legitster 4 days 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.

  • chrisweekly 3 days ago

    Interesting take.

    For my part, I'm grateful for Spotify's "exclude from taste profile" feature. This lets me leverage my personally-curated "Flowstate" playlist ^1 for hours at a time while I'm working -- tracks that I've hand-picked to facilitate a "getting things done" mindset / energized mood / creativity or go-time vibe, and can stand to listen to on repeat -- without "polluting" my regular music preferences. It's apples and oranges, mostly - there's music I want to listen and attend to (as a guitar player and lifelong avid music listener across many genres including "serious" jazz), and there's audio (which could as easily be programmatically generated / binaural beats, whatever -- eg brain.fm) that I use as a tool specifically to help shape my cognitive state for focus / productivity.

    I think it's kind of funny how some people get confused about the fact that there are many reasons to listen to many kinds of music.

    When it comes to music discovery on Spotify, the "go to radio" option from a given track or album is a reliable way to surface new-to-me things. I usually prefer this proactive seeking to the playlists spotify's algo generates for me. (shrug)

    1. https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6UScdOAlqXqWTOmXFgQhFA?si=...

    • dmonitor 3 days ago

      > For my part, I'm grateful for Spotify's "exclude from taste profile" feature

      This is my first time being made aware of this. Fantastic option that more websites should adopt

      • klabetron 2 days ago

        Anyone know if YouTube has it? The number of times I switch the YouTube app to Incognito just to avoid whatever links my friends send from influencing my recommendations…

        • m5l 2 days ago

          Removing videos from my watch history seems to work for this. The note on this page[1] seems to indicate that watch history is what's driving your recommendations (they disappear if you don't have enough history):

          [1] https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/95725

    • feoren 3 days ago

      > I think it's kind of funny how some people get confused about the fact that there are many reasons to listen to many kinds of music.

      It has always boggled my mind that this point seems to be lost on every music streaming service.

      • aoanevdus 2 days ago

        Spotify has been automatically generating 6 different “daily mix” podcasts for me, which cover different styles/moods.

  • lubujackson 2 days ago

    Alternative take - this might not actually be the worst thing for musicians, to have a low effort, steady paying gig creating music. I am reminded of the documentary "Standing in the Shadows of Motown" about the "Funk Brothers", which was an amorphous group of jazz musicians who did all of the backing tracks for most of the 100s of Motown hits.

    Obviously, making ambient tracks is not quite the same as writing "Please Mr. Postman" and hearing your songs on the radio, but in the documentary the band talked about how they'd pump out songs during the day then go to a jazz club at night to make the music they REALLY wanted to make.

    • motorest 2 days ago

      > Alternative take - this might not actually be the worst thing for musicians, to have a low effort, steady paying gig creating music.

      I think this is a red herring to try to convince people that it's in their best interests to be force-fed content produced by major labels behind the brand {INSERT_ARTIST_NAME}.

      Which incidentally it's the business model from major labels.

      I mean, check any major labels artist. Each and every single hit song they release has countless writers and producers claiming a stake, not to mention the fact that some major labels artists don't even try to hide the fact they buy all their content from third-parties to slap their name over it.

      Is this the state of affairs that's being defended?

      Give me a procedurally-generated playlist that I can listen all day long, and skip the content I'm not interested in.

      • tuna74 2 days ago

        "I mean, check any major labels artist. Each and every single hit song they release has countless writers and producers claiming a stake, not to mention the fact that some major labels artists don't even try to hide the fact they buy all their content from third-parties to slap their name over it."

        Do you think this is a bad thing?

        • motorest a day ago

          > Do you think this is a bad thing?

          Yes obviously, if you're trying to complain about "ghost artists" by presenting these "artists" as the counterpoint when they are even faker.

        • jfengel 2 days ago

          It's too bad that stardom still generally requires being promoted by one of a handful of corporations. It's not impossible to get there without them, but the result is that we still end up concentrating most of the wealth on a tiny number of artists, while a vast number of equal talents go under-used and under-compensated.

  • insane_dreamer 3 days ago

    > less of a nefarious plan from Spotify to replace famous Katy Perry with AI

    actually, it's the same nefarious plan, just that AI wasn't yet up to the task. Now it is, and replacing those fake artists, who are still human beings as far as we know, with AI (and the same fake resumes) is the logical next step.

    • yojo 2 days ago

      To your point, the article even mentions that since the Muzak labels own the master on all these tracks, they are free to use them however they see fit. Which in this case probably means training their AI entirely on their own cleanly licensed music.

      They are probably already doing it, slipping in a few AI-generated songs in with the gig-produced music to see how it’s performing.

    • motorest 2 days ago

      > Now it is, and replacing those fake artists (...)

      They aren't even artists. They release content bought from third-parties, and at most their role is limited to market it. These "artists" are at best brands that are carefully managed and curated.

  • kiba 2 days ago

    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.

    Not a musician myself, but I am a live performer. I think live performance will come back into stride for things people do.

    Then again, people do livestreaming all the time, but it's a different sort of entertainment compared to people putting up a live show for you for a lack of better term.

    I am hoping to do it next year.

    • jfengel 2 days ago

      I'm in theater, which is challenging because we do things comparable to TV and movies, but with significant physical constraints. And costs constraints, unless you're doing a Broadway musical for which ticket prices are well over $100.

      Yet people still come to my shows. I have to charge more than I want to, simply as a matter of real estate. People do still want what we can bring them live. I could not conceivably make a living at it, but there is still value in doing the work and bringing it to people.

      Maybe AI will demotivate people from screens. I haven't seen a flood yet, to be sure, but we'll see.

  • yellow_lead 3 days ago

    > 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).

    Sorry to break it to you, but there's actually tones of AI lofi music from Suno all over YouTube right now.

    See this video for an explanation: https://youtu.be/_oxtFP2UUyM

    And here are some examples of the content:

    https://youtu.be/RJUvNVCqtpI https://youtu.be/iBt051Pq7_4

    • liminalsunset 3 days ago

      The YouTube link that starts with RJUvNV, titled "(a). sip" IMO, the first track is a banger (I really like it), and it doesn't sound obviously AI.

      The second track is more obviously AI, mostly due to the high frequency "dullness". Likewise, the second link iBT051 seems to have the same issue, it's low fidelity (but in a different way than the lo-fi style is).

  • CocaKoala 4 days 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 3 days ago

      I like how you called it ChilledCow to show how OG you are.

  • Balgair 3 days ago

    Check out Chillhop ( https://chillhop.com/radio/). Great little lofi studio out of Rotterdam. Good to the artists, from what I can tell.

    Psalm Trees, an artist with them, just put out an interesting little 'double'-ish album here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmL9LvTYjMQ

    He produced a whole jazz album just so he could sample from it for a lofi album. Absolutely mental workload.

    There's a lot of crap in lofi, but also some real 'bangers' too : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IU3yBo2szD8 (yes, really, 10 hours of great work, IMHO)

    • xrd 3 days ago

      I want to know how you found this. Why do you say they are good to the artists? I would love to know how you cultivate your feed and from where you get your music information?

    • fakedang 2 days ago

      Psalm Trees is my jam! The song "Fever" got me into lofi music.

  • Gigachad 4 days 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.

    • wbl 3 days ago

      Kenny G might deserve your comment. But Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Charles Mingus...

      • orblivion 3 days ago

        I think some people may have a misunderstanding about what jazz is. I know one friend of mine did. Some jazz may be easy listening, but it's not made for easy listening, it's made to bend the boundaries of music theory. And also a lot of "easy listening" that sounds like jazz isn't really jazz.

        • Asooka 3 days ago

          Normal people care about music theory as much as they care whether you use jemalloc vs tcmalloc. "Easy listening" is a much more useful everyday definition for them than whatever musicians may want it to be.

          • orblivion a day ago

            Normal people who don't care about music at all, sure they can call it "easy listening" and I won't bother arguing. For anyone who cares about music or even history at least a little, it's worth knowing that jazz is very important to the history of music.

          • briandear 3 days ago

            Kind of Blue is far from “easy listening.”

            • maroonblazer 3 days ago

              Compared to Anthony Braxton, "Kind of Blue" is elevator music.

          • wbl 3 days ago

            There's nothing easy about Cecil Taylor.

        • vasco 3 days ago

          So what is jazz

          • netdevphoenix 3 days ago

            It is an approach to music (more than a genre) that relies on elaborate harmonic structures, freedom of interpretation of melody and personalising the harmony, interesting rhythms and time signatures and a general approach of trying to push the boundaries of music making. It is meant to be listened actively as opposed to having it as background music. The capitalisation of music has led us to the commoditisation of music and treating it as audio content as opposed to art.

