[HN Gopher] Ghost artists on Spotify
___________________________________________________________________
Ghost artists on Spotify
Author : greenie_beans
Score : 369 points
Date : 2024-12-19 14:12 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (harpers.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (harpers.org)
| timoth3y wrote:
| The entire history of the music business is one of attorneys
| developing ever more inventive ways of screwing over musicians.
|
| The sad thing (for artists) is that it seems like most Spotify
| listeners don't care.
|
| Most of our music consumption today seems to be as a kind of
| background vibe rather than an appreciation of the music itself.
| amelius wrote:
| It's a good demonstration of how the simple and seemingly solid
| foundations of our free market can still lead to extreme
| unfairness.
| equestria wrote:
| If a customer wants endless elevator music, then I don't
| think that Spotify is wrong to generate endless elevator
| music for them. The problem is deception. If you _want_ to
| listen to human performances, then Spotify should give you
| choice instead of hoping you don 't notice.
|
| Free market means you can vote with your wallet. If you
| don't, then it says less about markets and more about our
| stated vs revealed preferences. Maybe we just don't care if
| real artists go away.
| text0404 wrote:
| "we" care - the businesses that have inserted themselves as
| middlemen to extract profit have found that it's cheaper to
| deceive consumers, drag the quality of art down, and
| eliminate artists from art completely (or at least what a
| business executive thinks art is). _those_ are the people
| who don't care if artists go away. we as human beings are
| worse off for it.
| equestria wrote:
| Well, then again: maybe Spotify was hoping you wouldn't
| notice, but by now, the problem has been exposed publicly
| a number of times. This article is one of many.
|
| How many of us are canceling their Spotify subscriptions
| over this? It wouldn't be some huge sacrifice, it's about
| the least we could do. Most of us won't. The "caring" is
| just lip service.
| amelius wrote:
| You cannot blame consumers for the literal failure of the
| free market. Consumer psychology is what it is, you
| cannot change it, and actors in the free market will
| gladly abuse it where they can.
| achenet wrote:
| how is Spotify generating a bunch of of royalty free
| music in a way that kinda screws over the actual
| musicians making that music, which, for the musicians,
| isn't much worse than getting screwed over by record
| labels and may even be better in some ways [0], in order
| to meet the market's desire for "Chill Lo-fi Hip-hop
| background music"/"Music to Relax and Study"/"Gentle
| Relaxing Yoga Music" a 'literal failure of the free
| market'?
|
| People want comforting background noise, the market gives
| it to them. They never asked for ethically sourced,
| organic, gluten-free comforting background noise,
| although if they do, I'm sure the market will be more
| than happy to provide them with that, and we can look
| forwards to "Chill Study Music Made by Adorable Orphan
| Children in Kenya Using Only Recycled Materials And
| Biodegradable Recording Equipment" or whatever :)
|
| [0] https://thebaffler.com/salvos/the-problem-with-music
| troupo wrote:
| You mean the business that lets you listen to your
| favorite music on nearly any device in existence with
| seamless switching between them is actually a good
| business, and the actual middle men are these (quote from
| the article):
|
| --- start quote ---
|
| In reality, Spotify was subject to the outsized influence
| of the major-label oligopoly of Sony, Universal, and
| Warner, which together owned a 17 percent stake in the
| company when it launched. The companies, which controlled
| roughly 70 percent of the market for recorded music, held
| considerable negotiating power from the start.
|
| ... Ek's company was paying labels and publishers a lot
| of money--some 70 percent of its revenue
|
| --- end quote ---
|
| ?
| harry8 wrote:
| Having trouble generating much ripoff sympathy for someone
| who wants to listen to elevator music and feels ripped off
| because they can't tell the difference between human and
| algorithm. They've lost what that wasn't already long gone
| for them? That I have sympathy for, how could we not?
| the_af wrote:
| > _If a customer wants endless elevator music, then I don
| 't think that Spotify is wrong to generate endless elevator
| music for them._
|
| Do people really want low effort things, or are they
| addicted to them in a loop that businesses are only too
| happy to reinforce?
|
| I think public tastes are at least partially trained (or
| "learned"), they are very prone to addictive feedback
| loops, and they are not entirely shaped by something
| intrinsic but heavily influenced by what's on offer. And if
| what's on offer is intentionally cheap garbage...
| equestria wrote:
| Oh, come on. Not everything is addiction. I can accept
| that algorithmic doom-scrolling is somewhat habit-
| forming, but even there, we have agency. But background
| music? Yeah, I _like_ it, but I don 't get restless or
| frustrated when it's not playing.
| the_af wrote:
| Maybe addicting wasn't the right word, but more about
| reward vs effort.
|
| Regardless, I think it's not the full picture to say
| businesses simply give people what they want; businesses
| actually _shape_ people 's wants. That's what advertising
| is about...
| bee_rider wrote:
| Depends on the situation. While working, I think lots of
| us listen to music where the main merit is being non-
| distracting. In this case, effort is not so important.
|
| If I'm actually listening to the music, I'll want it to
| be good.
| imajoredinecon wrote:
| You should try working in a compiled language. I need
| _good_ music to listen to while I wait for gcc to do its
| thing
| bee_rider wrote:
| Put the compilation in another terminal, not need to wait
| for it to complete.
| achenet wrote:
| If you're working with C, your developer environment
| should include, in addition a good text editor and
| debugger, a fully furnished recording studio so you can
| record an album while waiting for your program to build.
|
| If you'd like to increase your income, you can try making
| formulaic smooth jazz for Spotify playlists instead of
| pretentious concept albums about your childhood trauma
| that no one will actually listen to ;)
| 09thn34v wrote:
| i agree with you, but i also think that there are some
| things that are more important, and deserve to be protected
| outside of the dynamics of the free market. i'd argue that
| art is one of those things, along with housing, health
| care, social services, etc.
| akira2501 wrote:
| The music industry relies on government supported copyrights.
| Music is often unsaleable unless you have an existing
| exclusive contract with the label. Royalty rates are set by
| the government.
|
| We're pretty far away from any actual "free market" here.
| amelius wrote:
| > The music industry relies on government supported
| copyrights.
|
| The government protects intellectual property rights and
| they protect physical property rights. In a completely free
| market, you'd have to own an army to protect your company
| building. The people with the biggest army would own
| everything.
| akira2501 wrote:
| > The government protects intellectual property rights
| and they protect physical property rights.
|
| Intellectual property laws are in the constitution and
| are structured to allow the government to preemptively
| act on potential violations. For example seizing
| shipments that would violate patents or trademarks before
| any actual sale occurs. They can also create registration
| offices to certify claims publicly for the holders.
|
| At the same time you were, and often still are, expected
| to physically protect your own property and the
| government largely can not preemptively act on potential
| issues. You must be a victim to receive service. To a
| large extent most property dispute /resolutions/ are
| handled through the civil courts. A criminal prosecution
| for theft may or may not be perused by a district
| attourney or certified by a grand jury, and even if it
| is, it does not make your injury whole.
|
| You would still need a civil judgement to reclaim your
| property or it's claimed and adjudicated value. Once you
| have this judgement you are again personally responsible
| for enforcing it. You can file paperwork with the sheriff
| to audit their property and sell it or garnish their
| wages but you take all responsibility for this. Including
| finding their property or identifying their employer.
| None of this will happen on it's own simply because you
| were a victim of an actual property crime.
| occz wrote:
| There's a crucial difference between intellectual
| property and physical property - in the case of physical
| property, someone else having it necessitates that you
| cannot have it.
|
| Intellectual property is infinitely reproducible and
| someone else having it does not mean you cannot have it.
| amelius wrote:
| How does that make a difference here?
|
| Besides, physical property law is also just an abstract
| concept. If _you_ own a swimming pool, who says I cannot
| use it also?
| grujicd wrote:
| Well I care and I would rather use model where my subsbcription
| gets distributed only to musicians I listen to. As a side
| effect, all these ghost/fake frauds for milking money would
| cease to exist.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| Same. I buy mp3s from bandcamp, and upload them to
| (currently) Google Music (or whatever they decided to call it
| now), after backing them up to my hard drive.
| modzu wrote:
| recently discovered plexamp which is a pretty cool way to
| stream a local library to the app
| killjoywashere wrote:
| How much of my money am I supposed to fork over to streaming
| companies? Tidal, Qobuz, SoundCloud, YouTube Music, Deezer,
| Amazon Music, Apple. And how much work am I supposed to invest
| in migrating my playlists between them? I don't want to invest
| my time in digging through every new artist (SoundCloud?), at
| the same time, I occasionally find a deep rabbithole I want to
| go down. How do I go spelunking if the archive isn't deep and
| rich?
| piva00 wrote:
| The same way as it was always done: through effort.
|
| Before you'd need to visit different record stores, hitting
| one every few days to check their latest in catalogue. Find
| the hidden boxes with low print releases, listen on a player
| and skip the needle around track grooves. Or have good
| friends recommending you stuff.
|
| It got easier but I think we need to realise to find the
| signal on a sea of noise will probably require effort for a
| long time. Given time enough every new information discovery
| tool gets flooded by the noise, almost like a form of
| entropy.
| nradov wrote:
| I thought that technology was supposed to save humans from
| the torture of having to put forth any effort, so that we
| could just lay back and have all of our wants immediately
| satisfied. At least that's the utopia I was promised in
| Wall-E.
| crtasm wrote:
| "We have a [record] pool?!"
| StayTrue wrote:
| I just migrated my playlists from Spotify to Apple Music.
| Cobbling together the scripts to do that (without paying a
| third party service) was hard.
| Aloha wrote:
| This is part of why I basically gave up on this and just went
| with SiriusXM - I like linear programming - less effort for
| me to engage with.
| sitkack wrote:
| There are plenty of great radio stations around the world
| catering to all sorts of audio experiences.
|
| Pick a random place on earth and then search for nearby
| radio stations.
| sitkack wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_radio_stations_in_P
| ana...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_radio_stations_in_I
| tal...
| Aloha wrote:
| Oh sure - but I like something with the ease of use from
| my car too.
|
| Though thats not all, I also have a receiver feeding into
| an 1/2w FM modulator and providing whole house music at
| home.
| internetter wrote:
| https://radio.garden/
| sitkack wrote:
| This is beautiful, thank you.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Who has asked you to do anything?
| CapsAdmin wrote:
| Maybe very anecdotal, but I know a genz'er who mostly listens
| to music on tik tok in short loops.
| piva00 wrote:
| I got a cab some months ago with a young driver, he'd play a
| playlist, scrub the song to jump around the 01:00 mark,
| listen to 30-45s of the chorus, scrub again to find the 2nd
| chorus, and skip the song afterwards.
|
| It was fascinating to experience.
| justatdotin wrote:
| I've always known people who do similar. it's weird, but
| it's not terribly new.
| dylan604 wrote:
| It's like the exact opposite of the ol' skool DJs skipping
| all of the choruses to play just the breaks. The guys
| playing the breaks started a huge movement. Maybe this
| driver is ahead of the curve and might be making the next
| big thing in music?? (no, i don't really believe that)
| anigbrowl wrote:
| DJs playing records and DJs buying records are two
| different things. When you're looking for records, it's
| quick listens and gut decisions to keep or dump. The
| labor of love is only applied to stuff that makes the
| keep pile.
| dylan604 wrote:
| What's you point? You think DJs don't have large
| collections of vinyl? Tell that to the 15 crates sitting
| in my room. You think that doing needle drops looking for
| breaks is any different than doing needle drops for the
| chorus? You can look at the grooves in the record and
| read the track. You can easily see where the breaks are,
| and you can see where the chorus would be. So I'm at a
| total loss on what you think is different
| dylan604 wrote:
| > The sad thing (for artists) is that it seems like most
| Spotify listeners don't care.
|
| Why would/should they care? They are touted a service where you
| pay a monthly fee, and you get to consume anything they have.
| So now you're suggesting that music consumers are going to look
| for sustainably sourced music too?
|
| As you've said, most people "like" music to have in the
| background, but are not music aficionados that look for
| anything other than whatever their influencer of choice says is
| trendy.
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| > The entire history of the music business is one of attorneys
| developing ever more inventive ways of screwing over musicians.
|
| Meta: this feels like a similar problem as doctors and nurses
| vs administrators, teachers/professors vs administrators, devs
| vs management, and I'm sure there are others. The latter group
| takes a disproportionate share of profit, and claims it is
| justified because of the responsibility.
|
| I see these asymmetries everywhere now.
| 7e wrote:
| Look at the kings and chiefs of old. Power grabs are as old
| as civilization itself. In the case of wolves and lions, even
| older.
