Okay, what is it with Swedes min-maxing their way to the top of pop music? How do they do it? Even Pewdiepie is like another case of chasing algorithmic success.
In this case it's not pop music, it's instrumental ambient music and childrens tunes.. Very particular set of playlists, Spotify-owned, that if you get into them you're essentially guaranteed millions of streams (as those playlists have tens of millions of followers that I'm sure just have them on repeat often - guilty here as well..)
Aside from the sketchy issue with faking 750 artist names, apparently the music is good and has good artistic intent within the genre.
According to the article, you can do deals where you trade away part of your royalty for a higher placement on those Spotify-owned playlists, which in his case seems to be the right business choice to make by far.
We used to have Kommunala Musikskolan, where kids for a relatively low fee could learn to play music. In the year 2000 it had 335 000 pupils (at the time the population of Sweden was less than 9 million people).
> A “secret” composer who has released music under hundreds of different names has been identified as Sweden’s most-listened-to artist on Spotify – pulling in more plays than Britney Spears or Abba.
He's basically SEOing Spotify. Search for "peaceful piano" or whatever, and you'll likely find the guy's tracks.
At home, whenever we eat X, we have a habit of asking Spotify to play X. We've made some great discoveries this way (Cornflakes 3D is an Israeli psytrance group, while The Dumplings is a Czech indie band), but these days almost all the searches have been hijacked by "playlist called Italian Restaurant Music" etc.
Yeah, nothing fishy here at all. Why pay tribute to other artists if you can make a deal with one and promote him on all the playlist to pocket back your money. Just give him the machinery and funding to create all of it and voila!
Yep, most people never heard of Max Martin - another Swede - but probably listed to his songs so many times.
The Weeknd, Katy Perry, Bon Jovi, Usher, Pink and many more have their hit songs made by this guy. It's amazing, he somehow trained his neural networks to produce global hit songs.
He is doing this straight from 1998 to this day starting with "...Baby One More Time" of Britney Spears. This year he already has 2 songs as #1 on the Billboard HOT 100.
What I wonder is if Spotify's algorithm works in such a way that it ranks based on users fully listening and liking most songs, wouldn't he have actually been better off releasing all his music under one name, vs many? Because he is still releasing quite a bit of volume to achieve this
Not necessarily, it might be better to stratify by genre (like buying a separate domain for different product verticals), to make the algorithm think each one is super relevant and specific.
you have to remember this is the tactic food industry have understood for decades by selling multiple branda of potato chips masquarading as 'choices' to capture as wide a market as possible. Can you blame a person for doing the same.
Whether you think music streaming in its current form is a net good or bad for humanity, consider not supporting Spotify the company. From the very start, they're nothing but grifters.
Daniel Ek has his background in ads, SEO and related stuff –basically every possible way to make a buck using this newfangled internet thing – including selling virtual clothes for virtual dolls to kids age 9-17.
The teaming up with Martin Lorentzon was never about music, but simply finding an untapped market, a niche in which to apply their particular set of skills of hawking stuff online. They teamed up with the guy behind µTorrent and eventually convinced the major labels to buy into the idea (by getting a cut). The idea that they are on the side the art form, let alone artists, is pure mythogenesis to serve their brand.
Recently, music hasn't been enough to feed the growth. They want to colonize podcasts, an open ecosystem, and have put billions of dollars into investments and deals locking popular podcasts onto their platforms. They now intend to do the same with audio books.
Spotify has from the very start had an incestuous relationship with labels and various middlemen. It was never a fair game, they make special deals whenever it serves their purpose (driving the price down). Everyone involved is guaranteed to make a cut before the artist, and the entire ecosystem is built upon the idea that the less they pay out to the artist, the better their numbers look. Nowadays they don't even pay out anything at all unless you have 1000 streams, which just happens to be about two thirds of the catalogue. Is it in their best interest to keep songs with 500 streams from getting more streams, or not?
Why would they care about money laundering, or legitimate artists having their entire body of work deleted by a middleman because someone maliciously sent a bot their way?[1] The cheaper they can amass content, the better. Hence these backroom deals with what are basically content farms. What the featured article describes is not only sanctioned, it's the entire strategy going forward.
Once generative AI comes further along, what their algorithm will push will continue to be what serves their bottom line, i.e. the cheap stuff. You'll soon see the audio book equivalent of Johan Röhr, churning out thousands of books, narrated in real time by a non-human voice, algorithmically pushing out authentic works from all the lists.