            • fc417fc802 3 days ago

              > It is meant to be listened actively as opposed to having it as background music.

              The masterpiece hanging in the museum was fully intended to be actively appreciated. The background on the box of cereal is ... just a background on a box of cereal. It's still art though.

              • klez 3 days ago

                That would be the distinction between "fine art" and "decorative art". Jazz as GP meant it is "fine art", the smooth jazz you hear in the elevator could be classified as decorative art.

                • fc417fc802 3 days ago

                  I think that's a function of the effort, expertise, and intent. I don't think it changes the genre. Smooth, big band, blues, etc - it's all still jazz.

                  A low effort watercolor by an amateur is still (an attempt at) art and remains a watercolor even if no one appreciates it.

              • troupo 3 days ago

                Most masterpieces where literally hanging in the background of some rich person's summer houses, and hunting lodges, and other properties. Thrown out and replaced on a whim.

                • Neonlicht 2 days ago

                  Art was used by the rich and famous to show off their wealth. In the 19th century countries got into the game (the idea that Dutch masters were ending up in American collections was a national embarrassment).

                • mr_toad 3 days ago

                  Or melted down to make spears and helmets.

              • bezkom 3 days ago

                Most of the masterpieces you see in museums were used as decoration at some point.

                • wbl 3 days ago

                  The Pope needed something for his ceiling.

              • dijksterhuis 3 days ago

                in my personal opinion, which is as valuable as the piece of paper i’m writing this on /s

                art has no function except to be observed by an audience. if they enjoy it or not is immaterial. its purpose is to be observed.

                the design of a box of cereal has a purpose - to sell you the box of cereal by making it attractive/stand out/fit the brand.

                graphic design, when it has purposes beyond being observed, is not art — it’s a craft.

                like engineering.

                although graphic design/engineering can become art when it has no purpose except being observed.

                edit — enjoyment is immaterial and the bits about graphic design can be art etc.

            • xanderlewis 3 days ago

              I feel like there’s some kind of analogy between jazz cats and hackers.

          • gvurrdon 3 days ago

            The term covers a variety of styles, with old ones hanging around as new ground is broken. Perhaps it is a "meta-genre". There are various articles around explaining its history which might be worth looking at, if you're interested. I'd expect to hear some degree of improvisation in jazz, but not in easy listening.

          • YagoTheFrood 3 days ago

            "If you have to ask what jazz is, you'll never know." Apocryphal quote by Louis Armstrong.

            • vasco 3 days ago

              [flagged]

              • technothrasher 3 days ago

                The original quote is apocryphal, but he did respond to a question from a reporter asking about the quote saying, "Yeah, Daddy. Ya know how it is... jazz is something ya feel... ya live it, that's all." So he wasn't gatekeeping, he was saying the answer to "what is jazz?" was contained in the experience of jazz.

          • shrikant 3 days ago

            I found it easier to "get" when I started thinking of jazz as the beat poetry of music.

          • kid64 3 days ago

            jazz != smooth jazz

          • kunalgupta 3 days ago

            delightful mental pain, like a cold plunge

          • mesofile 3 days ago

            the ‘sound of surprise’

      • couchand 2 days ago

        Interesting that your first counterexample is Charlie Parker. I've been listening to a lot of Phil Schaap's Bird Flight recently (https://www.philschaapjazz.com/sections/bird-flight). It's funny to see how many of the episodes are Phil describing a recording session more or less like this:

        "The Bird showed up two hours late to a three and a half hour recording session. They recorded one take each of six tracks, but the recording engineer was surprised when they started so he missed the first half of the first track. And that's how we got the five tracks on <INSERT CRITICALLY-ACCLAIMED ALBUM HERE>."

        • dleink 2 days ago

          goes to show, lines of code doesn't equal quality.

      • petre 2 days ago

        If I'd want to crash a party I'd totally play Ornette Coleman.

      • fuhsnn 3 days ago

        All jazz artists started as insignificant band members before they found their voice.

    • bee_rider 3 days ago

      Yeah, this rules, why are we supposed to be angry? It is like WFH for music makers.

      Although, I’m pretty sure there’s a ton of really complex and difficult jazz out there (IIRC it is one of the most advanced genres, whatever they means; I don’t do music). But that isn’t what we’re looking for on the chill whatever ambient music channels.

      • ksymph 3 days ago

        The issue is that the artists who make it are getting paid very little, with no attribution, on songs that get massive amounts of plays and exposure. The entire purpose of the program is for Spotify to pay artists less and cut out real independent musicians. The decline in quality is an (arguably) unfortunate side effect, but not really the main reason for people to be angry.

        • lmz 3 days ago

          It's not like they put in a lot of work into it either (as per the article).

      • oreilles 3 days ago

        Did you guys not read the article ? The problem arises because of the way the music is distributed on Spotify and the way it is licensed. Spotify make deals with the companies producing this stock music so that it can fill its popular playlists with while paying close to zero royalties. The consequence is a decline both in music quality on the platform and in artists rights, revenue, and ability to be listened to overall.

        • RandallBrown 3 days ago

          Those playlists become popular because of the music on them. If they decline in quality won't people will just listen to better playlists?

          My Discover Weekly from Spotify used to be awesome. I found a bunch of new artists that I really liked and tons of great new songs. Recently it's been a bunch of old stuff that I've definitely heard of before. So I've mostly stopped listening to it.

          • Wolfenstein98k 2 days ago

            Big agree.

            Discover Weekly went from something I was excited about every Monday morning on the train, to something I forget to check most weeks.

            There's a handful of songs it puts on every few weeks, for literally years now, despite me skipping them every time and never once listening to the band or song by choice.

        • danudey 3 days ago

          100% guarantee that, once the technology is solid enough and the library is big enough, Spotify is going to train an AI off the tracks they own the rights to so they can mass-produce this music without paying anyone (except nvidia) a dime.

          • bee_rider 3 days ago

            Hopefully someone will release a music ML model to just generate it locally.

        • afro88 3 days ago

          Spotify isn't a monopoly, and if they want to fill their platform with stock music and presumably AI slop in the future, good luck to them. They're hollowing themselves out and making way for a new better service.

          And in the end, the real money for musicians is syncs, shows and merch anyway. Spotify streaming revenue is tiny in comparison.

          • oreilles 3 days ago

            The discussion is not wether Spotify will benefit from this situation in the long run or not, it's wether the users of the platform (both the listeners and the artists) should be happy with it and the answer to that is, thanks this lengthy article, demonstrably no.

            • gizmondo 3 days ago

              I don't think the article showed that listeners are unhappy.

          • edu 3 days ago

            Yes, that’s’ why a switched to Apple Music

            • georgebcrawford 3 days ago

              You don't think every platform will be doing the same within a year or two?

      • bezkom 3 days ago

        Miles Davis famously recorded 4 legendary albums in just 2 sessions, jazz you know...

      • Cthulhu_ 3 days ago

        I mean yeah, the music isn't the problem; a lot of music especially "back when" (in my idealised head, this may not be true) was just some guy or a small band noodling in the corner, instead of a well known artist giving a performance of their greatest hits.

        "jazz improv" is probably just that, start with a generic beat / atmosphere and improvise and noodle on top of that. Sounds great to me, I wish there was more low barrier to entry live music like that. But I suppose there's no market for e.g. an in-house band working shifts for background entertainment, and they can't compete with jukebox software.

      • insane_dreamer 3 days ago

        You don't understand how Spotify distributes revenue to artists.

    • flipthefrog 2 days ago

      Kind of Blue was smashed out in two sessions. A Love Supreme in one

    • alsetmusic 3 days ago

      The point is that artists who have <1000 streams get zero pay. This is designed to help prevent payouts and increase profits. 'Deny,' 'defend', and 'depose'.

      • volkl48 3 days ago

        Yes and no.

        They do not pay out per stream. They pay out a set % of their total revenue to rights holders. Spotify has to pay the exact same amount of money before and after that change.

        The savings for Spotify is in not having the (not so insignificant) administrative overhead of trying to make hundreds of thousands of basically worthless payouts to different individuals that are worth <$5 or even <$1.

        I think it's fairly reasonable to draw some sort of lower bound on the minimum you need to reach to get a payout, especially in a world where basically anyone can put music on their service.

        • tuna74 2 days ago

          Spotify seems to have special deals with these music producers that probably gives them less money per stream.

      • jzb 3 days ago

        It's designed to increase profits, for sure. I do not have a lot of love for Spotify, currently, but this particular practice does not bother me much.

