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Ghost artists on Spotify

(harpers.org)
556 points greenie_beans | 2 comments | 19 Dec 24 14:12 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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Animats ◴[20 Dec 24 06:57 UTC] No.42468901[source]▶
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

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nitwit005 ◴[20 Dec 24 08:22 UTC] No.42469239[source]▶
I was not aware that dated back to records. Appreciate the YouTube link.
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Animats ◴[20 Dec 24 09:01 UTC] No.42469394[source]▶
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/

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1. jccalhoun ◴[20 Dec 24 15:38 UTC] No.42472009[source]▶
The actual company that owns the Seeburg catalog has their own site and stream as well: https://seeburg1000.com/
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2. Animats ◴[20 Dec 24 20:20 UTC] No.42474634[source]▶
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.