Ghost artists on Spotify

> 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.

> 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.

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.

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.

> 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.

> 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.)

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...

> 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.

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