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| For sure. I think what sticks out about now is how brazen
| those who grab power are now. For whatever reason there's a
| shamelessness/entitlement about the whole thing that is
| palpable.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Yes, it's MITM attacks all the way down. Everyone knows it's
| a scam, but anyone who upsets the applecart is severely
| punished.
| NoPicklez wrote:
| "Most Spotify listeners don't care"
|
| In all honesty, do you think most Spotify listeners or even
| Apple music listeners have a decent understanding of the model
| in which artists are paid? Or an understanding that isn't from
| the mouth of said company?
|
| To say we don't care is akin to saying most people don't care
| about how they contribute to child labor/exploitation, wage
| theft, global warming by buying and using products that
| contribute to those things. It's not that people don't care its
| that people don't have a reason to suspect is nefarious, nor do
| they feel the impact of it.
|
| I see musicians on music videos, on radio and touring, how am I
| supposed to know they're severely disadvantaged when I listen
| to their music on a streaming platform?
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| That applies to the users of the software that I write.
|
| It's not their job to care. They like what they like,
| regardless of how it got there.
|
| If they prefer junk software, shat out by dependency-addicted
| clowns, it's usually because it gives them what they
| need/want. I can get all huffy and elitist, but it won't
| change the facts on the ground: users prefer the junk. That's
| their right, and there's always someone willing to drop the
| bar, if it will make them money/prestige.
|
| It's up to me, to produce stuff that gets users to prefer
| mine, over theirs. That means that I need to take the time to
| understand the users of my software, and develop stuff that
| meets their needs, at a price (which isn't just money -if my
| software is difficult to use, that's also a price) that the
| user is willing to pay.
|
| Of course, in today's world, promotion and eye-candy can also
| affect what users prefer. Marketing, advertising,
| astroturfing reviews or GH stars, whatever, can affect what
| end-users prefer. I also need to keep that in mind.
| n144q wrote:
| > it seems like most Spotify listeners don't care.
|
| I am the kind of listeners that care, but to be honest, indeed
| most people don't care, and what Spotify does is taking
| advantage of that fact which makes business sense.
|
| Most people just listen to "chill music" and never care to find
| out the musicians behind the tracks. They may not even realize
| that lots of tracks sound very similar (for good reason -- they
| are created by the same musician[s]). They just need some music
| while studying/working.
|
| I play instruments myself, and I force myself to listen to many
| different styles of music and delve deep into artists' works,
| so that I can be a better (amateur) musician. I don't listen to
| Spotify "chill" playlists, not just because of the practice
| described in this article, but because I could actually tell
| that the music was repetitive and low effort, and I can never
| find more albums made by those musicians when I occasionally
| find a track that I find interesting. Can you expect other
| listeners to think this way? No.
| circlefavshape wrote:
| > The sad thing (for artists) is that it seems like most
| Spotify listeners don't care.
|
| The standard risk model for a musical artist is massive-
| upfront-investment-for-a-tiny-chance-of-payoff-someday. A
| different model with smaller rewards and lower risks isn't
| "sad" - if it had existed 30 years ago I might be a
| professional musician today instead of an engineer
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| > Spotify had long marketed itself as the ultimate platform for
| discovery--and who was going to get excited about "discovering" a
| bunch of stock music? Artists had been sold the idea that
| streaming was the ultimate meritocracy--that the best would rise
| to the top because users voted by listening. But the PFC program
| undermined all this.
|
| True, but there is more music than any group of people can ever
| listen to. Is aggregating blogs like Hype Machine, or reviewing
| songs like Pitchfork or the New Yorker, any better? The
| alternatives to collaborative filtering are different shades of
| nepotism; or, making barriers to entry much, much higher.
| tommilburn wrote:
| i'd argue yes, definitely. those blogs are, at least
| historically, written by real people with individual taste and
| preferences that you can use to understand their critique. one
| might find themselves agreeing with Siskel, and not Ebert.
|
| reading a review is not the same level of passivity as
| something being algorithmically inserted into your existing
| Spotify playlists ("smart shuffle") or something else that will
| inevitably be used to shut out artists to juice quarterly
| reports
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| Yeah. But it is meritocratic? You have to know somebody to
| get a review in a thing people actually read. My POV is that
| artists choose the collaborative filtering system because
| "knowing someone" suits them poorly, and the average musician
| knows no one, so the average musician is poorly served by
| nearly all reviewers in blogs.
| Vegenoid wrote:
| I think that "meritocracy" is not such a useful concept in
| the realm of art, where there are not good objective
| measures of what makes something have "meritocracy".
|
| I think you're on to something with
| "consolidation/centralization is bad", and that's what this
| article is about: the centralization of music discovery
| into Spotify resulting in a situation where they choose
| what people get to discover, in an unnatural way. Unless
| I'm misunderstanding, the article is about Spotify putting
| their thumb on the collaborative filtering scales, to the
| benefit of themselves and their business partners.
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| This article is saying that a bunch of nobodies found an
| audience via collaborative filtering on Spotify.
| "Organically." But then, to save money, and because these
| nobodies have no power, Spotify authored similar music.
| On its route to organic charts, real musicians who were
| nonetheless nobodies were displaced by these fake ones.
|
| Spotify put its thumb on the scales by changing the
| contents of named playlists, which are more like radio
| stations. They are Spotify creations and curations, and
| they are choosing to curate more explicitly.
|
| The alternative is that the New Yorker authors a playlist
| of its daily new tracks you should listen to. 100% of
| those tracks that belong to nobodies / bonafide new
| artists, those artists would have to know someone at the
| New Yorker to appear on such a playlist. In radio, this
| took the form of pay to play.
| Spivak wrote:
| The article is far far less bad than I think most people would
| assume. The meat of the article is one single sentence.
|
| > David Turner had used analytics data to illustrate how
| Spotify's "Ambient Chill" playlist had largely been wiped of
| well-known artists like Brian Eno, Bibio, and Jon Hopkins, whose
| music was replaced by tracks from Epidemic Sound, a Swedish
| company that offers a subscription-based library of production
| music--the kind of stock material often used in the background of
| advertisements, TV programs, and assorted video content.
|
| I really don't see the issue with this. We can talk about AI or
| whatever but there's no indication it's anything other than a
| company that makes b-roll music realizing that there's a niche of
| listeners who desire their content and then partnered with
| Spotify through an intermediary (a label perhaps) to get them on
| official playlists through a sweetheart royalty deal.
| legitster wrote:
| I think more to the point, there's not a lot of artists who
| would intentionally and willingly make forgettable ambient
| music.
| juujian wrote:
| As if labels weren't treating 85% of artists bad enough. This
| just seems like the further corporatization of music, with even
| more money going to suits.
| norir wrote:
| It's bad because these types of practices directly contribute
| to the degradation of culture and is destroying the market for
| quality music. Putting aside TikTok for a moment, spotify is
| largely filling the role that radio used to play. The problem
| is that by doing this kind of thing, they are taking advantage
| of a largely captive audience to feed them derivative, second
| rate music, knowing that many can barely tell the difference.
|
| This ultimately lowers the quality for everyone, in no small
| part because it makes it so difficult to make a living as a
| musician (not that it was easy before streaming). This then
| makes a feedback loop where in order for most musicians to make
| money, they must feed the algorithm. Then of course the
| streaming services get to say, look, people can't tell the
| difference! In fact, they prefer the algorithmically generated
| music, our listening stats say so! This increasingly just
| becomes a circular argument. Feed people the algorithm and then
| say that the algorithm is just giving them what they want which
| is a good thing.
|
| Really what they are doing is capturing whatever little profit
| exists in the industry and redirecting it from artists to
| executives. It's really not very different from what uber did
| to cab drivers except that there is far, far more intrinsic
| value in music than in cab driving.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > the degradation of culture and is destroying the market for
| quality music.
|
| I dislike almost all pop music with vocals and rock and metal
| and all that overly guitar-y stuff. I very much prefer the
| music available to me today compared to what I had an option
| to listen to in the 1990s.
| greenie_beans wrote:
| you had all the music leading up to the 1990s to listen to,
| was that not good enough?
| troupo wrote:
| No, you didn't really have all the music: you were very
| limited by what was playing on the radio (fully
| influenced and often paid for by large labels) and in the
| local record store.
|
| Now you can chose to listen to almost anything:
| https://everynoise.com/
| lmm wrote:
| > a company that makes b-roll music realizing that there's a
| niche of listeners who desire their content and then partnered
| with Spotify through an intermediary (a label perhaps) to get
| them on official playlists through a sweetheart royalty deal.
|
| If that isn't payola then it's pretty damn close.
| troupo wrote:
| No. The actual meat is mentioned once, and then completely
| dismissed as irrelevant and inconsequential:
|
| --- start quote ---
|
| In reality, Spotify was subject to the outsized influence of
| the major-label oligopoly of Sony, Universal, and Warner, which
| together owned a 17 percent stake in the company when it
| launched. The companies, which controlled roughly 70 percent of
| the market for recorded music, held considerable negotiating
| power from the start.
|
| But while Ek's company was paying labels and publishers a lot
| of money--some 70 percent of its revenue--it had yet to turn a
| profit itself, something shareholders would soon demand. In
| theory, Spotify had any number of options: raising subscription
| rates, cutting costs by downsizing operations, or finding ways
| to attract new subscribers.
|
| --- start quote ---
|
| This is what so infuriating about all these articles: they
| never _ever_ address the actual problems in the music industry
| kerblang wrote:
| If one could get sufficient AI for Muzak (not _that_ challenging)
| into the footprint of a white noise box like LectroFan, would fun
| & profit ensue, with the bonus of killing spotify?
|
| The author acts like this ghost thing ruined spotify for artists.
| I think artists realized it was a ripoff long before that.
| smitelli wrote:
| > LectroFan
|
| Ah, somebody who appreciates the finer things in life. Our
| LectroFan will more than likely remain at our bedside until our
| dying days.
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| Our son has ours currently, but it sounds so good I might
| have to get another.
| ausbah wrote:
| i think there really needs to be a set of laws prohibiting
| marketplace providers like uber, amazon, and spotify from also
| offering their own products on the same platform
| legitster wrote:
| Despite the headline, it's not actually Spotify creating the
| music, but third parties taking advantage of their playlist
| model.
| Miraltar wrote:
| > third parties taking advantage of their playlist model.
|
| Not really, it's a collaboration since Spotify actively
| promotes these third parties because they cost less royalties
| phonetic wrote:
| Just a question--not meant to sound rude or offensive in any
| way--but would you also apply this logic to supermarkets
| offering their own generic brands!?
| ricardobeat wrote:
| Why not? That can be construed as abusing their 'monopoly'
| over shelf space and foot traffic, it's unfair competition
| that displaces other legitimate businesses.
|
| Incidentally, in the Netherlands a lot of supermarkets stock
| a 'shared house brand' called Gwoon. Usually the cheapest
| option by far and decent quality. I don't know what they do
| to keep prices as low as actual house brands, but it seems
| possible.
| sureIy wrote:
| > I don't know what they do
|
| Common products are actually not that expensive if you
| don't have to pay leeches like marketing agencies and
| investors.
| legitster wrote:
| This article is fascinating. But what's on display here is less
| of a nefarious plan from Spotify to replace famous Katy Perry
| with AI - instead we get to see something much more specific: a
| behind-the-scenes of how those endless chill/lo-fi/ambient
| playlists get created.
|
| Which is something I've always wondered! How does the Lofi Girl
| channel on Youtube always have so much new music from artists I
| have never heard from?
|
| The answer is surprising: real people and real instruments! (At
| least at the time of writing). Third-party stock music ("muzak")
| companies hiring underemployed jazz musicians to crank out a few
| dozen derivative songs _every day_ to hack the algorithm.
|
| > "Honestly, for most of this stuff, I just write out charts
| while lying on my back on the couch," he explained. "And then
| once we have a critical mass, they organize a session and we play
| them. And it's usually just like, one take, one take, one take,
| one take. You knock out like fifteen in an hour or two." With the
| jazz musician's particular group, the session typically includes
| a pianist, a bassist, and a drummer. An engineer from the studio
| will be there, and usually someone from the PFC partner company
| will come along, too--acting as a producer, giving light
| feedback, at times inching the musicians in a more playlist-
| friendly direction."
|
| I think there's an easy and obvious thing we can do - stop
| listening to playlists! Seek out named jazz artists. Listen to
| your local jazz station. Go to jazz shows.
| CocaKoala wrote:
| Ah, see, my experience is exactly the opposite of yours; I
| don't listen to the ChilledCow streams, but I do listen to the
| Chillhop playlists (and in fact purchase the seasonal
| essentials collections on vinyl) and one of the reasons I like
| them is because there's a lot of curation that goes into the
| playlist and they tend to feature artists that I end up liking
| - Blue Wednesday, Purple Cat, Joey Pecararo are all reliable
| artists in the genre for me.
| nicky0 wrote:
| I like how you called it ChilledCow to show how OG you are.
| Gigachad wrote:
| I'm not even mad about it. It's background music and clearly
| people are enjoying it. Just because they smashed out 15 tracks
| in a single session doesn't make it unfit for purpose. That's
| just how Jazz music is.
| wbl wrote:
| Kenny G might deserve your comment. But Charlie Parker, John
| Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Charles Mingus...
| orblivion wrote:
| I think some people may have a misunderstanding about what
| jazz is. I know one friend of mine did. Some jazz may be
| easy listening, but it's not made for easy listening, it's
| made to bend the boundaries of music theory. And also a lot
| of "easy listening" that sounds like jazz isn't really
| jazz.
| vasco wrote:
| So what is jazz
| gvurrdon wrote:
| The term covers a variety of styles, with old ones
| hanging around as new ground is broken. Perhaps it is a
| "meta-genre". There are various articles around
| explaining its history which might be worth looking at,
| if you're interested. I'd expect to hear some degree of
| improvisation in jazz, but not in easy listening.
