- Spotify is reportedly pushing "ghost artists" into many playlists
- Ghost artists are similar to muzak: it's music to be in the background
- Some employees have refused to take part
Who makes the music you're streaming? On some Spotify playlists it might not be who you think. A bombshell new report in Harper's magazine says that a program called Perfect Fit Content, PFC for short, is stuffing some playlists with cheaply produced content.
The report goes into great detail, but here's the short version: rather than give individual artists some much-needed exposure in some playlists, Spotify is buying in music from production companies who effectively make musical wallpaper. It's music that's designed specifically to sound quite like other people's music and to cost Spotify as little as possible. And then Spotify's own employees are giving that music undue prominence in playlists at the expense of other artists.
That's good for Spotify's bottom line, because it means even less money is going to musicians; many music production companies pay a small flat fee without major future royalty payments going to the musicians. But as the Harper's report argues, "it raises worrying questions for all of us who listen to music."
Where are the ghost musicians on Spotify?
The playlists are ones primarily designed to be listened to in the background; think "chill instrumental beats" and "lo-fi house". And the music is being pushed into those playlists to make each playlist more profitable, ie. to make it pay less to musicians. As Harpers' Liz Pelly puts it, the idea is simple: why pay full royalties if people are only half listening?
The problem with that is that Spotify's idea of what constitutes background music is what many of us would just call, well, music. Think ambient music, classical music, electronica, jazz, lo-fi beats… you get the idea.
The reason this is a problem is that there is already tons of ambient, classical, electronica, jazz, lo-fi beats and other music on Spotify. And if that's being pushed down the playlists in favor of music Spotify has bought in specifically because it's generic but cheaper, that's going to damage not just the careers of musicians in those genres but also the genres themselves.
Pelly explains it very well in her piece:
"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."
Pelly adds, however, that "Spotify denies that staffers were encouraged to add PFC to playlists, and that playlist editors were discontented with the program." I recommend reading the full piece and the quotes from editors, as well as Spotify's responses to individual elements, to form your own opinion.
And now there's AI…
When you look at Spotify through this lens, its embrace of AI – Spotify boss Daniek Ek, whose net worth is higher than any musician who ever lived, is very excited about it – starts to look a lot less fun: is the goal of AI really to improve your listening experience, or is it to stream the musical equivalent of crappy AI images?
We know that many AI systems have been trained using what artists and artists' organisations would characterise as widespread and blatant copyright infringement in order to churn out copies of the same artists' work; it might not be as good, but it's a damn sight cheaper.
As I wrote last month, "Many years back, a music business expert told me that music companies didn't care about music; they'd sell Brillo pads full of custard if that's where the money was." Swap custard pads for ghost artists and it's the same deal.
As one former Spotify playlist editor told Pelly about AI pumping out audio much like the PFC program does, “I’m sure it’s something that AI could do now, which is kind of scary."
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