Spotify - the ugly truth

[hopkins]

I found this article interesting:

https://open.substack.com/pub/tedgioia/p/the-ugly-truth-about-spotify-is-finally?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=209ad3

As I understand it, Spotify purchases, at low cost, "generic" music from fake artists, and promotes it in their playlists at the expense of "real" artists.

Edited January 2 by hopkins

[Д.Д.]

Yes, you got it right. The most-streamed "jazz" tracks on Spotify are by-the-numbers tunes churned out in hundreds by anonymous musicians who are contracted through low- or no-royalty deals (unlike tracks from "real" artists where Spotify has to pay out around 70% of the streaming revenue as royalties to rights' holders). 

Read the article by Liz Pelly that Gioia is referring to - it's a good piece of investigative journalism.

At the same time, I find the whining tenor of the Gioia's article annoying and childish - there is always "somebody else" to blame. No, it's not "industry" or "labels". It's the listeners. The majority of listeners (i.e. the people who consume music in a very different way compared to organissimo forum posters) really DON'T CARE. They start a ten-hour "jazz in the background" playlist at Spotify and it is good enough for their purposes. The listeners generate millions in streams of this muzak. The comparisons with radio payola are sort of lazy - with streaming, listener has a choice what to listen to. And how about this exhortation from Mr. Gioia's article: "our single best hope is a cooperative streaming platform owned by labels and musicians". Sure, cooperation between labels and jazz musicians for the common benefit - how can this possible not work?!         

 

Edited January 2 by Д.Д.

[T.D.]

21 minutes ago, Д.Д. said:

Yes, you got it right. The most-streamed "jazz" tracks on Spotify are by-the-numbers tunes churned out in hundreds by anonymous musicians who are contracted through low- or no-royalty deals (unlike tracks from "real" artists where Spotify has to pay out around 70% of the streaming revenue as royalties to rights' holders). 

Read the article by Liz Pelly that Gioia is referring to - it's a good piece of investigative journalism.

At the same time, I find the whining tenor of the Gioia's article annoying and childish - there is always "somebody else" to blame. No, it's not "industry" or "labels". It's the listeners. The majority of listeners (i.e. the people who consume music in a very different way compared to organissimo forum posters) really DON'T CARE. They start a ten-hour "jazz in the background" playlist at Spotify and it is good enough for their purposes. The listeners generate millions in streams of this muzak...

 

Emphasis added. I had the same reaction. If listeners "DON'T CARE", the phenomenon described in the article is hardly surprising, and even seems inevitable IMO. [Added] Agreed on the irrelevance of payola, something completely different.

Re. Ted Gioia, I once read and enjoyed his West Coast Jazz book, though I found the writing slightly dull. I then read another book (forgot the title, probably History of Jazz) that made little impression and was definitely dull. Don't pay much attention to his online columns, which indeed seem whiny.

Edited January 2 by T.D.

[gvopedz]

Speaking of Spotify, here is Rick Wakeman's view of Spotify (he uses a more colorful word):

 

 

[Rabshakeh]

The comparison to Muzak is a better one than Gioia's kneejerk Payola comparison. Noone is paying Spotify money to artificially promote these artists by pretending that they're popular. (People are paying Spotify to artificially promote other artists by including them on playlists, but that's another matter.)

This is essentially cheap background music for the purposes of increasing productivity. Nobody cares whether it is Miles Davis or some made up group masking some Swedish studio hack, or, soon, AI.

What irritates me about the Gioia article is the way that he pretends he was out there saying all of this long before it was known, like some sort of musical Jeremiah. Articles about how Spotify uses studio musicians to produce royalty-free music have been being published in the broadsheet press since before the pandemic, and all Gioia has been doing is repeating what he has read elsewhere.

I find the fact that Spotify does this very interesting, but not particularly outrageous or unexpected. It is an old business model. The studio output of the 1950s was full of pseudonymous groups with covers illustrated strapless blonds pouting at the bongo player, serving to mask the production line efforts of pudgy, chain-smoking arrangers, chained to their desks and suffering from rickets.

15 minutes ago, T.D. said:

Re. Ted Gioia, I once read and enjoyed his West Coast Jazz book, though I found the writing slightly dull. I then read another book (forgot the title, probably History of Jazz) that made little impression and was definitely dull. Don't pay much attention to his online columns, which indeed seem whiny.

I think he's an example of audience capture. He was once a writer of stolid music history books, then he went on substack and he's discovered that what people want to read is these rants about the culture industry, written in short sentences with hard paragraph drops. So that's what he does now.

Edited January 2 by Rabshakeh

[T.D.]

1 minute ago, rostasi said:

Same feelings for Rick Beatoff too...

 😁

Rick's videos are a taste I never acquired. Having seen a few I now pass. But so many people link to them that it's nearly impossible to be unaware of him.