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| The devils music.
| YagoTheFrood wrote:
| "If you have to ask what jazz is, you'll never know."
| Apocryphal quote by Louis Armstrong.
| vasco wrote:
| Ah, gatekeeping and elitist? Got it.
|
| PS: Spent more hours than I should trying to learn jazz
| drums
| technothrasher wrote:
| The original quote is apocryphal, but he did respond to a
| question from a reporter asking about the quote saying,
| "Yeah, Daddy. Ya know how it is... jazz is something ya
| feel... ya live it, that's all." So he wasn't
| gatekeeping, he was saying the answer to "what is jazz?"
| was contained in the experience of jazz.
| kid64 wrote:
| jazz != smooth jazz
| browningstreet wrote:
| JavaScript != Java
|
| These are everywhere...
| DonHopkins wrote:
| New Age rhymes with Sewage
| netdevphoenix wrote:
| It is an approach to music (more than a genre) that
| relies on elaborate harmonic structures, freedom of
| interpretation of melody and personalising the harmony,
| interesting rhythms and time signatures and a general
| approach of trying to push the boundaries of music
| making. It is meant to be listened actively as opposed to
| having it as background music. The capitalisation of
| music has led us to the commoditisation of music and
| treating it as audio content as opposed to art.
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| > It is meant to be listened actively as opposed to
| having it as background music.
|
| The masterpiece hanging in the museum was fully intended
| to be actively appreciated. The background on the box of
| cereal is ... just a background on a box of cereal. It's
| still art though.
| klez wrote:
| That would be the distinction between "fine art" and
| "decorative art". Jazz as GP meant it is "fine art", the
| smooth jazz you hear in the elevator could be classified
| as decorative art.
| dijksterhuis wrote:
| in my personal opinion, which is as valuable as the piece
| of paper i'm writing this on /s
|
| art has no function except to be observed by an audience.
| if they enjoy it or not is immaterial. its purpose is to
| be observed.
|
| the design of a box of cereal has a purpose - to sell you
| the box of cereal by making it attractive/stand out/fit
| the brand.
|
| graphic design, when it has purposes beyond being
| observed, is not art -- it's a craft.
|
| like engineering.
|
| although graphic design/engineering can become _art_ when
| it has no purpose except being observed.
|
| edit -- enjoyment is immaterial and the bits about
| graphic design can be art etc.
| bezkom wrote:
| Most of the masterpieces you see in museums were used as
| decoration at some point.
| wbl wrote:
| The Pope needed something for his ceiling.
| troupo wrote:
| Most masterpieces where literally hanging in the
| background of some rich person's summer houses, and
| hunting lodges, and other properties. Thrown out and
| replaced on a whim.
| xanderlewis wrote:
| I feel like there's some kind of analogy between jazz
| cats and hackers.
| jdietrich wrote:
| In short, a cultural tradition. At length:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68zOvCLwcL8
| shrikant wrote:
| I found it easier to "get" when I started thinking of
| jazz as the beat poetry of music.
| mesofile wrote:
| the 'sound of surprise'
| datadrivenangel wrote:
| jazz is what you can get away with.
| kunalgupta wrote:
| delightful mental pain, like a cold plunge
| Asooka wrote:
| Normal people care about music theory as much as they
| care whether you use jemalloc vs tcmalloc. "Easy
| listening" is a much more useful everyday definition for
| them than whatever musicians may want it to be.
| briandear wrote:
| Kind of Blue is far from "easy listening."
| wbl wrote:
| There's nothing easy about Cecil Taylor.
| fuhsnn wrote:
| All jazz artists started as insignificant band members
| before they found their voice.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Yeah, this rules, why are we supposed to be angry? It is like
| WFH for music makers.
|
| Although, I'm pretty sure there's a ton of really complex and
| difficult jazz out there (IIRC it is one of the most advanced
| genres, whatever they means; I don't do music). But that
| isn't what we're looking for on the chill whatever ambient
| music channels.
| oreilles wrote:
| Did you guys not read the article ? The problem arises
| because of the way the music is distributed on Spotify and
| the way it is licensed. Spotify make deals with the
| companies producing this stock music so that it can fill
| its popular playlists with while paying close to zero
| royalties. The consequence is a decline both in music
| quality on the platform and in artists rights, revenue, and
| ability to be listened to overall.
| afro88 wrote:
| Spotify isn't a monopoly, and if they want to fill their
| platform with stock music and presumably AI slop in the
| future, good luck to them. They're hollowing themselves
| out and making way for a new better service.
|
| And in the end, the real money for musicians is syncs,
| shows and merch anyway. Spotify streaming revenue is tiny
| in comparison.
| oreilles wrote:
| The discussion is not wether Spotify will benefit from
| this situation in the long run or not, it's wether the
| users of the platform (both the listeners and the
| artists) should be happy with it and the answer to that
| is, thanks this lengthy article, demonstrably no.
| gizmondo wrote:
| I don't think the article showed that listeners are
| unhappy.
| edu wrote:
| Yes, that's' why a switched to Apple Music
| georgebcrawford wrote:
| You don't think every platform will be doing the same
| within a year or two?
| danudey wrote:
| 100% guarantee that, once the technology is solid enough
| and the library is big enough, Spotify is going to train
| an AI off the tracks they own the rights to so they can
| mass-produce this music without paying anyone (except
| nvidia) a dime.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Hopefully someone will release a music ML model to just
| generate it locally.
| RandallBrown wrote:
| Those playlists become popular because of the music on
| them. If they decline in quality won't people will just
| listen to better playlists?
|
| My Discover Weekly from Spotify used to be _awesome_. I
| found a bunch of new artists that I really liked and tons
| of great new songs. Recently it 's been a bunch of old
| stuff that I've definitely heard of before. So I've
| mostly stopped listening to it.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| I mean yeah, the music isn't the problem; a lot of music
| especially "back when" (in my idealised head, this may not
| be true) was just some guy or a small band noodling in the
| corner, instead of a well known artist giving a performance
| of their greatest hits.
|
| "jazz improv" is probably just that, start with a generic
| beat / atmosphere and improvise and noodle on top of that.
| Sounds great to me, I wish there was more low barrier to
| entry live music like that. But I suppose there's no market
| for e.g. an in-house band working shifts for background
| entertainment, and they can't compete with jukebox
| software.
| ksymph wrote:
| The issue is that the artists who make it are getting paid
| very little, with no attribution, on songs that get massive
| amounts of plays and exposure. The entire purpose of the
| program is for Spotify to pay artists less and cut out real
| independent musicians. The decline in quality is an
| (arguably) unfortunate side effect, but not really the main
| reason for people to be angry.
| bezkom wrote:
| Miles Davis famously recorded 4 legendary albums in just 2
| sessions, jazz you know...
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| You don't understand how Spotify distributes revenue to
| artists.
| alsetmusic wrote:
| The point is that artists who have <1000 streams get zero
| pay. This is designed to help prevent payouts and increase
| profits. 'Deny,' 'defend', and 'depose'.
| jzb wrote:
| It's designed to increase profits, for sure. I do not have
| a lot of love for Spotify, currently, _but_ this particular
| practice does not bother me much.
|
| Look: If you give a damn about what you're listening to,
| you can go over to Spotify and create your own playlists
| filled with music you care about (assuming they have the
| artists you like in their catalog). In that case, the
| artists will get paid accordingly.
|
| But Spotify has realized that a lot of people use it for
| background noise and don't give two shits whether what
| they're listening to is a "real" band or music-like content
| squeezed out of sweatshop sessions in Sweden or whatever. I
| can't fault them overmuch for taking advantage of the
| actual listening preferences of its users. If you feel
| cheated by this, spend some time curating playlists on your
| own.
|
| Tacking on the CEO-shooter's mantra to your message is
| shameful. This isn't healthcare. This isn't killing anyone.
| It's a fully optional service that happens to be popular.
| Trying to link it to anger over being denied healthcare is
| ridiculous.
| georgebcrawford wrote:
| I 50/50 agree with you. My issue is the bait and switch
| feel it has to it, for both artist and audience. Spotify
| holds all the power. They already pay less for Discover
| Weekly streams, instead using that old music industry
| classic "exposure". If they really care about artists
| (like their marketing claims), perhaps they can add a
| filter for playlists that contain PFC vs not?
|
| I'm just rambling without much explanation sorry, but I'm
| gonna hit the reply button anyway!
| volkl48 wrote:
| Yes and no.
|
| They do not pay out per stream. They pay out a set % of
| their total revenue to rights holders. Spotify has to pay
| the _exact_ same amount of money before and after that
| change.
|
| The savings for Spotify is in not having the (not so
| insignificant) administrative overhead of trying to make
| hundreds of thousands of basically worthless payouts to
| different individuals that are worth <$5 or even <$1.
|
| I think it's fairly reasonable to draw some sort of lower
| bound on the minimum you need to reach to get a payout,
| especially in a world where basically anyone can put music
| on their service.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| Interesting take.
|
| For my part, I'm grateful for Spotify's "exclude from taste
| profile" feature. This lets me leverage my personally-curated
| "Flowstate" playlist ^1 for hours at a time while I'm working
| -- tracks that I've hand-picked to facilitate a "getting things
| done" mindset / energized mood / creativity or go-time vibe,
| and can stand to listen to on repeat -- without "polluting" my
| regular music preferences. It's apples and oranges, mostly -
| there's music I want to listen and attend to (as a guitar
| player and lifelong avid music listener across many genres
| including "serious" jazz), and there's audio (which could as
| easily be programmatically generated / binaural beats, whatever
| -- eg brain.fm) that I use as a tool specifically to help shape
| my cognitive state for focus / productivity.
|
| I think it's kind of funny how some people get confused about
| the fact that there are many reasons to listen to many kinds of
| music.
|
| When it comes to music discovery on Spotify, the "go to radio"
| option from a given track or album is a reliable way to surface
| new-to-me things. I usually prefer this proactive seeking to
| the playlists spotify's algo generates for me. (shrug)
|
| 1.
| https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6UScdOAlqXqWTOmXFgQhFA?si=...
| dmonitor wrote:
| > For my part, I'm grateful for Spotify's "exclude from taste
| profile" feature
|
| This is my first time being made aware of this. Fantastic
| option that more websites should adopt
| feoren wrote:
| > I think it's kind of funny how some people get confused
| about the fact that there are many reasons to listen to many
| kinds of music.
|
| It has always boggled my mind that this point seems to be
| lost on _every_ music streaming service.
| sitkack wrote:
| > is less of a nefarious plan from Spotify to replace famous
| Katy Perry with AI
|
| Has that been shown?
| mort96 wrote:
| It hasn't been shown that Spotify has no nefarious plan to
| replace Katy Perry with AI, but _what 's on display here_,
| what this article is highlighting, is no such thing.
