This summary of the book excerpt/Harper's article https://futurism.com/spotify-accused-promoting-ghost-artists https://futurism.com/spotify-accused-promoting-gh

This summary of the book excerpt/Harper's article https://futurism.com/spotify-accused-promoting-ghost-artists https://futurism.com/spotify-accused-promoting-ghost-artists provides a short, punchy summary: > Spotify Employees Say It's Promoting Fake Artists to Reduce Royalty Payments to Real Ones [...] > According to a shocking new book, Spotify has been promoting so-called "ghost artists" so it can avoid paying its piddling royalties to real artists. > In an excerpt from "Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist" published in Harper's, author Liz Pelly reveals that the streaming platform has a secretive internal program that prioritizes cheap and generic music. > Dubbed "Perfect Fit Content" or PFC for short, this program not only involved a network of affiliated production firms creating tons of "low-budget stock muzak" for the platform, but also a team of employees who surreptitiously placed tracks from those firms on Spotify's curated playlists. I think the mods should change this post to link to the Harper's piece, or even the Futurism one. More broadly, it is interesting how Spotify is following the path blazed by supermarkets, then by video streaming services, in starting to sell (and promote, and prioritise) own-brand content. (Of course the Futurism summary is itself an example of a related problematic practice ...)