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ivarv | 1 month ago

Spotify hires musicians to churn out content that fits certain criteria. see https://harpers.org/archive/2025/01/the-ghosts-in-the-machin...

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4d4m|1 month ago

Create Music Group, they buy your favorite artists catalogs and then use the money to underpay artists to churn out slop songs that Create Music Group then owns and distribute/licenses Yay! :)

troupo|1 month ago

Spotify doesn't hire any artists because if it did, major labels would immediately pull their contracts.

No one actually understands what's written in this article, including the authors themselves.

Also note how you didn't provide a single track that Spotify allegedly pays no royalties for.

james_marks|1 month ago

You’re missing the concept of session musicians that can improvise for hours. No license, flat fee.

vintermann|1 month ago

The major labels own a good chunk of Spotify directly. Used to be even more. As long as they get their cut they'll jump on any opportunity to screw over their artists (yes I know "unsourced statement" blah blah, sit down lawyers. I won't explain the reasons for my low opinion of these companies right now.)

The allegation is that Spotify pays out to entities which are ultimately owned by themselves, or that they get kickbacks in other ways like ad purchases (probably illegal, but hard to prove if you're at all clever about it).

I remember I found a track a few years ago, by the artist Mayhem. No, not the metal band. The background music artist Mayhem. Which only ever released two tracks. One of which, "Solitude Hymns", happened to get featured in one of Spotify's playlists, and managed to rack up more plays than any track by the more famous metal band at the time.

They haven't scrubbed it. Just look it up.