> How much Röhr, who has worked as a conductor on pop stars’ tours and on TV, has earned from his agreement with Spotify is not known. However, his private company reportedly made 32.7mn kronor (£2.4m) in 2022, when it had a record year.
publius_0xf3|1 year ago
l33tman|1 year ago
Aside from the sketchy issue with faking 750 artist names, apparently the music is good and has good artistic intent within the genre.
According to the article, you can do deals where you trade away part of your royalty for a higher placement on those Spotify-owned playlists, which in his case seems to be the right business choice to make by far.
rightbyte|1 year ago
I would suspect the best SEO consultants have worked at Google or have friends inside.
Ma8ee|1 year ago
juitpykyk|1 year ago
Maybe this also explains UK success in music :)
j45|1 year ago
amelius|1 year ago
systemvoltage|1 year ago
spiderice|1 year ago
Wow.. this is sketchy as hell.
resolutebat|1 year ago
At home, whenever we eat X, we have a habit of asking Spotify to play X. We've made some great discoveries this way (Cornflakes 3D is an Israeli psytrance group, while The Dumplings is a Czech indie band), but these days almost all the searches have been hijacked by "playlist called Italian Restaurant Music" etc.
hobs|1 year ago
iamsanteri|1 year ago
vasco|1 year ago
petesergeant|1 year ago
jjallen|1 year ago
tdudhhu|1 year ago
dvh|1 year ago
mrtksn|1 year ago
The Weeknd, Katy Perry, Bon Jovi, Usher, Pink and many more have their hit songs made by this guy. It's amazing, he somehow trained his neural networks to produce global hit songs.
He is doing this straight from 1998 to this day starting with "...Baby One More Time" of Britney Spears. This year he already has 2 songs as #1 on the Billboard HOT 100.
nadermx|1 year ago
nojs|1 year ago
rightbyte|1 year ago
E.g.
A likes a. B likes b. B likes c. A maybe likes c.
But with many more nodes. I think they use it for recommendations and subgenre sorting etc.
justanotherjoe|1 year ago
djmips|1 year ago
non-nil|1 year ago
Daniel Ek has his background in ads, SEO and related stuff –basically every possible way to make a buck using this newfangled internet thing – including selling virtual clothes for virtual dolls to kids age 9-17.
The teaming up with Martin Lorentzon was never about music, but simply finding an untapped market, a niche in which to apply their particular set of skills of hawking stuff online. They teamed up with the guy behind µTorrent and eventually convinced the major labels to buy into the idea (by getting a cut). The idea that they are on the side the art form, let alone artists, is pure mythogenesis to serve their brand.
Recently, music hasn't been enough to feed the growth. They want to colonize podcasts, an open ecosystem, and have put billions of dollars into investments and deals locking popular podcasts onto their platforms. They now intend to do the same with audio books.
Spotify has from the very start had an incestuous relationship with labels and various middlemen. It was never a fair game, they make special deals whenever it serves their purpose (driving the price down). Everyone involved is guaranteed to make a cut before the artist, and the entire ecosystem is built upon the idea that the less they pay out to the artist, the better their numbers look. Nowadays they don't even pay out anything at all unless you have 1000 streams, which just happens to be about two thirds of the catalogue. Is it in their best interest to keep songs with 500 streams from getting more streams, or not?
Why would they care about money laundering, or legitimate artists having their entire body of work deleted by a middleman because someone maliciously sent a bot their way?[1] The cheaper they can amass content, the better. Hence these backroom deals with what are basically content farms. What the featured article describes is not only sanctioned, it's the entire strategy going forward.
Once generative AI comes further along, what their algorithm will push will continue to be what serves their bottom line, i.e. the cheap stuff. You'll soon see the audio book equivalent of Johan Röhr, churning out thousands of books, narrated in real time by a non-human voice, algorithmically pushing out authentic works from all the lists.
[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVY7-Ti77UQ
tuwtuwtuwtuw|1 year ago
Spotify allows me to listen to music. Why would I care that the CEO previously worked with ads?
And obviously a company like this will try to create deals which are cheap to them, so that they can make more money.. they run a business, so...yes?
adawg4|1 year ago
choonway|1 year ago
alexey-salmin|1 year ago
Doesn't look much
the_other|1 year ago
It’s a life changing amount of money for something like 90% of humanity.
wasmitnetzen|1 year ago
[1]: https://www.allabolag.se/5569664575/j-pipe-productions-ab
[2]: https://www.allabolag.se/5566338496/j-pipe-music-ab
[3]: https://www.allabolag.se/5593406852/j-pipe-holding-ab