        Look: If you give a damn about what you're listening to, you can go over to Spotify and create your own playlists filled with music you care about (assuming they have the artists you like in their catalog). In that case, the artists will get paid accordingly.

        But Spotify has realized that a lot of people use it for background noise and don't give two shits whether what they're listening to is a "real" band or music-like content squeezed out of sweatshop sessions in Sweden or whatever. I can't fault them overmuch for taking advantage of the actual listening preferences of its users. If you feel cheated by this, spend some time curating playlists on your own.

        Tacking on the CEO-shooter's mantra to your message is shameful. This isn't healthcare. This isn't killing anyone. It's a fully optional service that happens to be popular. Trying to link it to anger over being denied healthcare is ridiculous.

        • georgebcrawford 3 days ago

          I 50/50 agree with you. My issue is the bait and switch feel it has to it, for both artist and audience. Spotify holds all the power. They already pay less for Discover Weekly streams, instead using that old music industry classic "exposure". If they really care about artists (like their marketing claims), perhaps they can add a filter for playlists that contain PFC vs not?

          I'm just rambling without much explanation sorry, but I'm gonna hit the reply button anyway!

  • bondarchuk 2 days ago

    I'm just pleasantly surprised that this stuff is played by humans at all. Maybe in 20 years we'll see some "best of mid-2020's streaming muzak" compilations pressed on expensive vinyl, like we got with the library music of yore not that long ago.

    • wsintra2022 2 days ago

      If your looking for an early community that wants to press vinyl and create an online community, check out kushtybuckrecords, it’s a project me and my son are building, we have friends that own a vinyl press factory (Press On) and we are trying to build an online community that will help Artist create vinyl records

  • legohead 3 days ago

    There is an incredible amount of unique music & artists on Soundcloud. Or at least there was some years ago. I got quite into it, to where it was taking up too much of my time and I stopped using it altogether. They kept making it more difficult to download music too so that was another thing that drove me away.

    • onemoresoop 2 days ago

      I tried soundcloud recently and it’s filled with ads to the point of being an extremely disruptive experience.

  • sitkack 3 days ago

    > is less of a nefarious plan from Spotify to replace famous Katy Perry with AI

    Has that been shown?

    • mort96 3 days ago

      It hasn't been shown that Spotify has no nefarious plan to replace Katy Perry with AI, but what's on display here, what this article is highlighting, is no such thing.

  • eleveriven 3 days ago

    It’s ironic, though, that what we love about playlists like Lofi Girl (endless streams of music that feel fresh yet familiar) is exactly what’s being exploited

    • fuhsnn 3 days ago

      >feel fresh yet familiar

      This probably applies to most mainstream entertainment.

      • Cthulhu_ 3 days ago

        In this particular context, it's for passive entertainment; things like blockbuster movies are intended for actively watching.

        But that said, people massively underestimate the background entertainment market. Spotify Reddit is that for me a lot of the time, as is youtube. Netflix and co less so, if I'm watching something I want to enjoy it, not have it as background / comofort stuff.

  • rich_sasha 3 days ago

    I agree 100%.

    I think the question is, what when inevitably someone uses that human music to train an AI generating the same ambient music? Especially when you acquired the music on the cheap using a monopoly position.

    • lotsofpulp 3 days ago

      I assumed that has already been happening. I see tons of all capital letter 5 or 6 letter “artists” in Apple Music infinite playlist.

      There are also websites and apps like Suno that make whatever you want on the fly.

  • magic_hamster 2 days ago

    Only on your last sentence did I realize you were describing something you thought was actually bad. In my opinion it's a pretty good system where everybody wins: the audience gets real, fresh music, the players get paid for some practice sessions with low pressure (sounds like fun), and the producers make some money. This is a pretty good expression of music as a service in my opinion.

    • chrz a day ago

      Oh look spotify is here. From article it wasnt "sounds like fun" but "horrible expierience"

Animats 3 days 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

  • spacechild1 3 days ago

    Interesting, I didn't know about Seeburg. Funnily enough, this business model is even older: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telharmonium

    "As early as 1906, the Cahill Telharmonium Company of New York attempted to sell musical entertainment (produced by Dr. Thaddeus Cahill's "Telharmonium," an early synthesizer) to subscribers through the telephone"

    The business failed miserably, but the Telharmonium is remembered as an early electronic music instrument.

    • Animats 3 days ago

      The Telharmonium dated from the "if only we had gain" era of pre-electronics. The thing was a huge collection of sizable AC generators running at different frequencies, run through a keyboard, and mixed with transformers. With no way to amplify a small signal, there was no way to downsize the thing. Once amps were invented, the Hammond Organ, with its tone wheels, was the same concept in a piano-sized package.

      History of pre-transistor electronics:

      - If only we had voltage.

      - If only we had current.

      - If only we had rectification.

      - If only we had gain.

      - If only we had frequency.

      - If only we had power gain.

      - If only we had reliability.

      - If only we had precision.

      - If only we had counting.

    • ksymph 3 days ago

      Fun fact: there was a brief period after music recording, but before copies could be made with much quality, where if you wanted them to sound halfway decent each recording had to be a unique performance. Studio musicians were paid to perform popular songs over and over. When making copies became more feasible, there was backlash from some musicians, both for financial and artistic reasons - not unlike when recorded music started becoming popular in the first place. Not hard to see the similarities with modern distribution woes like piracy and streaming too.

    • Cthulhu_ 3 days ago

      Apparently there are no recordings of this telharmonium, which is a shame :/. There seem to be attempts at reproducing it though.

  • nonameiguess 3 days ago

    There is least one other common "bulk music factory" business model like this. Bands like Two Steps from Hell cranked out a whole lot of simple and generic "epic music" that didn't need to be licensed per use, with the purpose being studios could use in trailers for action movies and video games before the real scores were finished.

    Amusingly, even though the band existed for the purpose of supplying music for trailers, they eventually became popular enough on the Internet that fans convinced them to release a couple albums and even play live shows.

  • greenie_beans 3 days ago

    this would've been good context for the writer to share

    • sebdufbeau 2 days ago

      The article is an excerpt from an upcoming book, maybe it's part of it

    • montag 2 days ago

      I know, right??

  • philjohn 3 days ago

    Wow - that's an awesome video to watch how they automated playing the next records, thank you!

  • zimmund 3 days ago

    And before this: self-playing pianos using perforated rolls, reducing the cost of hiring live pianists in saloons.

    • Animats 3 days ago

      Different legal environment. Until 1908, player piano companies didn't have to pay royalties to composers. See White-Smith Music Publishing Co. v. Apollo Co..[1] So, in its growth period, the player piano industry didn't need to acquire music rights. Then Congress changed the law, to create the "mechanical license" right to play out the song from a storage device.

      [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White-Smith_Music_Publishing_C....

  • nitwit005 3 days ago

    I was not aware that dated back to records. Appreciate the YouTube link.

    • Animats 3 days 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

      [2] https://us.moodmedia.com/sound/music-for-business/

      • jccalhoun 3 days ago

        The actual company that owns the Seeburg catalog has their own site and stream as well: https://seeburg1000.com/

        • Animats 3 days ago

          I suspect they are claiming more ownership than they really have. Most of those records were made prior to 1976, back when copyright only applied if you made a copyright application. Seeburg didn't file copyright applications on them and they bear no copyright markings. They just stamped "Property of Seeburg Music Library" on the disks themselves, which were loaned out to customers but not always collected back.

          Seeburg and its successors all went out of business decades ago, via court-ordered liquidation. The current "Seeburg 1000" site uses the name, but came along much later and does not seem to be a successor company. So these are now probably public-domain.

          Their music was blah, but competently executed. Better than many modern low-end cover bands.

  • globular-toast 2 days ago

    > So they didn't file copyrights on all this material.

    Huh? I'm really surprised to see this misconception cropping up here of all places. You don't have to "file copyright". It's automatically attached to anything and everything anyone creates as long as it meets some threshold of originality.

    • wheybags 2 days ago

      Now, yes. But before 1978 in the us there were some extra steps (I think just attaching a copyright notice & publishing it, but I'm not 100% sure)

_1ts3 3 days 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.

  • Cthulhu_ 3 days ago

    Just curious, what kind of software do you use, and / or, what is this category of music based on? Brian Eno and the ambient movement as a whole?

    It sounds like the kinda thing that'll earn you a paycheck, but not fame. Or the kind of fame that can land you work from e.g. Spotify, not the kind of fame that'll fill up concert halls.

    I think it's a sobering look into the music industry (not just your whole comment but the article + comments); the perception is that if you're not filling up concert halls then you don't matter, but the truth is that good or successful music does not necessitate the accompanying fame or "interesting" personality / personal branding.