| Balgair wrote:
| Check out Chillhop ( https://chillhop.com/radio/). Great little
| lofi studio out of Rotterdam. Good to the artists, from what I
| can tell.
|
| Psalm Trees, an artist with them, just put out an interesting
| little 'double'-ish album here:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmL9LvTYjMQ
|
| He produced a whole jazz album just so he could sample from it
| for a lofi album. Absolutely mental workload.
|
| There's a lot of crap in lofi, but also some real 'bangers' too
| : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IU3yBo2szD8 (yes, really, 10
| hours of great work, IMHO)
| eleveriven wrote:
| It's ironic, though, that what we love about playlists like
| Lofi Girl (endless streams of music that feel fresh yet
| familiar) is exactly what's being exploited
| fuhsnn wrote:
| >feel fresh yet familiar
|
| This probably applies to most mainstream entertainment.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| In this particular context, it's for passive entertainment;
| things like blockbuster movies are intended for actively
| watching.
|
| But that said, people massively underestimate the
| background entertainment market. Spotify Reddit is that for
| me a lot of the time, as is youtube. Netflix and co less
| so, if I'm watching something I want to enjoy it, not have
| it as background / comofort stuff.
| rich_sasha wrote:
| I agree 100%.
|
| I think the question is, what when inevitably someone uses that
| human music to train an AI generating the same ambient music?
| Especially when you acquired the music on the cheap using a
| monopoly position.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I assumed that has already been happening. I see tons of all
| capital letter 5 or 6 letter "artists" in Apple Music
| infinite playlist.
|
| There are also websites and apps like Suno that make whatever
| you want on the fly.
| yellow_lead wrote:
| > Which is something I've always wondered! How does the Lofi
| Girl channel on Youtube always have so much new music from
| artists I have never heard from?
|
| > The answer is surprising: real people and real instruments!
| (At least at the time of writing).
|
| Sorry to break it to you, but there's actually tones of AI lofi
| music from Suno all over YouTube right now.
|
| See this video for an explanation: https://youtu.be/_oxtFP2UUyM
|
| And here are some examples of the content:
|
| https://youtu.be/RJUvNVCqtpI https://youtu.be/iBt051Pq7_4
| liminalsunset wrote:
| The YouTube link that starts with RJUvNV, titled "(a). sip"
| IMO, the first track is a banger (I really like it), and it
| doesn't sound obviously AI.
|
| The second track is more obviously AI, mostly due to the high
| frequency "dullness". Likewise, the second link iBT051 seems
| to have the same issue, it's low fidelity (but in a different
| way than the lo-fi style is).
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| > less of a nefarious plan from Spotify to replace famous Katy
| Perry with AI
|
| actually, it's the same nefarious plan, just that AI wasn't yet
| up to the task. Now it is, and replacing those fake artists,
| who are still human beings as far as we know, with AI (and the
| same fake resumes) is the logical next step.
| legohead wrote:
| There is an incredible amount of unique music & artists on
| Soundcloud. Or at least there was some years ago. I got quite
| into it, to where it was taking up too much of my time and I
| stopped using it altogether. They kept making it more difficult
| to download music too so that was another thing that drove me
| away.
| juujian wrote:
| They might work explain why Google home plays anything but the
| original when my kids ask for baby shark on Spotify? I was
| wondering why Spotify wouldn't go to the most highy listened
| artist, that seemed easy to implement.
| legitster wrote:
| >the original
|
| FYI Baby Shark was basically a public domain song when PinkFong
| made _their_ version.
| ricardobeat wrote:
| This is not surprising. Most curated playlists on Spotify feel
| soul-less, I avoid them almost completely, and this might be one
| of the reasons.
|
| Such a downfall for what could've been a nice company in the long
| run. And disrupting them is now harder than ever due to
| consolidation.
| _1ts3 wrote:
| The other DSPs are much more creative and allow room for more
| interesting music. My experience has been that Amazon is my
| personal favorite from a curation standpoint. I discovered
| Yonatan Ayal via amazon meditation programming and his solo
| stuff is arguably the most interesting ambient record of the
| year.
| default-kramer wrote:
| > Discovery Mode, its payola-like program whereby artists accept
| a lower royalty rate in exchange for algorithmic promotion. Like
| the PFC program, tracks enrolled in Discovery Mode are unmarked
| on Spotify; both schemes allow the service to push discount
| content to users without their knowledge.
|
| I definitely noticed this aspect of Discovery Mode but didn't
| know that it was confirmed or public knowledge. Spotify's
| recommendations have been terrible for a long time now.
| mlsu wrote:
| Another thing that happens with Spotify playlist is that someone
| will post something like:
|
| _" epic hip hop bangers"_
|
| Song 1-13 will indeed be epic hip hop bangers. Then song 14 is
| some random guy's track, which picks up the playlist momentum
| from its neighbors. Song 15-23 is epic bangers, then song 24. and
| on and on. The person who made the playlist is, of course, random
| guy or one of their friends.
|
| That's why I typically only listen either to whole albums on
| spotify, or DJ sets on soundcloud or youtube. There are too many
| individual human beings out there with great taste to bother with
| the algorithmic stuff.
| crtasm wrote:
| I don't know if it's still common but I used to run into this
| with album playlists on Youtube: all the tracks from something
| famous and then the creator's tracks tacked on the end.
| orblivion wrote:
| Honestly I can't hate random guy, that's a pretty clever
| tactic. If he's good it'll take off and he deserves it.
| Eduard wrote:
| > Song 1-13 will indeed be epic hip hop bangers. Then song 14
| is some random guy's track, which picks up the playlist
| momentum from its neighbors. Song 15-23 is epic bangers, then
| song 24. and on and on. The person who made the playlist is, of
| course, random guy or one of their friends.
|
| Not sure if I understand your argument. Is it the following:
| "epic hip hop bangers 1-13 and 15-23" are the boring millionth
| replay of all the genre-defining tracks of the past 40 years,
| and only tracks 14 and 24 are the precious new finds? If that
| is the argument, I totally agree.
| arnvald wrote:
| The way I understand it is that the 14th song is not a
| banger, but a song put between well known, good songs, to
| boost its number of streams.
|
| I've noticed it a few times, I was listening to something
| like "best of 80s" and a few tracks were from the same band
| that I couldn't find any info about. So my guess was that the
| creator of the list put some of the songs they (or their
| friends) made, then those songs got millions of streams just
| because they were on that playlist even though they had
| nothing to do with the expected content. It's either for the
| money or maybe PR to make an impression that the band is
| popular
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| I mean that's not unusual either I suppose, it's a self promo
| strategy. Spotify does it themselves as well, mixing in
| relatively unknown artists into generated playlists to give
| them a bit more exposure which they would never get if
| "existing popularity" was the metric to include them in
| generated playlists. The article implies that artists can
| accept lower royalty payments to get more exposure like that
| too, so it's intentional by Spotify and the artists themselves.
| I mean personally I don't care for it, but good for them.
|
| What I really don't like is the spam where they add a random
| well-known artist's name to their song to make it look like
| it's a collaboration, but it's either a low effort cover or has
| absolutely nothing to do with it. At least I've stopped
| gettring random basement mumble rap in generated metal
| playlists.
| yaur wrote:
| Those could also be payed placements.
| sailfast wrote:
| Are you seeing that on individual playlists created by users or
| official Spotify playlists? I've only seen the former so far
| trying to get their band exposure, etc by making a playlist
| popular.
| marcus_holmes wrote:
| > This treatment of music as nothing but background sounds--as
| interchangeable tracks of generic, vibe-tagged playlist fodder--
| is at the heart of how music has been devalued in the streaming
| era.
|
| Sorry musicians, but approximately 50% of the time, this is
| exactly what I want. I'm not actually listening to the music,
| it's just aural wallpaper.
|
| I see this as two separate markets:
|
| - there's music I actively want to listen to, even sing along to,
| maybe even dance to, that needs to be full of emotional resonance
| and relatable lyrics. Stuff I'll talk to my friends about, or
| ponder the meaning of at length, and dig into.
|
| - then there's the background stuff that should be (in the words
| of the article) "as milquetoast as possible". It's just there to
| cover up incidental sounds and aid my concentration on some other
| task (usually coding). If it makes me feel anything or it snags
| my attention at all then it's failing.
|
| So it's not a devaluation of music in the streaming era, it's
| just a different, possibly new, way of listening (or not) to
| music.
|
| I really don't see the harm in Spotify sourcing this background
| stuff cheaply and providing it in bulk. As the article says, this
| is not "artistic output" from a musician expressing their soul.
|
| It's the difference between an oil painting and wallpaper - both
| are pictures put on the wall, but they serve very different
| purposes and have very different business models. We don't object
| to wallpaper being provided cheaply in bulk, without crediting
| the artist. But we would consider treating an oil painting in the
| same way as borderline immoral.
| munchler wrote:
| Yes, and this is what Brian Eno had in mind when he coined the
| term "ambient music":
|
| "Ambient Music must be able to accommodate many levels of
| listening attention without enforcing one in particular; it
| must be as ignorable as it is interesting."
|
| I think the only semi-valid complaint here is that some (most?)
| of Spotify's ambient music isn't actually interesting, so it
| only works at the level of background music. But if people are
| happy listening to that, I don't see a problem with it.
| klabb3 wrote:
| There _is_ a problem though. If you mix high effort with low
| effort content you will get a distortion compared to the
| perceived initial market. The economic equilibrium in any
| platform is the bang for the buck in effort-per-engagement.
| This holds true for YouTube as well, where the most serious
| channels (like MentourPilot) can't rely on YouTube rev-share
| alone. So they use different revenue channels, like Patreon
| etc. Without it, we would not see the amount of quality
| content that we do today. The highest engagement per effort
| is clickbaity. Now, go to LinkedIn or Facebook, where the
| dials are tuned differently, and observe a barrage of
| absolute garbage.
|
| Profit seeking will land you in blandness, and here Spotify
| is even exacerbating by playing in a conflict of interest
| market, through playlists with massive reach that they
| control. Not even Zuck does that (afaik), but rely on high
| volume content farms that at least he has plausible
| deniability to claim that it's not his hand moving the
| needle. It's well known musicians pay a lot to be featured,
| so the monetary value of playlist placement is really high.
|
| Anyway, this may not be enough to cause an exodus yet. But
| artists will become more aware and rightfully complain, and
| perhaps find different platforms. It also weakens Spotifys
| own market position since algorithmic low effort music is
| fungible and much easier to disrupt (although Spotify still
| incredibly dominant today). It's not impossible that ambient
| music streaming breaks out to a cheaper alternative service,
| with white noise and yoga tunes. That may be a better
| tradeoff in the long run.
| a57721 wrote:
| > it's just aural wallpaper
|
| Erik Satie coined the term "furniture music" for this.
| dools wrote:
| Isn't this just like how supermarkets have their "house brands"
| that compete with name brands? If your consumption of music
| amounts to "whatever Spotify tells me to listen to" then chances
| are you were the type of person who used to just have the radio
| on for background noise anyway.
|
| EDIT: If you think about this "scandal" in reverse, that is that
| Spotify was started as a background, inert restaurant playlist
| app that paid session musicians to record 50 songs a day for lo-
| fi chill ambient jazz playlists, and later tried to expand their
| reach by allowing musicians to upload their songs, it wouldn't be
| a scandal at all.
| pests wrote:
| Its not in reverse though.
|
| If a upscale steak restaurant is known for using quality meats
| and then they decide to include something like Beyond Meat but
| make it hard to tell that's what you're ordering.
|
| Expectations were set.
|
| Personally I have no issue with it.
| dools wrote:
| > If a upscale steak restaurant is known for using quality
| meats and then they decide to include something like Beyond
| Meat but make it hard to tell that's what you're ordering.
|
| That sounds like an analogy worth belabouring!!
|
| I think this is more like if you had an upscale steak
| restaurant and then they opened up a series of food trucks
| that used the same branding but sold sausages instead.
| big-green-man wrote:
| If you walk into a steakhouse and order the porterhouse and
| you get taco bell Beefy(tm) meat, that's one thing. If you
| pay the restaurant a monthly retainer to feed you steak
| whenever you feel like wandering in and you get such
| treatment, you weren't really ripped off.
