The Ghosts in the Machine

Summary

Summarized wtih ChatGPT

Spotify has been accused of filling its popular playlists with stock music from ghost artists, which raises concerns for independent musicians who rely on these playlists for income. This practice could sever the connection between listeners and real artists, as users may not recognize the difference between genuine music and low-cost fillers. Many musicians feel that this trend undermines their work and leads to unfair earnings distribution.

Key Takeaways:

1. Be aware of the rise of stock music in popular playlists and its impact on independent artists.
2. Consider supporting independent musicians directly instead of relying solely on streaming platforms.
3. Stay informed about the practices of music streaming services to advocate for fair treatment of all artists.

Highlights from Article

Spotify, the rumor had it, was filling its most popular playlists with stock music attributed to pseudonymous musicians—variously called ghost or fake artists—presumably in an effort to reduce its royalty payouts.

Spotify, I discovered, not only has partnerships with a web of production companies, which, as one former employee put it, provide Spotify with “music we benefited from financially,” but also a team of employees working to seed these tracks on playlists across the platform. In doing so, they are effectively working to grow the percentage of total streams of music that is cheaper for the platform.

The most common feedback: play simpler. “That’s definitely the thing: nothing that could be even remotely challenging or offensive, really,” the musician told me. “The goal, for sure, is to be as milquetoast as possible.”

“There are so many things in music that you treat as grunt work,” he said. “This kind of felt like the same category as wedding gigs or corporate gigs. It’s made very explicit on Spotify that these are background playlists, so it didn’t necessarily strike me as any different from that. . . . You’re just a piece of the furniture.”

A model in which the imperative is simply to keep listeners around, whether they’re paying attention or not, distorts our very understanding of music’s purpose. 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. It is in the financial interest of streaming services to discourage a critical audio culture among users, to continue eroding connections between artists and listeners, so as to more easily slip discounted stock music through the cracks, improving their profit margins in the process. It’s not hard to imagine a future in which the continued fraying of these connections erodes the role of the artist altogether, laying the groundwork for users to accept music made using generative-AI software.

• Platforms leveraging demand to reduce or rearriculate supply. Not nice but doesn’t feel inherently wrong or illegal.

All material owns to the authors, of course. If I’m highlighting or writing notes on this, I mostly likely recommend reading the original article, of course.

See other recent things I’ve read here.