    • pxoe 2 days ago

      there are artists that are famous without "filling up concert halls", or even having that much of a scale of an audience. success doesn't have to be this frankly obsolete and obtusely singular idea of it. for a lot of music and artists that were brought up and got popular on the internet, and for the people who listen to them, this "concert fame" is completely irrelevant. i bet that it's almost inverse for a certain kind of listener who either just doesn't go to concerts, or can't, and/or simply enjoy listening music in their own manner of comfort.

  • dfedbeef 3 days ago

    You cheated and sold out to get preferential placement... Who cares how many streams you got? The metric is meaningless now.

    • beambot 2 days ago

      "Cheated" how?

      You & others may not like it. It may not align with your ethos or your peers' norms. But I see nothing ethically, morally or legally wrong with parent's comment...

    • recursive 2 days ago

      The "rules" you think are being violated here probably never existed. In the last decades, this kind of thing was called disruption.

  • eleveriven 3 days 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)

  • conradfr 3 days ago

    Good on you for earning a living from music (which is hard) but I'm not sure the whole reduced payout thing should be legal.

    Is it that far from payola?

  • chr15m 3 days 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!

  • montag 2 days ago

    I would pay a premium for a music service that excludes "volume plays"

  • justhw 3 days ago

    By 'programmers' you mean like playlist owners, channel owners etc... right?

  • ksynwa 3 days ago

    What's the wellness category about?

    • _1ts3 3 days ago

      Outcome based music generally - sleep, meditation, yoga, focus, etc.

  • Eduard 3 days ago

    I would love to listen to your music. Can you name it?

  • Yeul 3 days 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...

GuB-42 3 days 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 3 days 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.

    • pxoe 2 days 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 2 days 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.

        • pxoe 2 days ago

          they can look up credits of any given song right now and realize that literally everybody involved in music making has some sort of made up name, be they a singer, songwriter, producer, engineer, or whomever. like, spotify has a credits button. it's not really a revelation.

    • RandallBrown 3 days ago

      Lots of artists use "fake" names and don't write their music. Occasionally they don't even perform it.

    • mvdtnz 2 days ago

      This guy thinks the dudes from Slipknot really dress like that.

  • basisword 3 days ago

    One of the producers in the article describes making the music as “brain-numbing” and “pretty much completely joyless.” The process is described as “...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.”

    He's not a fake musician by any means. But I think he'd accept the work he creates for this being described as fake 'art' specifically. There's no thought, meaning, or passion injected into it. It's a conveyor belt. It's based on analytics. It's soulless.

    • lalalandland 3 days ago

      So its an office job? I know people who makes this exact music described in the article and it's part of their daily work to earn a living as music producers. Other musicians play weddings for example. It's not fake. But you don't put your serious artist name on a track like for a chill muzak stream. Music is a product that fills many categories and I salute the ones that can find ways to earn a living doing with their passion. Some of the time you do a routine and other time you follow your dream

      • adin8mon 2 days ago

        When people say "passion", they don't mean churning out derivative charts of the same "correct" ranges of muzak with no inner emotion or no inner story. That's not passion, and I'm pretty sure your friends who do this would agree that this is not theirs either. Instead, they'd probably point to more personal work to show you what they are actually passionate about.

        What makes art beautiful isn't plucking the strings or pressing piano keys. It is the expression of ideas, a communicative art.

        The artists who do this are not evil, and must make a living. I would not call them or define them as "fake". There is absolutely fake work and fake output, though.

    • IncreasePosts 3 days ago

      Mountain ranges and forests are soulless too, but they're still quite special and can be inspiring.

  • insane_dreamer 3 days ago

    > we are taking about real people here

    the people are indeed real (well, for now, but soon to be replaced with AI -- it's the logical next step)

    what is fake is that the bios are not who those people are; it's like me putting on my bio that I went to Julliard

dools 3 days 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.

  • insane_dreamer 3 days ago

    > Isn't this just like how supermarkets have their "house brands" that compete with name brands? I

    1) A supermarket does not bill itself as a neutral discovery platform. It's not comparable to Spotify.

    2) A supermarket can't make up fake information about the provenance of its products. The information on the cereal box is regulated to be truthful (well, we hope).

    3) Most importantly, this is about discovery. The store has its brand of cereal next to some other non-store brands on the shelf, the customer has the opportunity to discover both. What Spotify is doing is taking the non-store-brand cereals off the shelf and putting them in the stocking room where you only get them if you happen to ask one of the store employees.

    • mehwoot 2 days ago

      Supermarkets sell promotional space and in some cases access to have products even appear in store, either through discounts on the wholesale price or straight up charging for it. They absolutely tilt things in favour of their own brands, and in some supermarkets in some categories don't stock any non house brands.

      Spotify has discovered there is a big market for music where the quality isn't that important and they can serve it themselves. Same as supermarkets do with many products.

      • gregw2 2 days ago

        You are right about supermarkets charging for shelf space in various ways, and to add to that I think it's even worse. I've heard the supermarkets and other retailer dub certain brands for certain products as "category leaders" and basically give them control of the entire shelf space of their category, including that brand's competitors. Which products and varities get stocked, how much, and placement. That brand is then in charge of maximizing profitability of "its" section. I'm not sure how that isnt an antitrust problem, but...

    • crazygringo 3 days ago

      > What Spotify is doing is taking the non-store-brand cereals off the shelf and putting them in the stocking room where you only get them if you happen to ask one of the store employees.

      That's a terrible analogy.

      Spotify has tons of ways to access the real artists. Often including dedicated playlists for each one of them. They show up in search. In related arists. In radio playlists. In top music playlists. Etc.

      Spotify isn't taking anything "off the shelf". A more apt analogy is a grocery store with a dedicated section for store-brand goods only. Where everything's still normally on the shelves where you expect -- nothing has been taken off the shelf -- but you can also visit the store-brand-only section.

      It's hard to see why that would be a bad thing for a supermarket to do.

      • insane_dreamer 3 days ago

        you missed what the article was talking about

        yeah, they're available by search if you know what to look for; that's the same as asking the store employee if they carry X, as opposed to seeing it as you browse the aisle

        > A more apt analogy is a grocery store with a dedicated section for store-brand goods only

        No, that's not the right analogy and not what Spotify is doing. That would be like having a section for "undiscovered artists" on the front page where you can browse through them, alongside another section for "Spotify-sponsored artists" which you can also browse through.

        The point of the article's argument is that unless you know you want Artist X and search for them, you're not going to come across them because they're not being added to Spotify playlists and content discovery mechanisms (obviously you can add them to your own playlist manually). You'll instead come across the content that Spotify owns, allowing it to keep a greater share of revenue and pay less to artists trying to distribute their music through its platform.

        • crazygringo 2 days ago

          > The point of the article's argument is that unless you know you want Artist X and search for them, you're not going to come across them because they're not being added to Spotify playlists and content discovery mechanisms

          No, that's not the point of the article because the article doesn't say that and that's not what's happening.

          Real artists are still being added to all those things. Probably 99.99+% of Spotify playlists and content discovery is for real artists.

          This is about a couple of very specific genres of background music where they've specifically sourced their own music for their own playlists. That's all.

        • TeMPOraL 2 days ago

          > yeah, they're available by search if you know what to look for; that's the same as asking the store employee if they carry X, as opposed to seeing it as you browse the aisle

          Most people aren't browsing Spotify as if they were browsing the store. They're browsing the promotional magazine of the store - and that one is very selective indeed, focusing on what the store wants to promote at any given moment. Which is OK, too - promotional magazine is where the best deals are anyway.

          The problem is people confusing promotion with discovery. Advertising and promotional materials are stupid way of doing discovery. They're literally meant to do the opposite of giving you a broad and clear picture of things.

          (It's the same thing like if you browse for stuff on Amazon and think you're doing discovery. You're not, you're just setting yourself up for wasting money.)

    • TeMPOraL 2 days ago

      > 1) A supermarket does not bill itself as a neutral discovery platform.

      Neither does Spotify? It's the "pay once, listen to anything, more convenient than Torrents" thing; discovery sucks everywhere anyway.

      > 2) A supermarket can't make up fake information about the provenance of its products. The information on the cereal box is regulated to be truthful (well, we hope).

      Yeah, but then if you read it carefully, you may be surprised to learn that the Premium Brand Cereal X, and the Value-Add store-brand cereal, are literally the same thing, made in the same factory, differing only in packaging and price (and perhaps in quality brackets).

