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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.

[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVY7-Ti77UQ

[tuwtuwtuwtuw]

It's funny that you mention AI, because your comment reads like generative AI to me - longwinded and with lot of vague claims.

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?