[winternett]

Spotify does all kinds of tricky things to their music preview player. If you're not a logged in user, it only plays a preview of the tune, which of course does not count towards plays for artists. They also steer listeners away from independent artist links by playing completely different songs on shared links.

I'm thoroughly convinced the platform is against independent music, and actively working to suppress the discovery of new and independent musicians unless they pay a lot of money in ads on Spotify and social media (even before making a dime), especially now since they have set a minimum stream threshold for unknown artists. Their corporate practices are terrible behind the scenes.

[troupo]

> If you're not a logged in user, it only plays a preview of the tune, which of course does not count towards plays for artists.

Have you considered that's because of music licensing? Playing music costs Spotify money

Disclaimer: I work at Spotify, but this is true for anything streaming. If you stream anything beyond the preview, you have to pay the rights holder. Worse still, even previews often cost money (IIRC this is true in audiobooks). So Spotify really has no choice but only play previews for the non-logged-in users. And that's before we start with the usual problems of gaming the system, bots etc. if you count plays by non-logged in users towards artist plays.

[winternett]

I appreciate the honest intent response, but for an artist that has had zero traction (~7-20 monthly listeners) on Spotify since about 2018 {But solid growth on YouTube and other platforms}, it's disheartening that embedded players don't play full tracks and count those plays. As I am not a popular artist on the platform, the minute a user clicks on my embedded Spotify player, almost every action they take thereafter steers them away from my music, making it extra hard to build a Spotify following, when even my first preview song may have been what brought them to the Spotify site/app.

YouTube, soundcloud, audiomack, pretty much every other audio platform allows embedded players and playlists that allow non-logged-in users to preview full songs. Spotify used to, but quietly changed over time in the past 2 years. As a rights holder, I get paid more from TikTok and youtube for even clips of my songs being played. I have to disagree with the ideal that Spotify doesn't limit artists in this way... Somehow major artists can also on twitter and other sites share full preview songs from Spotify to even non-logged-in users via links, highlighting a deep contradiction in the policies you cite.

If you go to any artist page and navigate to the embed menu item, the embed playlist function on profiles shows/plays full songs as an example for the embed code, which is also quite misleading to artists that want to share their own Spotify music list. When using a single track link on social media sites, on mobile most times clicks don't even play the correct artist song, and on desktop, as soon as an independent artist's song is played, the next song is one by another artist, instead of logical behavior of playing another track by the original (linked) artist... These behaviors are different than many other sites, and there really aren't logical reasons behind that behavior other than to steer listeners towards popular artists and advertising artists as my best guess.

Embedding spotify music player only serves to steer listeners away from the artist sites the music players are embedded on, as they work within an iframe, even when I'm logged in, the embedded player plays only clips of full tunes, so I'm compelled to see it as a shortcut to only promoting what Spotify wants people to hear, rather than all music by unsuspecting artists that embed the player that assume it behaves normally and usefully as a music promotion tool.

[troupo]

> the minute a user clicks on my embedded Spotify player, almost every action they take thereafter steers them away from my music

I mean, that's exactly what all recommendation systems do: they look at what's popular and tend recommending in that direction.

I'm dissatisfied with this as well, but it works for a significant chunk of people.

> YouTube, soundcloud, audiomack, pretty much every other audio platform

Which other platform?

Youtube has plenty of instances where "video cannot be played embedded on the site". And that is invariably some stuff where rights holders are involved.

The other two are services that allow direct uploads from artists, so they are not as bound by licenses and contracts.

Spotify does not have direct uploads from artists. The music comes from rights holders or from distributors. And this comes with a set of rules and costs. I don't know what they are (I'm nowhere near the licensing teams), but I've worked in streaming for a while to know some of this :)

> on mobile most times clicks don't even play the correct artist song, and on desktop, as soon as an independent artist's song is played, the next song is one by another artist, instead of logical behavior of playing another track by the original (linked) artist

What seems to be the logical step might not be the logical step from the point of business ;) Spotify is in an unenviable position of trying to satisfy the rights holders, _and_ the listeners, _and_ its own business.

I can't say I like or approve of all the decisions, or that all the decisions are correct, but you'd be surprised how often the most logical/simple solution at the first glance is far from the actual solution after you've dug into details.

That said, current incentives in music (with the Big 4 dictating all the rules) really suck for independent artists.