|
| Someone tells Spotify "I want to listen to the latest Lil
| yachty album" and it plays, expectations were met. Someone
| says "play whatever I just need background noise",
| expectations were also met. You can't ask for elevator music
| and be upset that that's what you get. The fact that you can
| still pay a flat monthly rate and get access to almost any
| music you'd want to hear, that's like still getting the
| porterhouse every day for a monthly fee. That's amazing and
| fantastic. Don't expect it to last much longer. And don't ask
| for the soup of the day if you want something fresh.
| foota wrote:
| I don't know how I feel about this, but the people that are
| upset about this seem to be upset for musicians. Which, I
| don't know how I feel. It feels like the outsourcing of the
| music industry.
| Yeul wrote:
| Spotify sends users a notification when their favourite
| artist has a concert. I think that's a nice gesture.
|
| Nowadays you make money with live gigs not snorting coke
| in a studio making concept albums. And Spotify saved the
| industry from Napster- yes I still remember.
| philistine wrote:
| You don't really remember. Spotify arrived in the US only
| in 2011. The iTunes Store saved the industry from
| Napster.
| big-green-man wrote:
| I mean, do you feel sad for photographers, painters,
| digital artists that every stock photo used on every
| website in the world comes from a stock photo website and
| wasn't hand made by an artisan? Is it some slight against
| Duke Ellington that he wasn't selected to write and
| record the hold music you hear when you call your doctors
| office? _Feel bad for musicians why?_ They still get
| their royalties when someone plays their song. It 's just
| they're not getting selected by an algorithm for random
| background music as often. How is that some wrongdoing
| against them?
| mort96 wrote:
| Beyond Meat is a weird analogy here. It's relatively
| expensive, and having a Beoynd Meat alternative to steaks
| would open up new markets (vegans, vegetarians, pescatarians,
| groups of people who include vegans and vegetarians and
| pescatarians) so it's something restaurants tend to feature
| prominently on their menues as a vegan or vegetarian
| alternative.
|
| A better alternative would be a steak restaurant known for
| using quality meats and then they decide to include cheap
| meat to reduce cost, and not make it clear that that's what
| you're ordering.
| schnable wrote:
| I'll play along. It's like ordering a beer flight at a bar
| and they start out with craft beers and 3-4 beers in they
| start slipping in Natty Lights and Busches.
| xandrius wrote:
| In that specific scenario, if the customers can't tell, I'd
| say the beyond meat option is better: still gives you the
| experience, the proteins, less cruelty and better for the
| environment. Win win to me.
|
| Unlike here the topic in question, I'd assume cows too would
| prefer you having a beyond meat instead of them. But I'm just
| projecting, I'm not actually sure about that.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| > Isn't this just like how supermarkets have their "house
| brands" that compete with name brands? I
|
| 1) A supermarket does not bill itself as a neutral discovery
| platform. It's not comparable to Spotify.
|
| 2) A supermarket can't make up fake information about the
| provenance of its products. The information on the cereal box
| is regulated to be truthful (well, we hope).
|
| 3) Most importantly, this is about discovery. The store has its
| brand of cereal next to some other non-store brands on the
| shelf, the customer has the opportunity to discover both. What
| Spotify is doing is taking the non-store-brand cereals off the
| shelf and putting them in the stocking room where you only get
| them if you happen to ask one of the store employees.
| mholm wrote:
| I encountered this last Christmas: My parents were running a
| Christmas music playlist. All the bangers, the Mariah Carey's and
| Mannheim Steamrollers, and maybe 1/10 songs were this really soft
| yet bad piano playing. So I look into it and this guy gets
| $200,000 per year, just slipping his inoffensive slop into
| popular playlists he created and got to the top of Spotify search
| sitkack wrote:
| I'd love to see their Settlers of Catan game.
| foota wrote:
| Huh?
| pinkmuffinere wrote:
| The implication is that the artist has very creative
| strategies. It would be fun to see what they come up with
| in settlers
| foota wrote:
| That's a lot of leaps for me, but seems like a possible
| interpretation (certainly better than any I came up
| with).
| pinkmuffinere wrote:
| Wow this is brilliant. I'm on the fence about whether I should
| be mad -- they're providing a service (curating "all the
| bangers"), and they have discovered a way to profit from the
| service. On net I think they've made the world a better
| place???
| circlefavshape wrote:
| $200,000 per year from running Spotify playlists? Citation
| needed - that is _wildly_ implausible
| DrammBA wrote:
| > $200,000 per year from running Spotify playlists
|
| No, $200,000 per year slipping his inoffensive slop into
| popular playlists
| Eduard wrote:
| how does one slip their tracks into someone else's playlist? I
| rather guess playlist curators decide on their own which tracks
| they put in their owned playlists.
| pinkmuffinere wrote:
| It's the same guy making the playlist and slipping the slop.
|
| "He who collated created"
| big-green-man wrote:
| I'm not a Spotify user, but I've got to go against the grain here
| and say "who cares?"
|
| Have you ever bought a CD in the days of CDs because you heard a
| song or two from the album on the radio and found that only those
| that you'd already heard were any good? Hair metal was
| particularly rife with this. Flower power stuff from the 60s
| stands out, mostly utter hot garbage, you can find entire mixes
| of the low quality knockoff crap getting sold at night on PBS.
| There are people that have every motley crue album (and not just
| the first 2 like more cultured people such as myself), and listen
| to them regularly. _There has always been a massive market for
| low quality garbage._
|
| Radio stations used to get paid to put crap in rotation. Anyone
| remember Limp Bizkit? They got famous by buying slots on Seattle
| radio stations. Who didn't grow out of that garbage? _A lot of
| people,_ unfortunately.
|
| You've got playlists, played by lazy people that don't care about
| anything but the mood or vibe, that they didn't curate, going on
| in the background while they ride the elevator and youre
| surprised that it's elevator music? How often do you hear
| billboard top 100 hits while on hold with the cable company?
| Complain when someone tries to play one of those tracks and a
| cover band plays instead, that's when someone is getting screwed
| over.
|
| Subscription services have always been and will always be a race
| to the bottom. Quality art has always had to be manually curated
| by the enjoyer. The best stuff has always been hidden behind the
| stuff people were trying to sell you. People looking to squeeze
| out an extra buck were always willing to sell lower quality to
| those who would tolerate it. So if you don't want low quality
| crap in your life, take the time to pick what's in your life and
| pay fairly for it. There was never going to be a miracle cure to
| the downfall of the music industry for the low low price of ten
| dollars a month.
| Vegenoid wrote:
| I agree. I have left streaming services, and rely on purchasing
| digital downloads of albums to obtain music. I am very into a
| niche subgenre of electronic music where many artists don't
| have their music available on streaming services. I pay for
| those albums (if I like the music, obviously) and I am happy
| about it. I also fairly happily pay $3-5 for an album that _is_
| available on streaming services. But when I encounter albums
| that are on streaming platforms, but cost $10+ for the digital
| download, it's a hard pill to swallow. I want to give them
| money for their music, but to do so I must give them vastly
| more than their listeners on streaming platforms give them.
|
| I know that artists often just treat digital download sales as
| a donation mechanism, akin to a busker's money can. But I want
| to pay for music, not donate to artists who are then handing
| that along to streaming services by giving them their music
| practically for free.
|
| I'm not sure if my feelings about this are justified, or if
| they're irrational.
| _1ts3 wrote:
| I run a label that has direct deals with certain major DSPs. We
| do over a billion streams a year.
|
| The entire "wellness" music category is programming driven. Much
| of my energy is spent building and maintaining relationships with
| the programmers, even with our direct deals. We take a reduced
| payout on the master side in return for preferential treatment on
| playlist positions.
|
| I have an active roster of extremely talented producers. It's a
| volume play. I've made tracks that I'm quite proud of in 90
| minutes that have done 20+ million streams.
|
| It's a wild system but we've made it work. Not really a critique
| or an endorsement - just making a living making music.
|
| Edit: fun fact, Sleep Sounds is generally the #1 streamed
| playlist on the entire Apple Music platform.
| ksynwa wrote:
| What's the wellness category about?
| _1ts3 wrote:
| Outcome based music generally - sleep, meditation, yoga,
| focus, etc.
| eleveriven wrote:
| On one hand, it's a way to guarantee visibility and streams...
| On the other, it seems like another symptom of how streaming
| has commodified music... (I'm talking about the reduced payouts
| for preferential playlist treatment)
| chr15m wrote:
| > I've made tracks that I'm quite proud of in 90 minutes that
| have done 20+ million streams. Regardless of the ethics that's
| quite incredible!
| Yeul wrote:
| I honestly don't give a shit about music nor artists. Never
| have. But I'm at the gym about 3 hours a week and need a
| soundtrack so I like to listen to synthwave that the Spotify AI
| recommends me.
|
| Spotify seems to trigger the hell out of music purists...
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Just curious, what kind of software do you use, and / or, what
| is this category of music based on? Brian Eno and the ambient
| movement as a whole?
|
| It sounds like the kinda thing that'll earn you a paycheck, but
| not fame. Or the kind of fame that can land you work from e.g.
| Spotify, not the kind of fame that'll fill up concert halls.
|
| I think it's a sobering look into the music industry (not just
| your whole comment but the article + comments); the perception
| is that if you're not filling up concert halls then you don't
| matter, but the truth is that good or successful music does not
| necessitate the accompanying fame or "interesting" personality
| / personal branding.
| Eduard wrote:
| I would love to listen to your music. Can you name it?
| conradfr wrote:
| Good on you for earning a living from music (which is hard) but
| I'm not sure the whole reduced payout thing should be legal.
|
| Is it that far from payola?
| justhw wrote:
| By 'programmers' you mean like playlist owners, channel owners
| etc... right?
| dfedbeef wrote:
| You cheated and sold out to get preferential placement... Who
| cares how many streams you got? The metric is meaningless now.
| Animats wrote:
| _"music commissioned to fit a certain playlist /mood with
| improved margins"_
|
| Ah. So that's where all those appallingly bad covers of Xmas
| music heard in stores are coming from.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I mean we had appallingly bad Xmas songs in the 90's as well.
| They just had a more limited selection.
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| If you are a Spotify user please make an active effort to seek
| and listen to artists _albums_. Playlist are a worse experience
| (unless you make them) and only play into Spotify's pocket.
|
| A few key points with albums:
|
| - You are listening to the artists vision/journey. The songs are
| not played in isolation but as part of a collective arrangement.
|
| - Artists get payed more per play than individual songs.
|
| - Albums don't degrade like playlists which can be changed by
| users or spotify to inject some newer commercial push.
| eptcyka wrote:
| Also consider paying for music on bandcamp or elsewhere.
| Kiro wrote:
| > - You are listening to the artists vision/journey. The songs
| are not played in isolation but as part of a collective
| arrangement.
|
| I think this is less of the case nowadays. The latest albums
| I've listened to have all been just a complication of the
| artist's latest EPs with a couple of new tracks.
| thequux wrote:
| This tends to be true of mamy of the artists that chart, but
| less so for indie bands. I see Major Parkinson's Blackbox and
| Magna Carta Cartel's The Dying Option as two of the best
| albums of the century so far, for example.
| Kiro wrote:
| I don't think that's an accurate distinction. I think maybe
| it has more to do with the genre (e.g. more common in rock
| and less so in the electronic music that I listen to, where
| it's mostly EP driven).
|
| If we're talking popularity vs indie, those bands seem
| pretty mainstream. In my head indie artists that put out
| single songs on Soundcloud etc don't do albums until they
| grow big, so pretty much the opposite (more popular = more
| album focused).