      Perhaps like with supermarkets, if Spotify users cared more about provenance, they'd realize that the same people are doing the 'high art' hits and cranking out supermarket music - that the preference for "high art" of specific bands may have nothing to do with quality of art, but rather is just falling for the brand marketing.

      So perhaps musicians were better off with Spotify not drawing users' attention to the in-store background and to who made it.

      > Most importantly, this is about discovery. The store has its brand of cereal next to some other non-store brands on the shelf, the customer has the opportunity to discover both. What Spotify is doing is taking the non-store-brand cereals off the shelf and putting them in the stocking room where you only get them if you happen to ask one of the store employees.

      I can't help but think that this is not a problem that actually exists, because a supermarket that keeps brand products forever in the stocking room in favor of in-house brands, would be much better off not ordering the brand product in the first place. Why pay money for product that you're not going to sell anyway, and lose the storage space too?

      The dynamics of what's happening with in-house vs. outside brands in stores are quite complex, as are the underlying reasons, but I argue it all has very little to do with discovery.

      • insane_dreamer a day ago

        > I can't help but think that this is not a problem that actually exists, because a supermarket that keeps brand products forever in the stocking room in favor of in-house brands, would be much better off not ordering the brand product in the first place. Why pay money for product that you're not going to sell anyway, and lose the storage space too?

        Good point. But where Spotify and the store differ is that Spotify doesn't pay for the music upfront. It distributes a portion of its streaming revenues up front. So unlike the store, it can keeping thousands of titles in the stocking room without losing money.

    • tuna74 2 days ago

      Does Spotify actually bill itself as a "neutral discovery platform"?

  • pests 3 days 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.

    • big-green-man 3 days 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.

      • foota 3 days ago

        I don't know how I feel about this, but the people that are upset about this seem to be upset for musicians. Which, I don't know how I feel. It feels like the outsourcing of the music industry.

        • Yeul 3 days ago

          Spotify sends users a notification when their favourite artist has a concert. I think that's a nice gesture.

          Nowadays you make money with live gigs not snorting coke in a studio making concept albums. And Spotify saved the industry from Napster- yes I still remember.

          • philistine 3 days ago

            You don't really remember. Spotify arrived in the US only in 2011. The iTunes Store saved the industry from Napster.

        • big-green-man 3 days ago

          I mean, do you feel sad for photographers, painters, digital artists that every stock photo used on every website in the world comes from a stock photo website and wasn't hand made by an artisan? Is it some slight against Duke Ellington that he wasn't selected to write and record the hold music you hear when you call your doctors office? Feel bad for musicians why? They still get their royalties when someone plays their song. It's just they're not getting selected by an algorithm for random background music as often. How is that some wrongdoing against them?

    • mort96 3 days ago

      Beyond Meat is a weird analogy here. It's relatively expensive, and having a Beoynd Meat alternative to steaks would open up new markets (vegans, vegetarians, pescatarians, groups of people who include vegans and vegetarians and pescatarians) so it's something restaurants tend to feature prominently on their menues as a vegan or vegetarian alternative.

      A better alternative would be a steak restaurant known for using quality meats and then they decide to include cheap meat to reduce cost, and not make it clear that that's what you're ordering.

      • schnable 3 days ago

        I'll play along. It's like ordering a beer flight at a bar and they start out with craft beers and 3-4 beers in they start slipping in Natty Lights and Busches.

      • gregw2 2 days ago

        I've had this... The Longhorn Steakhouse "kids menu" steak (not cheap) given to my kids was actually inedible.

    • xandrius 3 days ago

      In that specific scenario, if the customers can't tell, I'd say the beyond meat option is better: still gives you the experience, the proteins, less cruelty and better for the environment. Win win to me.

      Unlike here the topic in question, I'd assume cows too would prefer you having a beyond meat instead of them. But I'm just projecting, I'm not actually sure about that.

    • dools 3 days 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.

DoingIsLearning 3 days 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.

  • Kiro 3 days 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 3 days 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 3 days 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).

    • Cthulhu_ 3 days ago

      That's nothing new though, a lot of the big name artists' albums are a collection of most of their singles (idk how the album vs single market works); e.g. Taylor Swift with 7 singles made from the 13 tracks on '1989'.

      I don't know what is normal, but releasing singles or EPs before the full album seems like a common way to generate hype beforehand. Also, the Spotify model - assuming against what the previous comment says and every stream counts for the same revenue - doesn't differentiate between singles, EPs or albums, so it's whatever from that point of view. I've seen a few artists start releasing demos, songs-that-didn't-quite-make-it, and all kinds of unusual material that wasn't good enough for a full album onto streaming platforms, which then ends up in the long tail of their repertoire. It ties in with the article though, in that these songs will also start appearing in the playlists related to those artists.

      Another interesting one is a single artist releasing songs under different names; Devin Townsend comes to mind, who can fill up a related playlist with songs released under his own name, Strapping Young Lad, Devin Townsend Band, Devin Townsend Project, Casualties of Cool, etc. And given he does many different genres, he'd appear - theoretically - on many different styles of playlists too, although I think the algorithm would get confused when the artist name gets associated with both hourlong ambient tracks and seven minute chaos metal genre mashups.

      • michaelt 3 days ago

        > I don't know what is normal, but releasing singles or EPs before the full album seems like a common way to generate hype beforehand.

        I think this arose in the radio-and-CD era of music. Maybe even earlier?

        The radio stations that drove sales of new music wanted to play the latest releases. By releasing three singles before your 12-track album, you got more radio play, more shots at doing well in the sales charts, and hence raised your album sales.

  • basisword 3 days ago

    >> If you are a Spotify user

    I would recommend switching to Apple Music if you want to stream. They're continuing to lean into the idea of human curation (with the launch of three new live radio stations this month) and I find their human curated playlists lead to me discovering a lot more music I like than Spotify's. Apple Music also works well with local files so music you purchase of Bandcamp, bootlegs etc. will work across devices.

    • jabroni_salad 3 days ago

      Is the software still garbo on Windows and Android? Last I tried it, it would crash after a couple hours and I have no valid airplay targets in my home. They were generous about the 2 month trial but I only needed 2 hours to realize that I wasn't the target market.

      For all of spotify's faults, it runs on EVERYTHING and Spotify Connect is effectively borderless.

      • n144q 2 days ago

        The Android app is solid. I don't remember running into any bugs recently, and (1) the app supports Android tablets well (2) the app for classical music "Classical" works is also top-tier. I switch between the iPhone app and Android app frequently, and I really can't tell any difference between the two versions. The Android one supports Chromecast, although I have had some trouble with it in the past.

        The Windows app is ok, but I haven't used it as much, so I can't provide much feedback.

      • bangaroo 3 days ago

        as an avid apple music user i am continually frustrated by what an afterthought the windows app is

        it's a continuation of apple's legacy of barely putting in the minimum to ship anything for windows.

        there's a reason i won't use their password manager, etc. i still interact with windows, and basically any key app i use can't be apple-made because the windows experience will be utter trash and the linux experience will be nonexistent.

        i make do with the windows apple music app but it is objectively a bad experience.

        • mr_toad 2 days ago

          Apple still makes most of their money off hardware. They really want you to buy their hardware.

      • achenet 3 days ago

        I prefer YouTube Music's webapp and Android app to Spotify, personally.

    • phatfish 2 days ago

      There are a number of good independent radio stations I listen to, personally I would say that is the better option for human curation.

  • eptcyka 3 days ago

    Also consider paying for music on bandcamp or elsewhere.

  • sailfast 3 days ago

    Do they really get paid more “per play” on an album vs. a playlist? That seems quite tricky to figure out the accounting.

    Is it as simple as per play? I only know what’s posted on the loud and clear website but stream share isn’t quite the same thing from what they’re saying in the FAQ.

  • abrookewood 3 days ago

    I used to think like this, but no longer. Honestly, in an average album, there may only be 2-4 tracks that are excellent and the rest are just OK. This is a pretty common pattern and you can see reflected in the number of streams for each song. As for the album being the artists collective vision, I don't know that that is true. Maybe it is for something like Pink Floyd, but I get the impression most songs are written in isolation, rather than being a part of a collective vision.

    In the end, why waste time listening to something you only half enjoy?

mlsu 4 days 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 4 days 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 2 days ago

      I think something like that would be easily detected and penalized. Might explain why you don't see it any more

  • Eduard 3 days 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.

    • arnvald 3 days ago

      The way I understand it is that the 14th song is not a banger, but a song put between well known, good songs, to boost its number of streams.

