Ghost artists on Spotify

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.

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.

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?

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...

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.

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...

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.

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?

> 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?

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.

> 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.

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.

> 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.

> 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.

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.

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".

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.

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

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.

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…

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.

> 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.

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.

> 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.

> 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.)

> 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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.