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| That's nothing new though, a lot of the big name artists'
| albums are a collection of most of their singles (idk how the
| album vs single market works); e.g. Taylor Swift with 7
| singles made from the 13 tracks on '1989'.
|
| I don't know what is normal, but releasing singles or EPs
| before the full album seems like a common way to generate
| hype beforehand. Also, the Spotify model - assuming against
| what the previous comment says and every stream counts for
| the same revenue - doesn't differentiate between singles, EPs
| or albums, so it's whatever from that point of view. I've
| seen a few artists start releasing demos, songs-that-
| didn't-quite-make-it, and all kinds of unusual material that
| wasn't good enough for a full album onto streaming platforms,
| which then ends up in the long tail of their repertoire. It
| ties in with the article though, in that these songs will
| also start appearing in the playlists related to those
| artists.
|
| Another interesting one is a single artist releasing songs
| under different names; Devin Townsend comes to mind, who can
| fill up a related playlist with songs released under his own
| name, Strapping Young Lad, Devin Townsend Band, Devin
| Townsend Project, Casualties of Cool, etc. And given he does
| many different genres, he'd appear - theoretically - on many
| different styles of playlists too, although I think the
| algorithm would get confused when the artist name gets
| associated with both hourlong ambient tracks and seven minute
| chaos metal genre mashups.
| michaelt wrote:
| _> I don 't know what is normal, but releasing singles or
| EPs before the full album seems like a common way to
| generate hype beforehand._
|
| I think this arose in the radio-and-CD era of music. Maybe
| even earlier?
|
| The radio stations that drove sales of new music wanted to
| play the latest releases. By releasing three singles before
| your 12-track album, you got more radio play, more shots at
| doing well in the sales charts, and hence raised your album
| sales.
| basisword wrote:
| >> If you are a Spotify user
|
| I would recommend switching to Apple Music if you want to
| stream. They're continuing to lean into the idea of human
| curation (with the launch of three new live radio stations this
| month) and I find their human curated playlists lead to me
| discovering a lot more music I like than Spotify's. Apple Music
| also works well with local files so music you purchase of
| Bandcamp, bootlegs etc. will work across devices.
| jabroni_salad wrote:
| Is the software still garbo on Windows and Android? Last I
| tried it, it would crash after a couple hours and I have no
| valid airplay targets in my home. They were generous about
| the 2 month trial but I only needed 2 hours to realize that I
| wasn't the target market.
|
| For all of spotify's faults, it runs on EVERYTHING and
| Spotify Connect is effectively borderless.
| achenet wrote:
| I prefer YouTube Music's webapp and Android app to Spotify,
| personally.
| bangaroo wrote:
| as an avid apple music user i am continually frustrated by
| what an afterthought the windows app is
|
| it's a continuation of apple's legacy of barely putting in
| the minimum to ship anything for windows.
|
| there's a reason i won't use their password manager, etc. i
| still interact with windows, and basically any key app i
| use can't be apple-made because the windows experience will
| be utter trash and the linux experience will be
| nonexistent.
|
| i make do with the windows apple music app but it is
| objectively a bad experience.
| sailfast wrote:
| Do they really get paid more "per play" on an album vs. a
| playlist? That seems quite tricky to figure out the accounting.
|
| Is it as simple as per play? I only know what's posted on the
| loud and clear website but stream share isn't quite the same
| thing from what they're saying in the FAQ.
| abrookewood wrote:
| I used to think like this, but no longer. Honestly, in an
| average album, there may only be 2-4 tracks that are excellent
| and the rest are just OK. This is a pretty common pattern and
| you can see reflected in the number of streams for each song.
| As for the album being the artists collective vision, I don't
| know that that is true. Maybe it is for something like Pink
| Floyd, but I get the impression most songs are written in
| isolation, rather than being a part of a collective vision.
|
| In the end, why waste time listening to something you only half
| enjoy?
| tivert wrote:
| > It puts forth an image of a future in which--as streaming
| services push music further into the background, and normalize
| anonymous, low-cost playlist filler--the relationship between
| listener and artist might be severed completely.
|
| I don't think this is limited to streaming. I think other
| companies have similar schemes for other types of media and
| interactions, and one of the main uses of generative AI will be
| to create it.
|
| At some point, the path of least friction will guide us into
| having chatbot friends, read AI-generated articles, and consume
| either anonymous filler or outright AI generated artistic media.
| Animats wrote:
| This business model goes way back, to long before streaming. The
| Seeburg 1000 [1] was a background music player sold to
| restaurants and stores. Like Musak, it was a service, but used a
| local player. New sets of disks were delivered once a month or
| so. 1000 songs in a set, hence the name.
|
| The music was recorded by Seeburg's own orchestra, using songs
| either in the public domain or for which they had purchased
| unlimited rights. Just like the modern "ghost artists". So this
| business model goes back to the 1950s.
|
| The records had a form of copy protection - nonstandard RPM,
| nonstandard size, nonstandard hole size, nonstandard groove
| width. So they didn't file copyrights on all this material. As a
| result, there are sites on the web streaming old Seeburg 1000
| content.
|
| Seeburg made jukeboxes with random access, but the background
| player was simpler - it just played a big stack of records over
| and over. It's rather low-fi, because the records were 16 2/3
| RPM, which limits frequency response.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2Y6OKy4AMc
| philjohn wrote:
| Wow - that's an awesome video to watch how they automated
| playing the next records, thank you!
| nitwit005 wrote:
| I was not aware that dated back to records. Appreciate the
| YouTube link.
| Animats wrote:
| Seeburg had the whole concept - blah music intended only for
| background use, total ownership of the content, several
| different playlists for industrial, commercial, and dining
| settings, and their own distribution system.
|
| Their main competitor was Muzak, which started delivering
| blah music in 1934, and, after much M&A activity and
| bankruptcies, is still around as Mood Media.[2] Muzak won
| out, because they could deliver content over phone likes or
| an FM broadcast subcarrier, rather than shipping out all
| those records.
|
| Here's a free stream from a Seeburg 1000, from Radio
| Coast.[1]
|
| [1] http://198.178.121.76:8157/stream
|
| [2] https://us.moodmedia.com/sound/music-for-business/
| Eduard wrote:
| > Here's a free stream from a Seeburg 1000, from Radio
| Coast: http://198.178.121.76:8157/stream
|
| They are currently playing a seasonal Christmas playlist
| that gives me better vibes than any Spotify Christmas
| playlist.
|
| https://radiocoastcom.godaddysites.com/
|
| https://tunein.com/radio/RadioCoast-s248470
| jccalhoun wrote:
| The actual company that owns the Seeburg catalog has their
| own site and stream as well: https://seeburg1000.com/
| Animats wrote:
| I suspect they are claiming more ownership than they
| really have. Most of those records were made prior to
| 1976, back when copyright only applied if you made a
| copyright application. Seeburg didn't file copyright
| applications on them and they bear no copyright markings.
| They just stamped "Property of Seeburg Music Library" on
| the disks themselves, which were loaned out to customers
| but not always collected back.
|
| Seeburg and its successors all went out of business
| decades ago, via court-ordered liquidation. The current
| "Seeburg 1000" site uses the name, but came along much
| later and does not seem to be a successor company. So
| these are now probably public-domain.
|
| Their music was blah, but competently executed. Better
| than many modern low-end cover bands.
| spacechild1 wrote:
| Interesting, I didn't know about Seeburg. Funnily enough, this
| business model is even older:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telharmonium
|
| "As early as 1906, the Cahill Telharmonium Company of New York
| attempted to sell musical entertainment (produced by Dr.
| Thaddeus Cahill's "Telharmonium," an early synthesizer) to
| subscribers through the telephone"
|
| The business failed miserably, but the Telharmonium is
| remembered as an early electronic music instrument.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Apparently there are no recordings of this telharmonium,
| which is a shame :/. There seem to be attempts at reproducing
| it though.
| ksymph wrote:
| Fun fact: there was a brief period after music recording, but
| before copies could be made with much quality, where if you
| wanted them to sound halfway decent each recording had to be
| a unique performance. Studio musicians were paid to perform
| popular songs over and over. When making copies became more
| feasible, there was backlash from some musicians, both for
| financial and artistic reasons - not unlike when recorded
| music started becoming popular in the first place. Not hard
| to see the similarities with modern distribution woes like
| piracy and streaming too.
| Animats wrote:
| The Telharmonium dated from the "if only we had gain" era of
| pre-electronics. The thing was a huge collection of sizable
| AC generators running at different frequencies, run through a
| keyboard, and mixed with transformers. With no way to amplify
| a small signal, there was no way to downsize the thing. Once
| amps were invented, the Hammond Organ, with its tone wheels,
| was the same concept in a piano-sized package.
|
| History of pre-transistor electronics:
|
| - If only we had voltage.
|
| - If only we had current.
|
| - If only we had rectification.
|
| - If only we had gain.
|
| - If only we had frequency.
|
| - If only we had power gain.
|
| - If only we had reliability.
|
| - If only we had precision.
|
| - If only we had counting.
| greenie_beans wrote:
| this would've been good context for the writer to share
| nonameiguess wrote:
| There is least one other common "bulk music factory" business
| model like this. Bands like Two Steps from Hell cranked out a
| whole lot of simple and generic "epic music" that didn't need
| to be licensed per use, with the purpose being studios could
| use in trailers for action movies and video games before the
| real scores were finished.
|
| Amusingly, even though the band existed for the purpose of
| supplying music for trailers, they eventually became popular
| enough on the Internet that fans convinced them to release a
| couple albums and even play live shows.
| zimmund wrote:
| And before this: self-playing pianos using perforated rolls,
| reducing the cost of hiring live pianists in saloons.
| Animats wrote:
| Different legal environment. Until 1908, player piano
| companies didn't have to pay royalties to composers. See
| _White-Smith Music Publishing Co. v. Apollo Co._.[1] So, in
| its growth period, the player piano industry didn 't need to
| acquire music rights. Then Congress changed the law, to
| create the "mechanical license" right to play out the song
| from a storage device.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White-
| Smith_Music_Publishing_C....
| eleveriven wrote:
| It's particularly concerning that Spotify's actions prioritize
| cheaper, anonymous tracks over legitimate artist contributions
| nicky0 wrote:
| What makes an artist "legitimate"?
| iamacyborg wrote:
| They release records and play shows.
| nicky0 wrote:
| I hear what you are saying but that's kind of an
| established-music-industry centric view. There are all
| kinds of musicians, not just "recording artists" in the
| 20th century industry mold.
| troupo wrote:
| That somehow makes people who create music for games and
| movies not legitimate artists.
| iamacyborg wrote:
| Do those not also get released as records and do those
| artists not also do live shows?
|
| I know of at least one record label that specialises in
| releasing game music and I've seen Amon Tobin (producer
| who make the soundtrack for a Splinter Cell game, amongst
| other things) live.
| caporaltito wrote:
| So what? We are talking about low-fi, chill music and smooth
| jazz; these genres already sound AI generated from the start. And
| this won't stop people from making music as well, maybe just deny
| them to get paid for making a track in half an hour on Fruity
| Loops.
| notpushkin wrote:
| I've met a guy doing this a fee years ago, way before AI boom. He
| said it's a pretty easy way to get some cash if you know how to
| automate things. I'm wondering if it's even easier now, or the
| competition made it harder actually.
| wodenokoto wrote:
| I find the PFC program utterly unsurprising.
|
| Take all the easy listening covers that every single cafe seems
| to be playing on end. It's the perfect storm:
|
| Cafe wants quiet music and music customers know. Spotify wants to
| pay only songwriting royalty instead of both songwriting and
| performance royalties.
| nprateem wrote:
| Artists paid upfront to write songs they'd never write that only
| get millions of listens when forced on users can't really
| complain they aren't getting big enough royalties. The whole
| point is their music is bland.
|
| This is no different to working for a salary and not getting
| equity. And being a star has always been more about exposure than
| talent.
|
| It's a shame for the real artists trying to write bland crap
| though. But the fault is with listeners. And let's face it, most
| musicians are probably only doing it hoping to one day become a
| star and get loaded... which is why there's so much competition.
|
| All we can really say is Spotify etc and powerful DAWs have
| broken down barriers to being able to make and release music,
| which should be a good thing shouldn't it?
|
| But yeah, Spotify stuffing playlists with their choices instead
| of popular music sounds bad... except only playing popular music
| would only reward the early birds on the platforms, so that's a
| tricky one too...
| anilakar wrote:
| The whole ContentID system is irreversibly broken as long as
| people are allowed to submit content for registration over the
| internet and not in person under penalty of perjury.
|
| A ton of fake artists take widely used commercial sample packs
| and copyright-free music, create simple songs and then register
| them via companies that submit them to ContentID databases. They
| then use it to monetize content created by other people on
| Youtube. There is no way to report these because the listener is
| not the copyright owner.
|
| Just two of the countless cases I've come across:
|
| JasoN SHaRk - Let the Music Play. I've heard a track from an
| indie artist predating the release by more than half a year.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEGgea4Z2co
|
| Anitoly Akilina - A Nightmare (on My Street). This is a bold one;
| it uses a free track from Kevin MacLeod, also used in Kerbal
| Space Program. This means KSP gameplay videos get monetized.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVbZT1iFnlM
| NobodyNada wrote:
| > uses a free track from Kevin MacLeod, also used in Kerbal
| Space Program. This means KSP gameplay videos get monetized.
