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Ghost artists on Spotify

(harpers.org)
556 points greenie_beans | 4 comments | 19 Dec 24 14:12 UTC | HN request time: 0.635s | source
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dools ◴[20 Dec 24 03:31 UTC] No.42468039[source]▶
Isn't this just like how supermarkets have their "house brands" that compete with name brands? If your consumption of music amounts to "whatever Spotify tells me to listen to" then chances are you were the type of person who used to just have the radio on for background noise anyway.

EDIT: If you think about this "scandal" in reverse, that is that Spotify was started as a background, inert restaurant playlist app that paid session musicians to record 50 songs a day for lo-fi chill ambient jazz playlists, and later tried to expand their reach by allowing musicians to upload their songs, it wouldn't be a scandal at all.

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insane_dreamer ◴[20 Dec 24 18:21 UTC] No.42473405[source]▶
> 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.

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1. crazygringo ◴[20 Dec 24 23:49 UTC] No.42476294[source]▶
> 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.

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2. insane_dreamer ◴[21 Dec 24 02:53 UTC] No.42477175[source]▶
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.

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3. TeMPOraL ◴[21 Dec 24 09:05 UTC] No.42478407[source]▶
> 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.)

4. crazygringo ◴[21 Dec 24 12:11 UTC] No.42479218[source]▶
> 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.