[bwooceli]

I call this the Pentatonix Problem at Christmas. When left in "auto-play" mode, streaming services absolutely default to the lowest payout possible. The fastest way to discover if there was a Pentatonix version of a song is to ask "Hey Google, play <christmas standard>" ... "OK, playing <christmas standard> by Pentatonix"

So yeah, they pay a bunch of basement recording artists to throw together a million generic sounding low-effort Ableton jams and voila, lower play counts and lower royalties for the normal working artists.

Some genres are easier to game than others. Classical music is really rough right now. Unless you already know EXACTLY what version of the piano concerto you want, you're going to get some crappy midi playthrough that was likely just the "performer" dropping the sheet music straight into the midi roll.