[hopkins]

I find it just interesting that they are doing this, and apparently don't want it publicized.

I have always wondered who produced and made elevator music... 

[JSngry]

Congress should investigate ethical violations at music streaming businesses—just like they did with payola. Laws must be passed requiring full transparency. Even better, let’s prevent huge streaming platforms from promoting songs based on financial incentives.

LOL @ #whatcenturyareyoulivinginbro?

That's not a reality-based strategy.

A reality-based strategy involves a lot of individual responsibility. But it's easier to whine about what other people are doing.

Once again - lots of emotion and no workable plan for success. Government stepping in? In 2025?

Grow the fuck up. Seriously.

[JSngry]

As for playlists ..

I only use Spotify as a record store, period. 

If I want background music, I set up a station in Pandora, use the thumbs until a reasonable tweaking has occurred and then go on to the next one. Soon enough I have a collection of viable options.

Ceding ownership.. people will take from you until you make them stop.

[T.D.]

22 minutes ago, JSngry said:

Congress should investigate ethical violations at music streaming businesses—just like they did with payola. Laws must be passed requiring full transparency. Even better, let’s prevent huge streaming platforms from promoting songs based on financial incentives.

LOL @ #whatcenturyareyoulivinginbro?

That's not a reality-based strategy.

A reality-based strategy involves a lot of individual responsibility. But it's easier to whine about what other people are doing.

Once again - lots of emotion and no workable plan for success. Government stepping in? In 2025?

Grow the fuck up. Seriously.

The stuff in bold is so tone-deaf that it's beyond comical. This dude is living in some incomprehensible fantasy world. Expecting people or entities not to respond to "financial incentives"??? Good luck with that. The "Congress..." and "laws must be passed..." screed at this moment in time??? Surreal.

[JSngry]

Yep 

[Rabshakeh]

The other close comparison is to 'library music' or 'production music' of the 1960s - 1980s: royalty-free music produced to order by writers and musicians, generally uncredited or working under pseudonyms, and licenced for use in the background of TV shows, radio, educational videos, audio-books etc in circumstances where the creator doesn't want to pay royalty on a per-use basis. Some of that stuff is much prized by crate diggers, and is getting thr glossy high end reissue treatment these days (although I doubt that will apply to Spotify's insipid output).

Edited January 2 by Rabshakeh

[hopkins]

42 minutes ago, rostasi said:

Initially, Muzak ("Music" + "Kodak") was meant to supplant the ever-growing, but expensive radio that was just being introduced.
Later, it became a vehicle for increasing work productivity through mind control measures.
Eventually, it went nearly bankrupt, then bought by "Mood Media" - which, itself nearly went bankrupt.
Don't know its status these days. BTW: Muzak never created music to be played in elevators, so there's a certain irony there, I suppose.

Thanks. The Wikipedia page mentions the Mantovani orchestra as an example. Here's "Misty"!

My dentist always has the same station (or "playlist") of "mellow" covers of pop tunes to relax to while being worked on. It's always intriguing to listen to.

 

 

[Rabshakeh]

1 minute ago, rostasi said:

Just wait. Musical ephemera becoming the focus of deep cultural excavation happens a lot.
It'll probably have "-core" as its suffix: "streamcore" or some such.
Maybe even the corporate aspect will be cherished, "Corpohypnosis" ("C-Hip" for short) 

Check out my NTS show at 3:30am when I’ll be playing somnambulant black metalgaze, buried playlistcore classics and narco-cumbia anthems.

[Daniel A]

I understand the difference between the "majors" (Sony, Universal et al.) and Spotify themselves doing it, but of course this is also what the old style labels do; purchase music and then promote it on the streaming platforms by purchasing visibility in various playlists.

I have an office job for a living, but have always been playing jazz on the side, most often with no profit whatsoever. By coincidence, I happened to get a gig producing "background café jazz" music for a major label. I cannot disclose any details but I think the deal is fair. I can indeed confirm that mass produced similar music is proposed as a template for yet more of the same, but I want to stress that we try to make meaningful music and that we have a lot of fun doing it. And we have never used a first take of any song. 

I agree with the opinion expressed in the excellent Liz Pelly article that this type of music will most likely soon be created by AI and we're just doing this while we can (which might not be for too long).

[JSngry]

MTV

[hopkins]

Here is an example of a Spotify jazz playlist that will be sure to put you asleep:

All the songs sound exactly the same. What would be worse - knowing that actual musicians made all this or that it was AI generated?

Edited January 3 by hopkins

[medjuck]

Spotify is producing their own music because what they pay out is divided amongst any music that gets more than a 1000 plays (I forget over what time period) and the amount they pay out is a percentage of their total income.  The more they pay to themselves the less they pay others. It sucks. 

