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Ghost artists on Spotify

(harpers.org)
556 points greenie_beans | 3 comments | 19 Dec 24 14:12 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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mlsu ◴[20 Dec 24 00:53 UTC] No.42467295[source]▶
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.

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1. Eduard ◴[20 Dec 24 12:15 UTC] No.42470464[source]▶
> 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.

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2. arnvald ◴[20 Dec 24 20:11 UTC] No.42474542[source]▶
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

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3. ntlk ◴[21 Dec 24 08:31 UTC] No.42478253[source]▶
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.