      I’ve noticed it a few times, I was listening to something like “best of 80s” and a few tracks were from the same band that I couldn’t find any info about. So my guess was that the creator of the list put some of the songs they (or their friends) made, then those songs got millions of streams just because they were on that playlist even though they had nothing to do with the expected content. It’s either for the money or maybe PR to make an impression that the band is popular

      • ntlk 2 days ago

        This is a technique that every music marketing outfit will recommend nowadays. It’s one of the most effective ways to promote new music, but it requires the effort to create and maintain playlists.

  • orblivion 3 days 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.

  • Cthulhu_ 3 days ago

    I mean that's not unusual either I suppose, it's a self promo strategy. Spotify does it themselves as well, mixing in relatively unknown artists into generated playlists to give them a bit more exposure which they would never get if "existing popularity" was the metric to include them in generated playlists. The article implies that artists can accept lower royalty payments to get more exposure like that too, so it's intentional by Spotify and the artists themselves. I mean personally I don't care for it, but good for them.

    What I really don't like is the spam where they add a random well-known artist's name to their song to make it look like it's a collaboration, but it's either a low effort cover or has absolutely nothing to do with it. At least I've stopped gettring random basement mumble rap in generated metal playlists.

  • sailfast 3 days ago

    Are you seeing that on individual playlists created by users or official Spotify playlists? I’ve only seen the former so far trying to get their band exposure, etc by making a playlist popular.

  • yaur 3 days ago

    Those could also be payed placements.

    • mr_toad 2 days ago

      Still beats radio. That was all payed placements. With commercials. And obnoxious DJs.

timoth3y 4 days 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.

  • mattgreenrocks 4 days 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.

    • anigbrowl 3 days 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.

    • 7e 4 days 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 3 days 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.

  • n144q 3 days 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.

  • CapsAdmin 4 days ago

    Maybe very anecdotal, but I know a genz'er who mostly listens to music on tik tok in short loops.

    • piva00 4 days 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.

      • dylan604 4 days 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 3 days 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 3 days 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

            • anigbrowl 3 days ago

              The way your comment was written, it wasn't obvious you were familiar with needle drops.

              • dylan604 a day ago

                Wanna talk about cueburns, wow, and flutter too? It wasn’t obvious you were familiar with sarcasm by your posts

      • justatdotin 4 days ago

        I've always known people who do similar. it's weird, but it's not terribly new.

  • grujicd 4 days 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 4 days 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 4 days ago

        recently discovered plexamp which is a pretty cool way to stream a local library to the app

  • killjoywashere 4 days 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 4 days 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 4 days 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 4 days ago

          "We have a [record] pool?!"

    • StayTrue 3 days 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 3 days 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.

    • carlosjobim 3 days ago

      Who has asked you to do anything?

  • circlefavshape 3 days 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 4 days 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 4 days 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 4 days 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 4 days 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 3 days 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 3 days 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

        • troupo 3 days 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 4 days 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 4 days 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...

        • pxoe 2 days ago

          believe it or not, there are different kinds of music for different kinds of moods and levels of listening to it, levels of attention, engagement, and so on. some songs will be just a bit too engaging to listen to for some things, and some more low key songs might be a better fit.

          people settle for "mediocrity" all the time. be it just what you deem "mediocre" (out of cluelessness and/or disrespect), if it's not a "generic idea of a song with lyrics and all" and just some mild electronica, or if it is really just kind of mediocre, which is a good fit in some situations nonetheless, and does actually have wider appeal due to its mediocrity.

          "low effort" may overlap, in perception or in how things are actually made, with some simpler, subtler, not overproduced music. it really isn't a bad thing at all, so it's bizarre to see it get shaded so much.

        • bee_rider 3 days 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 3 days 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

            • achenet 3 days ago

              If you're working with C, your developer environment should include, in addition a good text editor and debugger, a fully furnished recording studio so you can record an album while waiting for your program to build.

              If you'd like to increase your income, you can try making formulaic smooth jazz for Spotify playlists instead of pretentious concept albums about your childhood trauma that no one will actually listen to ;)

            • bee_rider 3 days ago

              Put the compilation in another terminal, not need to wait for it to complete.

        • equestria 4 days 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 3 days 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...

      • 09thn34v 3 days 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 4 days 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 3 days 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 3 days 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 3 days 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.

          • amelius 3 days ago

            How does that make a difference here?

            Besides, physical property law is also just an abstract concept. If _you_ own a swimming pool, who says I cannot use it also?

            • occz 2 days ago

              One person using a swimming pool means that another person cannot use that particular fraction of the same swimming pool at the same time.

              Again, this does not apply to intellectual property, which is infinitely reproducible.

  • NoPicklez 4 days 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 3 days 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.

  • dylan604 4 days 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.

mholm 3 days 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

  • pinkmuffinere 3 days 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???

  • sitkack 3 days ago

    I'd love to see their Settlers of Catan game.

    • foota 3 days ago

      Huh?

      • pinkmuffinere 3 days 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 3 days ago

          That's a lot of leaps for me, but seems like a possible interpretation (certainly better than any I came up with).

  • circlefavshape 3 days ago

    $200,000 per year from running Spotify playlists? Citation needed - that is wildly implausible

    • DrammBA 3 days ago

      > $200,000 per year from running Spotify playlists

      No, $200,000 per year slipping his inoffensive slop into popular playlists

  • Eduard 3 days ago

    how does one slip their tracks into someone else's playlist? I rather guess playlist curators decide on their own which tracks they put in their owned playlists.

    • pinkmuffinere 3 days ago

      It's the same guy making the playlist and slipping the slop.

      "He who collated created"

    • ntlk 2 days ago

      A lot of playlist owners take submissions, and some have pricing lists, charging a set amount for featuring a song for a month or longer.

default-kramer 4 days 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.

anilakar 3 days 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

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

  • NobodyNada 3 days 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 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.

marcus_holmes 3 days 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 3 days 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 3 days 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.

  • a57721 3 days ago

    > it's just aural wallpaper

    Erik Satie coined the term "furniture music" for this.

Spivak 4 days 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.

  • norir 4 days 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.

    • lotsofpulp 3 days ago

      > the degradation of culture and is destroying the market for quality music.

      I dislike almost all pop music with vocals and rock and metal and all that overly guitar-y stuff. I very much prefer the music available to me today compared to what I had an option to listen to in the 1990s.

      • greenie_beans 3 days ago

        you had all the music leading up to the 1990s to listen to, was that not good enough?

        • troupo 3 days ago

          No, you didn't really have all the music: you were very limited by what was playing on the radio (fully influenced and often paid for by large labels) and in the local record store.

          Now you can chose to listen to almost anything: https://everynoise.com/

  • juujian 4 days 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.

  • legitster 4 days ago

    I think more to the point, there's not a lot of artists who would intentionally and willingly make forgettable ambient music.

  • lmm 4 days ago

    > 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.

    If that isn't payola then it's pretty damn close.

  • troupo 3 days ago

    No. The actual meat is mentioned once, and then completely dismissed as irrelevant and inconsequential:

    --- 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.

    But while Ek’s company was paying labels and publishers a lot of money—some 70 percent of its revenue—it had yet to turn a profit itself, something shareholders would soon demand. In theory, Spotify had any number of options: raising subscription rates, cutting costs by downsizing operations, or finding ways to attract new subscribers.

    --- start quote ---

    This is what so infuriating about all these articles: they never ever address the actual problems in the music industry

ausbah 4 days 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

  • phonetic 4 days 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 4 days 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 3 days 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 2 days ago

      I’ve been thinking about it and if there had to be a common rule for all these cases, I would say “yes”.

      However, if it was possible, I would set a threshold maybe based on an annual revenue. Let’s say I run a small board game store, where I sell games from other producers, but also my own games that I published. I’m a small entrepreneur, should I be prohibited from exposing my products more?

      Amazon, Spotify and some supermarket chains have such a dominant position in some markets they can abuse their position, they should be under scrutiny, but not small retail companies that want to try to create something on their own

  • legitster 4 days ago

    Despite the headline, it's not actually Spotify creating the music, but third parties taking advantage of their playlist model.

    • Miraltar 3 days 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

ricardobeat 4 days 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 3 days 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.

aggieNick02 3 days 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.

  • ejj28 3 days 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.

  • danudey 3 days 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.

eleveriven 3 days ago

It’s particularly concerning that Spotify’s actions prioritize cheaper, anonymous tracks over legitimate artist contributions

  • nicky0 3 days ago

    What makes an artist "legitimate"?

    • iamacyborg 3 days ago

      They release records and play shows.

      • nicky0 3 days 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.

      • troupo 3 days ago

        That somehow makes people who create music for games and movies not legitimate artists.