|
| Somebody made a bad rap song that samples the title screen
| music from Super Metroid, and goes around sending automated
| copyright claims to everyone who streams the game on Twitch.
| Every speedrunner and randomizer player has to deal with these
| bogus claims every couple of days.
|
| A few months ago, the speedrun community held a 47-way race on
| the game's 30th anniversary: https://racetime.gg/sm/dynamic-
| plowerhouse-1749 It took a little while for everyone to ready
| up and start the race, so we all just sat on the title screen
| for ~10 minutes until everyone was good to go. The next day,
| dozens of copyright claims went out.
|
| This has been going on for like 5 years; we dispute the
| copyright claims every single time, and people have contacted
| Twitch support many times. Yet, they won't do _anything_ to
| stop the same person from filing _thousands_ of false copyright
| claims for music he doesn 't even own.
| 2d8a875f-39a2-4 wrote:
| Yet another article that purports to show concern for artists
| being exploited by big bad streaming providers, but is in fact
| written out of concern for the record labels and distributors who
| are no longer able to exploit said artists as completely as
| possible. "Legacy rent seeker is alarmed that a newer rent seeker
| is cutting them out" would be a more accurate title.
| Eduard wrote:
| you didn't read the article.
| sim7c00 wrote:
| its a music platform where u can find music... don need to be
| some fancypants 'artist' to make music.. often music from
| libraries like some mentioned there are simply ppl makin music
| for money, not like an artist but like a job... they offer u the
| ability to make ur own lists if u wanna be elitist on whos an
| actual artist and 'who deserves to be on spotify'...
|
| a lot of the 'ghost' tracks also come from actual ghost producers
| who moved from making ghost productions for labels to doing it
| indie.
|
| not all producers are some kind of artist brand or make
| consistently the same theme of music every track. i got tons of
| projects i out stuff under, like categories.. some have 1 track,
| others lots. (no i dont make money from it, but often ppl do...
| just a few buck on the side)
| Aeolun wrote:
| Why do artists feel that Spotify is obligated to put them on
| their own playlists? This whole argument rings hollow. They're
| basically salty that nobody cares about their music in specific,
| and that any slop sounding vaguely like the genre is apparently
| good enough for people.
| EastSmith wrote:
| Wait, the music mafia industry is finally getting out-mafia-ed?
| GuB-42 wrote:
| I am the only one to be a bit upset by the term "fake artist"?
|
| While AI is evoked, this is not what is talked about here. The
| article mentions Epidemic Sound, and looking at their page, it
| "doesn't currently use generative AI to create music".
|
| It means that we are talking about real people here, there is
| nothing fake about them and their work, what they do takes skill
| and effort. That they focus on quantity over quality and are
| under-recognized does not make them "fake". Otherwise, I bet most
| of us would be called "fake engineers".
| sickcodebruh wrote:
| They are given fake names and identities in the platform in a
| deliberate intent to mislead the audience, deprive the real
| author of credit, and hide the real source of the work the
| major record labels. "Fake artist" is a generous term.
| RandallBrown wrote:
| Lots of artists use "fake" names and don't write their music.
| Occasionally they don't even perform it.
| basisword wrote:
| One of the producers in the article describes making the music
| as "brain-numbing" and "pretty much completely joyless." The
| process is described as "...I just write out charts while lying
| on my back on the couch," he explained. "And then once we have
| a critical mass, they organize a session and we play them. And
| it's usually just like, one take, one take, one take, one take.
| You knock out like fifteen in an hour or two."
|
| He's not a fake musician by any means. But I think he'd accept
| the work he creates for this being described as fake 'art'
| specifically. There's no thought, meaning, or passion injected
| into it. It's a conveyor belt. It's based on analytics. It's
| soulless.
| lalalandland wrote:
| So its an office job? I know people who makes this exact
| music described in the article and it's part of their daily
| work to earn a living as music producers. Other musicians
| play weddings for example. It's not fake. But you don't put
| your serious artist name on a track like for a chill muzak
| stream. Music is a product that fills many categories and I
| salute the ones that can find ways to earn a living doing
| with their passion. Some of the time you do a routine and
| other time you follow your dream
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| Mountain ranges and forests are soulless too, but they're
| still quite special and can be inspiring.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| > we are taking about real people here
|
| the people are indeed real (well, for now, but soon to be
| replaced with AI -- it's the logical next step)
|
| what is fake is that the bios are not who those people are;
| it's like me putting on my bio that I went to Julliard
| Concrete3286 wrote:
| This is a really interesting look behind the scenes. I don't have
| a problem with algorithmically generated playlists or even music,
| but I also enjoy human curation and have found it essential for
| discovering new artists and sounds. Music drives people - there
| will always be human makers and curators. Seek them out and pay
| them if you believe it is worth it.
| basisword wrote:
| Surprised to see most of the comments here defending this
| practice. It's more Enshittification and it's only going to get
| worse. They've already stopped paying artists who get under 1000
| streams (per track per year I think) and they offer 'marketing'
| opportunities for artists where they'll show your track more but
| pay you a cut rate. They also changed some terms recently (I can
| no longer find the article) to make clear that curated playlists
| can include tracks that have paid to be there.
|
| All of these things suck for artists but they also suck for
| consumers. The product is slowly getting worse but at a rate
| where nobody notices until there will be little quality left.
|
| I also find it staggering how little empathy my fellow software
| developers have for artists. If AI does eventually decimate the
| number of software dev jobs I'm sure you'll be as pragmatic as
| you expect others to be.
| greenie_beans wrote:
| we need a better word than "enshittification". reading that
| word is like fingernails on chalkboard to me.
| basisword wrote:
| tbh I also hate it :)
| luisgvv wrote:
| I feel cheated, will definitely look into curated playlists by
| users rather than the generated garbage.
| paradygm wrote:
| I've made a game out of my Discover Weekly and Release Radar
| playlists, seeing how good I am at detecting the AI stuff. "Bad
| music" comes from both machines, and humans.
|
| The real fraud Spotify hasn't done enough to address is when
| these AI-generated albums show up under real artist profiles
| https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/10/spotify-criticiz...
| crazygringo wrote:
| I see absolutely no problem with this. Look, I love music,
| listening to an album through, learning about artists, etc.
|
| But sometimes, I _want_ to put something on in the background
| that doesn 't call attention to itself, but just sets a mood. I
| don't want Brian Eno or Miles Davis because then I'd be paying
| attention -- I just want "filler".
|
| And I have absolutely no problem with Spotify partnering with
| companies to produce that music, at a lower cost to Spotify, and
| seeding that in their own playlists. If the musicians are getting
| paid by the hour rather than by the stream, that's still a good
| gig when you consider that they don't have to do 99% of the rest
| of the work usually involved in producing and marketing an album
| only to have nobody listen to it.
|
| The article argues that this is "stealing" from "normal" artists,
| but that's absurd. Artists don't have some kind of right to be
| featured on Spotify's playlists. This is more like a supermarket
| featuring their store-brand corn flakes next to Kellogg's Corn
| Flakes. The supermarket isn't _stealing_ from Kellogg 's.
| Consumers can still choose what they want to listen to. And if
| they want to listen to some background ambient music that is
| lower cost for Spotify, that's just the market working.
| dclowd9901 wrote:
| Is there nothing troubling about the fact that the company who
| _decides_ what you're listening to decides that you only listen
| to their music? I didn't sign up for that. I use Spotify to
| find new artists so I can follow their artistic journey and see
| them in concert. Perhaps some folks see music as shallow
| background filler but for people like me who value its
| contributions to my mental health and a big part of my social
| interactions, this kind of thing just scoops the soul out of it
| all. I'll be canceling my subscription.
| kylebenzle wrote:
| Spotify doesn't decide what I listen to at all but I use it
| almost daily. Listen to albums and audiobooks.
|
| How does Spotify decide what you listen to? Does Amazon
| _decide_ what you buy on their website too?
| arrosenberg wrote:
| Amazon does sort of decide in a way that works for this
| analogy. If you search for a basic computer component, like
| a keyboard, one of the first 2-3 results is usually Amazon
| Basics brand. We all know that people tend to click on the
| first few links way more often than bottom of the page or
| second page. It's 100% anticompetitive to self-serve in
| that way.
|
| Spotify is a different type of situation given the mode of
| consumption, but there is absolutely an argument to be made
| that we shouldn't, as a matter of ideology, allow
| distributors to also be producers.
| aeturnum wrote:
| I guess, to me, what about the popular counter-example:
| Trader Joes. A popular mid-cost supermarket that mostly
| stocks their own store brands. That behavior does not
| feel anti-competitive or deceptive. People know that
| Trader Joes sells mostly their own brands, which seem to
| generally be thought of as good deals and quality-
| competitive.
|
| I totally agree that Amazon doing this when they claim to
| be an open market is way scummier, but I am divided on
| the Spotify example. If they were somehow stopping you
| from playing non-house-produced music that would be one
| thing, but it seems fine for them to put together
| playlists with house-produced music and offer them to
| users?
| arrosenberg wrote:
| > I guess, to me, what about the popular counter-example:
| Trader Joes. A popular mid-cost supermarket that mostly
| stocks their own store brands. That behavior does not
| feel anti-competitive or deceptive. People know that
| Trader Joes sells mostly their own brands, which seem to
| generally be thought of as good deals and quality-
| competitive.
|
| I agree with that. The big difference to me is market
| share. Amazon and Spotify are both 800 lb gorillas who
| want to control the market. Trader Joes has a business
| model that's intended to compete in the market. Amazon
| and Spotify _should_ have to play by much more strict
| rules in order to maintain their market dominance - that
| 's healthy for a capitalist system, it prevents our
| current dilemma with consolidation and oligarchy.
|
| > If they were somehow stopping you from playing non-
| house-produced music that would be one thing, but it
| seems fine for them to put together playlists with house-
| produced music and offer them to users?
|
| Yeah, I also agree the Spotify example is more nebulous
| and harder to define. IMO they should not be allowed to
| produce the music or cut preferential deals to promote
| one artist over another, but the should be free to
| package and distribute the music they have the rights to
| however they see fit. I.E. they can promote <some artist>
| over <some other artist> they just can't do it because
| they made a preferential deal with the former.
| aeturnum wrote:
| I think...to me I would object to Spotify pushing their
| house-made music using their suggestion features
| (Discover Weekly, the horrid "Smart" Shuffle feature) -
| but them making playlists with their house music and
| offering them to users feels fine. I think that is how I
| would slice it when thinking about the Amazon example
| (that IS anti-competitive and monopolistic and should be
| illegal imo).
|
| Edit: I have not looked into market share deeply but
| others in this thread have said the Spotify market share
| is ~31%, which does not seem obviously overwhelming to
| me.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| That's a perfectly reasonable stance. I would point out
| that historically, 30% is an extremely high market share
| in any industry, and represents a high degree of
| consolidation (esp given that Apple probably has similar
| share, so the two of them control the market).
|
| That is more a result of how insanely the US structures
| intellectual property rights. The problem is that one
| company having that much marketshare usually creates a
| defacto private regulator of the industry, which goes
| against the whole notion of people being governed based
| on consent.
| danudey wrote:
| Spotify has 31% of the music streaming market[0], and now
| they're using their market share in that market to leverage
| out other creators in another market.
|
| This isn't really much different than Amazon using sales data
| from third party products to decide what Amazon Basics
| products to create, and then also featuring those products
| higher in search, recommending them over third-parties in
| recommendations, and so on, and then never featuring those
| third parties in any of their lists or categories unless you
| explicitly search for them.
|
| If Spotify's behavior wasn't inherently sketchy and full of
| underhanded motive, they wouldn't be hiding what they're
| doing and lying about everything. They wouldn't be
| manufacturing fake artists and publishing one artist's
| creations under a dozen other names. They'd just create a
| store brand playlist, like "Spotify Essentials", label
| everything that way, pitch it as "a curated selection of
| tracks produced and mastered exclusively for Spotify
| listeners", and then maybe make a cheaper subscription tier
| for just essentials, or stream those tracks at higher
| quality.
|
| Instead, what they're doing is one step better than just
| mass-generating AI slop, but I guarantee you that as soon as
| the technology is there that's what they'll be doing:
| training an AI on all this music that they own the rights to
| and using that to produce more music so that they don't have
| to pay anyone else for theirs.
|
| [0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/653926/music-
| streaming-s...
| aeturnum wrote:
| You aren't required to only listen to their music. You are
| free to make your own playlists with the artists you like.
| But Spotify publishes playlists with artists they would
| prefer you listen to, which is kinda annoying, but is hardly
| them "deciding you only listen to their music."
|
| Like, I get why this feels scummy, but I use Spotify often
| and have literally never used one of these playlists. They
| haven't forced me to listen to anything.
