifting the tradeoff from quality signals to cost-per-stream. Eventually, this will push out many of us music-lovers and the artists we love. Once this reaches a tipping point, there will be room in the market for another service to cater to music-lovers. But, given market pressures, they will almost certainly walk the same path as Spotify in the long term. For me, the implication is to own my own music. I always have and always will. I only use streaming platforms for discovery. But as soon as I decide I like something enough, I buy it. I almost always buy albums, not individual songs. That lets me see if I want to follow that artist more deeply. This is expensive and time-consuming relative to streaming. It's dirt cheap relative to what I get out of music.
• mingus88 2y ago
  If you don’t actually respect the artist who is getting cloned and replaced by lazy/AI versions of their work without compensation, sure. No problem with this at all. This enshittification of the streaming industry comes after decades of enshittification of radio (all clear channel owned in the U.S. now) and the total collapse of any revenue opportunities for making an album for a new artist. It’s no wonder that the arts are dominated by nepo babies today. People who can treat creativity as an unpaid hobby, taking all risks with no consequences, and short cutting the path to popularity thanks to having family connections and wealth. Taylor Swift had a rich daddy buy a record label for her. For everyone else, why bother?
  • surgical_fire 2y ago
    If an actual artist is being plagiarized, I would presume there are avenues for them to sue for that? Is this actually happening, or is this just a baseless claim?
  • throw646577 2y ago
    > Taylor Swift had a rich daddy buy a record label for her. For everyone else, why bother? Taylor Swift (an insanely hard-working artist) started gigging when she was like 12 or 13, and her dad invested in (didn't buy) a startup record label, that built up a roster of artists and did very well on its own terms. (Despite being attached to Toby Keith) Record labels, publishing companies etc., do not cost much money to start up, actually. His investment was likely small, and also likely comparable to the cost of seeing a child through a college education. Less, perhaps. A quick google suggests he got 3% ownership for perhaps as little as $130K, which indeed is comparable to the total cost of getting a child through higher education in the USA. And of course her parents were helping her: she was 13. Did her dad make a pretty smart decision to ensure some influence over the people responsible for his daughter? Of course he did. You would. More generally: hang around your local (proper) music scene sometimes, and pay attention to which young starter bands have helicopter parents, and which do not. And then try to correlate that with success. Pushy helicopter parents are very often an active disadvantage, because promoters hate working with them. And they are inherently uncool. Even -- perhaps especially -- when they used to be cool.