        • iamacyborg 3 days 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.

          • troupo 2 days ago

            Some composers do that, but most do not.

            Movie and game composers are literally work for hire. It's their employers who may or may not release a record related to that employer's work that may or may not credit the people involved.

            Even the extremely successful and popular composers are not necessarily releasing records or doing live shows. Even John Williams is primarily a conductor and a classical composer who didn't really start "touring" until 2002 or so. Same for Hans Zimmer. He doesn't release "records". Studios hiring him release movie soundtracks for which he was specifically hired. Etc.

            According to your definition of "legitimate artists" these artists are not legitimate.

          • pxoe 2 days ago

            there's probably a difference between doing maybe a handful of live shows spontaneously, and having a career that's filled with live shows and tours. having a "record" (a whatever physical release) is kind of irrelevant cause anyone can put anything on anything, live shows and tours are more complicated and some people just don't do it, and it's a yet more bizarre way to measure "legitimacy" cause again, so much music and so many artists just don't do that.

crazygringo 3 days 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 3 days 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.

    • danudey 3 days ago

      Spotify has 31% of the music streaming market[0], and now they're using their market share in that market to leverage out other creators in another market.

      This isn't really much different than Amazon using sales data from third party products to decide what Amazon Basics products to create, and then also featuring those products higher in search, recommending them over third-parties in recommendations, and so on, and then never featuring those third parties in any of their lists or categories unless you explicitly search for them.

      If Spotify's behavior wasn't inherently sketchy and full of underhanded motive, they wouldn't be hiding what they're doing and lying about everything. They wouldn't be manufacturing fake artists and publishing one artist's creations under a dozen other names. They'd just create a store brand playlist, like "Spotify Essentials", label everything that way, pitch it as "a curated selection of tracks produced and mastered exclusively for Spotify listeners", and then maybe make a cheaper subscription tier for just essentials, or stream those tracks at higher quality.

      Instead, what they're doing is one step better than just mass-generating AI slop, but I guarantee you that as soon as the technology is there that's what they'll be doing: training an AI on all this music that they own the rights to and using that to produce more music so that they don't have to pay anyone else for theirs.

      [0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/653926/music-streaming-s...

    • crazygringo 3 days 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.

      Spotify doesn't decide a thing. Everything I listen to on Spotify is based on what I chose to listen to. I have to choose to listen to background music, and choose a Spotify playlist over someone else's.

      > I use Spotify to find new artists so I can follow their artistic journey and see them in concert.

      So do I. This doesn't take away from that at all. That's "real" music which is most of my listening. But when I want "background" music, I can put on one of these Spotify playlists if I want. But that doesn't affect my ability to find new artists and follow them. If I'm putting on background music that I don't want to draw my attention, those are not artists I'd be following to begin with. It's like a different category of music entirely. What's wrong with Spotify providing both?

      • arnvald 2 days ago

        Discovery matters. Google doesn’t decide which websites you visit, but how often do you go to the 2nd page of search results? Supermarkets don’t decide what you buy, but there is a reason why everyone wants their product in middle shelf and not a bottom one. And Spotify doesn’t decide what you listen to, but a playlist on main page will get an order of magnitude more listens than a playlist you need to search for

      • PittleyDunkin 3 days ago

        This may be true for you (it's mostly true for me as well with Apple Music), but the spotify playlists and the auto-playlist-generator-thing are both enormously popular. There's little you can do with your behavior to affect the power Spotify has in the industry.

        > What's wrong with Spotify providing both?

        Spotify shouldn't be anything but a dumb pipe. Corporate money should not be dictating what art we gets produced and we have access to. It does, of course, across multiple industries, but that's generally a very bad thing.

        • crazygringo 3 days ago

          > Spotify shouldn't be anything but a dumb pipe.

          That's the absolute last thing I want.

          I've found so much music through its radio recommendations, it's "artists like this", getting into a new genre via its curated playlists.

          The primary value proposition to me of Spotify is to not be a dumb pipe, but to actively assist me in discovering new music I like.

          There are lots of services I could choose to access music through (Apple, Amazon, Tidal, etc.), if all I wanted was a dumb pipe. I pick Spotify because of how much better its recommendations are over the other services, in my experience.

          But that's not taking away any choice, it's only adding to it. Sometimes I choose to listen to stuff I know I like, and Spotify algorithms play zero part in that. Sometimes I want new stuff, and Spotify algorithms and playlists are a huge help. They're not "dictating" anything to me, because I'm actively choosing to use them.

          • PittleyDunkin 3 days ago

            > The primary value proposition to me of Spotify is to not be a dumb pipe, but to actively assist me in discovering new music I like.

            > Everything I listen to on Spotify is based on what I chose to listen to.

            I'm not saying these contradict, but you are in fact allowing a corporate entity to dictate your music taste on some level. Payola means certain artists pay to get prioritized to you. Maybe it doesn't work on you! Maybe you like this. Maybe your taste surrounds an area of music where payola isn't a problem. All of these are possibilities.

            To me, that's a very large problem. To you, that's what you're paying for. That's fine, but we're going to continue to disagree over whether or not Spotify is destroying the music industry and music culture. To me, this is exactly the opposite of how technology should assist in connecting artists to listeners and paying artists.

            But whatever; we really have no say at the end of the day, we're kind of just stuck with what we have.

            • crazygringo 3 days ago

              > but you are in fact allowing a corporate entity to dictate your music taste on some level.

              I think that's a very weird way of characterizing it.

              That's like saying, when I choose to watch a movie at the theaters, I am in fact allowing a corporate entity to dictate what I watch for the next two hours.

              True in some sort of technical sense I suppose. But I still chose to watch the film in the first place. So I don't really know what there is to complain about.

              (And I haven't noticed any kind of payola in Spotify radio recs or related artists -- but that would definitely be a decrease in quality that could send me to another service. In their editorial playlists, I don't mind though -- I assume it's editorial rather than algorithmic from the start.)

              • PittleyDunkin 3 days ago

                > That's like saying, when I choose to watch a movie at the theaters, I am in fact allowing a corporate entity to dictate what I watch for the next two hours.

                You absolutely are. That's the entire point of trailers.

                EDIT: my reading comprehension is poor. Yes, you have to opt in to watching the movies and in this sense you're 100% correct that corporate money isn't dictating what you watch. I think it's a little different in that it's much easier to miss out on music whereas movies can spend more on advertising than they do on production.

                I'm not saying this is even avoidable, either. It's just super depressing.

    • jedberg 3 days ago

      > I use Spotify to find new artists so I can follow their artistic journey and see them in concert.

      If you don't like what Spotify gives you, you can use another service that does. Clearly most people don't seem to mind.

    • shams93 3 days ago

      Not only this, but these music generation models were built with unlicensed content, not only do they bury the original artist they also just rip them off, not one dime no matter how much that artist spent on music lessons, music school, having a high quality instrument, studio gear to record, this is theft plain and simple.

      • alwa 3 days ago

        I think TFA discusses mainly a program whereby Spotify hires production companies to pay working musicians to create new works in a particular style, compensated per song and licensed closer to a work-for-hire basis than a royalty basis. The musicians feel that the result is artistically unsatisfying compared to what they’d do of their own creative initiative, but it is real people actually being paid.

        Incidentally the author also grumps that they avoid working with union artists for this purpose—I may be wrong but I thought part of the point of ASCAP and their lot was to require its artists to hew to a uniform, royalty-heavy compensation structure industrywide. So you can’t just go throw them $1700 a song (as Spotify is alleged to be doing in TFA) and call it a day.

        It sounds like your critique might apply more squarely to the generative music startups. Suno for example has gotten completely surreal, sounding spookily “real” in no time at all. Insipid, but stunning as a simulacrum.

        I imagine if we asked them, they’d counter that they’re expanding and democratizing access to creative tools, just as Snapchat filters satisfy dilettantes but don’t reduce pros’ need for Photoshop. And that to the extent they threaten to cannibalize any part of the status quo, it’s precisely the commoditized, sync/stock/“background music” end of the industry that needs to worry. That is, the ones who need to worry are the people doing the kinds of work that make this author uncomfortable.

        So I don’t disagree with your basic point. But it seems to me that nobody has ever been putting their concert dollars toward the Bossa Nova stylings of Spotify’s Chill Jazzy Fireside, live at a corporate canteen near you…

    • kylebenzle 3 days 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 3 days ago

        Amazon does sort of decide in a way that works for this analogy. If you search for a basic computer component, like a keyboard, one of the first 2-3 results is usually Amazon Basics brand. We all know that people tend to click on the first few links way more often than bottom of the page or second page. It's 100% anticompetitive to self-serve in that way.