However, I'm on Spotify a lot but almost never passively.  I usually pick an album but there are also playlists like the one that has nearly every record with a Lester Young solo-- including some air-checks. It can take most of a day to get through it.  When my choices do run out I   often have   gotten fairly good followups.(After I played some Charles Lloyd they continued with Coltrane, Dolphy etc., at one point making a perfect segue from one to another that was so good I presumed it was done by a real person-- of course shortly after that they fired most of their programmers.)

Once or twice I have heard what sounds like an AI mix of Bill Evans, Bill Charlop and Eric Satie-- it was pretty awful. 

26 minutes ago, hopkins said:

Here is an example of a Spotify jazz playlist that will be sure to put you asleep:

All the songs sound exactly the same. What would be worse - knowing that actual musicians made all this or that it was AI generated?

Is it really "Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most"?  I know you can't can't copyright a title (e.g.  Blue Haze) but Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most  is such an idiosyncratic use of words you'd think the composers could sue.  

Edited January 3 by medjuck

[hopkins]

38 minutes ago, medjuck said:

Spotify is producing their own music because what they pay out is divided amongst any music that gets more than a 1000 plays (I forget over what time period) and the amount they pay out is a percentage of their total income.  The more they pay to themselves the less they pay others. It sucks. 

However, I'm on Spotify a lot but almost never passively.  I usually pick an album but there are also playlists like the one that has nearly every record with a Lester Young solo-- including some air-checks. It can take most of a day to get through it.  

This must be the Lester Young playlist - thanks for the tip.

 

 

Edited January 3 by hopkins

[Teasing the Korean]

16 hours ago, Rabshakeh said:

The other close comparison is to 'library music' or 'production music' of the 1960s - 1980s: royalty-free music produced to order by writers and musicians, generally uncredited or working under pseudonyms, and licenced for use in the background of TV shows, radio, educational videos, audio-books etc in circumstances where the creator doesn't want to pay royalty on a per-use basis. Some of that stuff is much prized by crate diggers, and is getting thr glossy high end reissue treatment these days (although I doubt that will apply to Spotify's insipid output).

Except that libraries hired and paid real composers, arrangers, and musicians, and the results were often very good.  Hence the collectibility of certain records.  

I really don't care what Spotify does.  I don't use it.  If people don't like Spotify, cancel your subscriptions. 

[Dan Gould]

I guess I am lucky I have zero interest in streaming music and am committed to CDs/vinyl til I kick.

Also no need for "playlists" that I don't actively construct myself.

[Rabshakeh]

5 minutes ago, Teasing the Korean said:

Except that libraries hired and paid real composers, arrangers, and musicians, and the results were often very good.  Hence the collectibility of certain records.  

I really don't care what Spotify does.  I don't use it.  If people don't like Spotify, cancel your subscriptions. 

Spotify is hiring real people and paying them. I don't think anyone suggests otherwise, do they? (At least until AI gets better.)

Whether the results are any better than in the library music days is not clear to me: "Often very good" seems to overstate how good those records were. Retrospectively some that have been rediscovered are very good, others aren't but are good enough for sampling and often quite innovative in the way they used rhythm or synth sounds. But most library records were just as depressingly terrible as you'd expect. I don't hold out much expectation that Spotify's background jazz is going to age that well. 

[JSngry]

Subscription? 

[Teasing the Korean]

On 1/3/2025 at 10:23 AM, Rabshakeh said:

"Often very good" seems to overstate how good those records were. Retrospectively some that have been rediscovered are very good, others aren't but are good enough for sampling and often quite innovative in the way they used rhythm or synth sounds. But most library records were just as depressingly terrible as you'd expect. I don't hold out much expectation that Spotify's background jazz is going to age that well. 

"Often very good" refers to the nature of the assignments that composers were given, and not necessarily the quality of the work itself.  The albums were organized thematically. If Chappell needed a bagipe album for scenes depicting Scotland, that's what the composer delivered.  So, If the Chappell bagpipe album is not in high demand, that's only because bagpipe music isn't in high demand.  (No offense to our Scottish contingent, if we have one.)

Edited January 6 by Teasing the Korean

[Rabshakeh]

7 minutes ago, Teasing the Korean said:

"Often very good" refers to the nature of the assignments that composers were given, and not necessarily the quality of the work itself.  The albums were organized thematically. If Chappell needed a bagipe album for scenes depicting Scotland, that's what the composer delivered.  So, If the Chappell bagpipe album is not in high demand, that's only because I don't bagpipe music isn't in high demand.  (No offense to our Scottish contingent, if we have one.)

I think Ted Gioia should do a quality comparison between classic bagpipe Italo-library records and modern Spotify ghost bagpipe playlist tracks. Then write about it in short sentences. If Ted publishes that article, I will subscribe for life.