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _Is there nothing troubling about the fact that the company
| who _decides_ what you 're listening to decides that you only
| listen to their music? I didn't sign up for that._
|
| Spotify doesn't decide a thing. Everything I listen to on
| Spotify is based on what _I chose_ to listen to. I have to
| choose to listen to background music, and choose a Spotify
| playlist over someone else 's.
|
| > _I use Spotify to find new artists so I can follow their
| artistic journey and see them in concert._
|
| So do I. This doesn't take away from that at all. That's
| "real" music which is most of my listening. But when I want
| "background" music, I can put on one of these Spotify
| playlists if I want. But that doesn't affect my ability to
| find new artists and follow them. If I'm putting on
| background music that I don't want to draw my attention,
| those are not artists I'd be following to begin with. It's
| like a different category of music entirely. What's wrong
| with Spotify providing both?
| PittleyDunkin wrote:
| This may be true for you (it's mostly true for me as well
| with Apple Music), but the spotify playlists and the auto-
| playlist-generator-thing are both enormously popular.
| There's little you can do with your behavior to affect the
| power Spotify has in the industry.
|
| > What's wrong with Spotify providing both?
|
| Spotify shouldn't be anything but a dumb pipe. Corporate
| money should not be dictating what art we gets produced and
| we have access to. It _does_ , of course, across multiple
| industries, but that's generally a very bad thing.
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _Spotify shouldn 't be anything but a dumb pipe._
|
| That's the absolute last thing I want.
|
| I've found so much music through its radio
| recommendations, it's "artists like this", getting into a
| new genre via its curated playlists.
|
| The primary value proposition to me of Spotify is to
| _not_ be a dumb pipe, but to actively assist me in
| discovering new music I like.
|
| There are lots of services I could choose to access music
| through (Apple, Amazon, Tidal, etc.), if all I wanted was
| a dumb pipe. I pick Spotify because of how much better
| its recommendations are over the other services, in my
| experience.
|
| But that's not taking away any choice, it's only adding
| to it. Sometimes I choose to listen to stuff I know I
| like, and Spotify algorithms play zero part in that.
| Sometimes I want new stuff, and Spotify algorithms and
| playlists are a huge help. They're not "dictating"
| anything to me, because I'm actively choosing to use
| them.
| PittleyDunkin wrote:
| > The primary value proposition to me of Spotify is to
| not be a dumb pipe, but to actively assist me in
| discovering new music I like.
|
| > Everything I listen to on Spotify is based on what I
| chose to listen to.
|
| I'm not saying these _contradict_ , but you are in fact
| allowing a corporate entity to dictate your music taste
| on some level. Payola means certain artists pay to get
| prioritized to you. Maybe it doesn't work on you! Maybe
| you like this. Maybe your taste surrounds an area of
| music where payola _isn 't_ a problem. All of these are
| possibilities.
|
| To me, that's a very large problem. To you, that's what
| you're paying for. That's fine, but we're going to
| continue to disagree over whether or not Spotify is
| destroying the music industry and music culture. To me,
| this is exactly the _opposite_ of how technology should
| assist in connecting artists to listeners and paying
| artists.
|
| But whatever; we really have no say at the end of the
| day, we're kind of just stuck with what we have.
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _but you are in fact allowing a corporate entity to
| dictate your music taste on some level._
|
| I think that's a very weird way of characterizing it.
|
| That's like saying, when I choose to watch a movie at the
| theaters, I am in fact allowing a corporate entity to
| dictate what I watch for the next two hours.
|
| True in some sort of technical sense I suppose. But I
| still chose to watch the film in the first place. So I
| don't really know what there is to complain about.
|
| (And I haven't noticed any kind of payola in Spotify
| radio recs or related artists -- but that would
| definitely be a decrease in quality that could send me to
| another service. In their editorial playlists, I don't
| mind though -- I assume it's editorial rather than
| algorithmic from the start.)
| PittleyDunkin wrote:
| > That's like saying, when I choose to watch a movie at
| the theaters, I am in fact allowing a corporate entity to
| dictate what I watch for the next two hours.
|
| You absolutely are. That's the entire point of trailers.
|
| EDIT: my reading comprehension is poor. Yes, you have to
| opt in to watching the movies and in this sense you're
| 100% correct that corporate money isn't dictating what
| you watch. I think it's a little different in that it's
| much easier to miss out on music whereas movies can spend
| more on advertising than they do on production.
|
| I'm not saying this is even avoidable, either. It's just
| super depressing.
| shams93 wrote:
| Not only this, but these music generation models were built
| with unlicensed content, not only do they bury the original
| artist they also just rip them off, not one dime no matter
| how much that artist spent on music lessons, music school,
| having a high quality instrument, studio gear to record, this
| is theft plain and simple.
| alwa wrote:
| I think TFA discusses mainly a program whereby Spotify
| hires production companies to pay working musicians to
| create new works in a particular style, compensated per
| song and licensed closer to a work-for-hire basis than a
| royalty basis. The musicians feel that the result is
| artistically unsatisfying compared to what they'd do of
| their own creative initiative, but it is real people
| actually being paid.
|
| Incidentally the author also grumps that they avoid working
| with union artists for this purpose--I may be wrong but I
| thought part of the point of ASCAP and their lot was to
| require its artists to hew to a uniform, royalty-heavy
| compensation structure industrywide. So you can't just go
| throw them $1700 a song (as Spotify is alleged to be doing
| in TFA) and call it a day.
|
| It sounds like your critique might apply more squarely to
| the generative music startups. Suno for example has gotten
| completely surreal, sounding spookily "real" in no time at
| all. Insipid, but stunning as a simulacrum.
|
| I imagine if we asked them, they'd counter that they're
| expanding and democratizing access to creative tools, just
| as Snapchat filters satisfy dilettantes but don't reduce
| pros' need for Photoshop. And that to the extent they
| threaten to cannibalize any part of the status quo, it's
| precisely the commoditized, sync/stock/"background music"
| end of the industry that needs to worry. That is, the ones
| who need to worry are the people doing the kinds of work
| that make this author uncomfortable.
|
| So I don't disagree with your basic point. But it seems to
| me that nobody has ever been putting their concert dollars
| toward the Bossa Nova stylings of Spotify's Chill Jazzy
| Fireside, live at a corporate canteen near you...
| jedberg wrote:
| > I use Spotify to find new artists so I can follow their
| artistic journey and see them in concert.
|
| If you don't like what Spotify gives you, you can use another
| service that does. Clearly most people don't seem to mind.
| vidarh wrote:
| It's also not new. You've been able to get low cost filler
| music for literally decades. I used to have a bunch of CD's of
| "filler" synth music and cheap covers I picked up as a broke
| teenager back in the 80's...
| obeattie wrote:
| In principal, neither do I. What I take issue with is crafting
| elaborate but completely false bios to make these sound like
| real artists. That seems slimy to me.
| PittleyDunkin wrote:
| > I want to put something on in the background that doesn't
| call attention to itself
|
| An aside--I firmly believe that there's a genetic component to
| this or something. I can sleep to structurally complicated
| metal music or jazz or symphonic stuff--in fact these genres
| are fantastic for entering productive flows--but if you throw
| on pop music with lyrics I can't focus at all.
| davexunit wrote:
| This is one of the more depressing HN comments I have read in
| awhile. It's amazing to me that this can be one's take after
| reading this absolutely damning article. Just the market
| working, I suppose.
| gizmondo wrote:
| The article is deliberately written to try to evoke an
| outrage, but I also don't see what is actually damning about
| it. The comparison with store brands is the first thing that
| came to my mind.
| renegade-otter wrote:
| I mean, Netflix's "Emily in Paris" is a "background show".
| Would it make a difference if it were created with AI? Probably
| not? This is what AI is good for - mediocre, throw-away,
| background "art".
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| you've clearly missed the point
|
| this is similar to Apple creating an app that does the same
| thing as your app, and then strategically promoting that app in
| the App store rankings while relegating your app to be very
| hard to discover and fall into oblivion
|
| or Microsoft making it hard to use Netscape on Windows by
| pushing IE on you
|
| it's called using your position as a platform to push your own
| products; a typical monopoly play
|
| > This is more like a supermarket featuring their store-brand
| corn flakes next to Kellogg's Corn Flakes.
|
| No, it's not like that at all. firstly, a store doesn't promote
| itself as a neutral discovery platform. secondly, their store
| brand sitting next to some other brand on shelf is equal
| discovery opportunity for the customer. Adding their own tracks
| to playlists and pushing them to the top of the rankings is not
| equal discovery. It's like having your non-store brand flakes
| in a back room where if you happen to ask the store employee
| they'll go back and find them for you and otherwise you don't
| even know they exist
| aggieNick02 wrote:
| I wonder if the same kind of thing is at play when I ask my
| Google Home Mini to play a song (on Spotify) and it plays a
| version by a cover band instead of the real thing, despite my
| stating the song and band name.
|
| For example, I'll say: "OK Google, Play 'Hey Jude' by 'The
| Beatles'". Sometimes I'll get that song. But many others I'll get
| "Hey Jude" by a Beatles tribute band... I wouldn't be surprised
| if the version by the tribute band is cheaper to play.
| danudey wrote:
| Someone in another comment said that artists don't even get
| paid if they have <1000 streams. I wonder if Spotify does
| anything to spread things around to try to keep as many artists
| as possible under that 1000 streams cap so that they don't have
| to pay for them.
| cess11 wrote:
| Spotify lost me when they cleared out the warez and at least a
| third of my carefully curated playlists disappeared.
|
| The practice described in TFA aligns with their union busting
| and they are fundamentally a politically activist organisation
| rather than a business trying to serve a market. Piratbyran,
| which started the Pirate Bay, was a rather socialist project, and
| Spotify did basically the same thing but as reactionary activism
| that subsequently was accepted by the entertainment industry
| elites.
|
| If you enjoy background noise, just go for some web radio, there
| are tens of thousands of channels, many ad free. When you hear an
| artist you like there's a good chance they're on Bandcamp so you
| go there and give them ten bucks. Try Transistor in F-Droid for
| example.
|
| Unless, of course, you support the politics Spotify represent.
| Then your monthly fee is a more direct donation than going
| through a political party that will then use state bureaucracy
| and so on to funnel money and power from work to owners.
| ess3 wrote:
| I think this is a hard problem to solve for a couple of reasons.
|
| - Skew of supply and demand. There will be always be another
| musician willing to earn less money because they still get to do
| their "dream job".
|
| - The need for background music. No matter how joyless it feels
| to produce this stuff, there's a need for it.
|
| I think companies like Epidemic offers an alternative route for
| musicians to earn some money on the side of their artistic
| vision.
|
| Biggest issue which is more a philosophical one is how Spotify is
| shaping how we consume music.
| GraphWeaver23 wrote:
| Reminds me of ghost restaurants where a kitchen would be used to
| prep food for dozens of virtual restaurants on food delivery
| platforms like DoorDash, grubhub, etc. They would artificially
| create what looked to be an array of choices, but in fact just a
| single kitchen taking on multiple brands. It's really evident
| when you look at these food delivery apps late at night.
| imp0cat wrote:
| many users were not coming to the platform to listen to specific
| artists or albums; they just needed something to serve as a
| soundtrack for their days, like a study playlist or maybe a
| dinner soundtrack
|
| Sounds like me! Production music is booming
| today thanks to a digital environment in which a growing share of
| internet traffic comes from video and audio. Generations of
| YouTube and TikTok influencers strive to avoid the complicated
| world of sync licensing (short for music synchronization
| licensing, the process of acquiring rights to play music in the
| background of audiovisual content) and the possibility of content
| being removed for copyright violations. Companies like Epidemic
| Sound purport to solve this problem, claiming to simplify sync
| licensing by offering a library of pre-cleared, royalty-free
| production music for a monthly or yearly subscription fee. They
| also provide in-store music for retail outlets, in the tradition
| of muzak.
|
| I actually kinda like some of those backing tracks, they are
| quite recognizable.
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