        Spotify is a different type of situation given the mode of consumption, but there is absolutely an argument to be made that we shouldn't, as a matter of ideology, allow distributors to also be producers.

        • aeturnum 3 days ago

          I guess, to me, what about the popular counter-example: Trader Joes. A popular mid-cost supermarket that mostly stocks their own store brands. That behavior does not feel anti-competitive or deceptive. People know that Trader Joes sells mostly their own brands, which seem to generally be thought of as good deals and quality-competitive.

          I totally agree that Amazon doing this when they claim to be an open market is way scummier, but I am divided on the Spotify example. If they were somehow stopping you from playing non-house-produced music that would be one thing, but it seems fine for them to put together playlists with house-produced music and offer them to users?

          • arrosenberg 3 days ago

            > I guess, to me, what about the popular counter-example: Trader Joes. A popular mid-cost supermarket that mostly stocks their own store brands. That behavior does not feel anti-competitive or deceptive. People know that Trader Joes sells mostly their own brands, which seem to generally be thought of as good deals and quality-competitive.

            I agree with that. The big difference to me is market share. Amazon and Spotify are both 800 lb gorillas who want to control the market. Trader Joes has a business model that's intended to compete in the market. Amazon and Spotify should have to play by much more strict rules in order to maintain their market dominance - that's healthy for a capitalist system, it prevents our current dilemma with consolidation and oligarchy.

            > If they were somehow stopping you from playing non-house-produced music that would be one thing, but it seems fine for them to put together playlists with house-produced music and offer them to users?

            Yeah, I also agree the Spotify example is more nebulous and harder to define. IMO they should not be allowed to produce the music or cut preferential deals to promote one artist over another, but the should be free to package and distribute the music they have the rights to however they see fit. I.E. they can promote <some artist> over <some other artist> they just can't do it because they made a preferential deal with the former.

            • aeturnum 3 days ago

              I think...to me I would object to Spotify pushing their house-made music using their suggestion features (Discover Weekly, the horrid "Smart" Shuffle feature) - but them making playlists with their house music and offering them to users feels fine. I think that is how I would slice it when thinking about the Amazon example (that IS anti-competitive and monopolistic and should be illegal imo).

              Edit: I have not looked into market share deeply but others in this thread have said the Spotify market share is ~31%, which does not seem obviously overwhelming to me.

              • arrosenberg 3 days ago

                That's a perfectly reasonable stance. I would point out that historically, 30% is an extremely high market share in any industry, and represents a high degree of consolidation (esp given that Apple probably has similar share, so the two of them control the market).

                That is more a result of how insanely the US structures intellectual property rights. The problem is that one company having that much marketshare usually creates a defacto private regulator of the industry, which goes against the whole notion of people being governed based on consent.

    • aeturnum 3 days ago

      You aren't required to only listen to their music. You are free to make your own playlists with the artists you like. But Spotify publishes playlists with artists they would prefer you listen to, which is kinda annoying, but is hardly them "deciding you only listen to their music."

      Like, I get why this feels scummy, but I use Spotify often and have literally never used one of these playlists. They haven't forced me to listen to anything.

      • dclowd9901 2 days ago

        I get that but I use (and by extension trust) Spotify to introduce me to new _real_ artists. I can't do that on my own or I wouldn't use Spotify at all.

  • davexunit 3 days ago

    This is one of the more depressing HN comments I have read in awhile. It's amazing to me that this can be one's take after reading this absolutely damning article. Just the market working, I suppose.

    • tyrust 3 days ago

      HN has a super bland and anti-culture culture. Combine that with the tendency to love technology and watching the free market "solve" "problems" and you're bound to find prolific posters like the parent commenter with these cold takes.

      I'm not surprised in the least.

    • gizmondo 3 days ago

      The article is deliberately written to try to evoke an outrage, but I also don't see what is actually damning about it. The comparison with store brands is the first thing that came to my mind.

      • gregw2 2 days ago

        Its the deception. They dont call it "Spotify Easy Listening" and have a store brand the consumer can easily identify, the same song has 50 names and 50 artists, and its in Spotify's financial interest to keep doing that.

        • gregw2 2 days ago

          This deception in labeling and artist-anonymizing and hiding the existence of this PFC program is the antithesis of fulfilling their core value propositions, foremost to the consumer which is exposing them to music they do or would like and secondarily to the artist community they claim to support.

          More enshittification on the altar of selfish growth.

  • PittleyDunkin 3 days ago

    > I want to put something on in the background that doesn't call attention to itself

    An aside—I firmly believe that there's a genetic component to this or something. I can sleep to structurally complicated metal music or jazz or symphonic stuff—in fact these genres are fantastic for entering productive flows—but if you throw on pop music with lyrics I can't focus at all.

  • insane_dreamer 3 days ago

    you've clearly missed the point

    this is similar to Apple creating an app that does the same thing as your app, and then strategically promoting that app in the App store rankings while relegating your app to be very hard to discover and fall into oblivion

    or Microsoft making it hard to use Netscape on Windows by pushing IE on you

    it's called using your position as a platform to push your own products; a typical monopoly play

    > This is more like a supermarket featuring their store-brand corn flakes next to Kellogg's Corn Flakes.

    No, it's not like that at all. firstly, a store doesn't promote itself as a neutral discovery platform. secondly, their store brand sitting next to some other brand on shelf is equal discovery opportunity for the customer. Adding their own tracks to playlists and pushing them to the top of the rankings is not equal discovery. It's like having your non-store brand flakes in a back room where if you happen to ask the store employee they'll go back and find them for you and otherwise you don't even know they exist

  • obeattie 3 days ago

    In principal, neither do I. What I take issue with is crafting elaborate but completely false bios to make these sound like real artists. That seems slimy to me.

  • renegade-otter 3 days ago

    I mean, Netflix's "Emily in Paris" is a "background show". Would it make a difference if it were created with AI? Probably not? This is what AI is good for - mediocre, throw-away, background "art".

  • vidarh 3 days ago

    It's also not new. You've been able to get low cost filler music for literally decades. I used to have a bunch of CD's of "filler" synth music and cheap covers I picked up as a broke teenager back in the 80's...

imp0cat 3 days 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.
GraphWeaver23 3 days 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.

kbrisso 3 days 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 2 days 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-ar...

sim7c00 3 days 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)

basisword 3 days 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 3 days ago

    we need a better word than "enshittification". reading that word is like fingernails on chalkboard to me.

    • onemoresoop 2 days 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 2 days 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

wodenokoto 3 days 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.

NoRagrets 3 days 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=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.

paradygm 3 days 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-criticiz...

tivert 3 days 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 2 days ago

    It’s already happening all over social media

ess3 3 days 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.

EastSmith 3 days ago

Wait, the music mafia industry is finally getting out-mafia-ed?

Concrete3286 3 days 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.

luisgvv 3 days ago

I feel cheated, will definitely look into curated playlists by users rather than the generated garbage.

RajT88 2 days 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.

kerblang 4 days 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 4 days 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 4 days ago

      Our son has ours currently, but it sounds so good I might have to get another.

notpushkin 3 days 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.

juujian 4 days 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 4 days ago

    >the original

    FYI Baby Shark was basically a public domain song when PinkFong made their version.

Animats 3 days 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 3 days ago

    I mean we had appallingly bad Xmas songs in the 90’s as well. They just had a more limited selection.

  • onemoresoop 2 days ago

    Imagine working in a store and hearing that over and over. It’s pure torture

cess11 3 days 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.

doctorpangloss 4 days 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 4 days 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 3 days 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 3 days 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.

        • doctorpangloss 3 days ago

          This article is saying that a bunch of nobodies found an audience via collaborative filtering on Spotify. “Organically.” But then, to save money, and because these nobodies have no power, Spotify authored similar music. On its route to organic charts, real musicians who were nonetheless nobodies were displaced by these fake ones.

          Spotify put its thumb on the scales by changing the contents of named playlists, which are more like radio stations. They are Spotify creations and curations, and they are choosing to curate more explicitly.

          The alternative is that the New Yorker authors a playlist of its daily new tracks you should listen to. 100% of those tracks that belong to nobodies / bonafide new artists, those artists would have to know someone at the New Yorker to appear on such a playlist. In radio, this took the form of pay to play.

dankle 2 days 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.

nprateem 3 days 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...

Aeolun 3 days 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.

caporaltito 3 days 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.

2d8a875f-39a2-4 3 days 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 3 days ago

    you didn't read the article.

NN88 2 days ago

this article might win an award

big-green-man 3 days 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 3 days 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.