[geekamongus]

A couple of points missed for why Spotify is bad:

- Paying musicians cheap wages to make boring music (ghost artists) for playlists they promote: https://harpers.org/archive/2025/01/the-ghosts-in-the-machin...

- Not paying musicians anything at all if they don't have enough streams: https://www.engadget.com/spotify-confirms-it-wont-offer-payo...

- Not preventing the deluge of AI-generated music flooding the platform: https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/spotify-no...

[qwerpy]

Also, even for premium customers they will display ads (local concert tickets) and add sponsored albums/tracks to playlists and the home screen.

[jtokoph]

This infuriates me. I launch the app to play music and am forced to interact with a pop-up promoting some random new release that is nowhere near the same universe as my music taste.

They recently did the annual “Wrapped” release. It took over the iOS Home Screen widget I use for playing/pausing recent playlists. The widget was unusable until you (1) watched the wrapped video in full on that device (didn’t matter that I had watched it on other devices before) and (2) you had to listen to the playlist they generated of your most played songs.

[elektrontamer]

Still can't believe how bad the Spotify app is.

It keeps losing my downloaded podcasts. Takes forever to switch from online to offline mode. How hard could possibly be, just send a few packets if you get no answer you're offline.

It's really not that complicated yet they somehow managed to mess it up.

[gynecologist]

Yeah, I hate finding out when my favourite artists that I listen to on Spotify come to my city to play a show.

[atmosx]

There is this as well: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2025/sep/18/massive-attack...

[wismwasm]

That's true, I looked at it from pure consumerish selfish point of view. I appreciate the idealistic view and caring about artists, but in the end I believe:

- Most people will generally choose what's most convenient for themselves

- Streaming services will only change their ways if they lose customers. Any change they do is A/B tested, so the ads / price increases are definitely in their short term interest. Only when their customers churn because they cannot afford 10 subscriptions anymore or are tired of paying for ads something will change

[class3shock]

I mostly only use spotify for discovery, using either discovery weekly or starting a radio stream from a particular song. Is there another service that treats artists better that I can use instead for this purpose?

[chhs]

If you don't mind self-hosting, I've recently started using ListenBrainz in combination with Navidrome. You can upload your Spotify listen history to seed it, and scrobble your ongoing listening to keep it up to date with what you listen to. You can use a plugin[1] to automatically generate daily, weekly, and discovery playlists based on your listen history, and what you have available in your library. You can generate even more playlists using ListenBrainz data via their tool, Troi[2].

[1] https://github.com/kgarner7/navidrome-listenbrainz-daily-pla...

[2] https://troi.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

[conception]

Deezer is pretty good.

[oblique]

last.fm or rateyourmusic

[cdrnsf]

They also commission music from "ghost artists" that they can pay a fix rate, then place said artists in popular playlists to reduce royalty payouts.

[Spivak]

I really don't understand the hate around this one.

1. Spotify made a playlist that's "Chill Jazz To Study To" that's really popular.

2. They realize that listeners don't actually care about the specific artists in the playlist since it's background noise.

3. There are companies who specialize in making "b-roll" music for background noise and have a huge library of it just sitting around.

4. Spotify realizes they can license them on the cheap.

5. Profit?

Seems like a win for everyone involved including the listener who gets fresh tracks in their study playlists basically forever.

[DelightOne]

Isn't that how every streaming service does it?

[swiftcoder]

Most streaming services commission their own content, yes, but they do so to market original content - Netflix Originals don't pretend to be Wes Anderson movies, and get slid into your playlist when you aren't looking

[DelightOne]

So if they played a short annoncement beforehand so people know its an Original, it would be fine? Originals get advertised heavily, next-movie, so I assume putting it in the same playlist is fine.

[swiftcoder]

It would at least be better, than sneakily trying to substitute it for artists they'd actually have to pay royalties to, yes

[geekamongus]

The only evidence I can find is with Spotify doing this.

[DelightOne]

Amazon Originals, Netflix Originals. Disney Originals. Paramount Originals. I'm just wondering what is different between series and music, that for music its very bad morally to create your own and to put your own in the front row. While for other streaming its accepted.

[snowwrestler]

One big difference is that these shows and movies are not "ghost," they credit their crew and talent like any other production, and those folks negotiate their pay rates similar to other productions. If you are a grip on a Netflix original movie, you will get listed in the credits like any other movie.

The other big difference is that TV and movie productions have always been "assemble when needed." Production companies are typically very thin business shells who hire in 99% of what they need per show. As opposed to a band or artist like Taylor Swift or The Rolling Stones, where the core persistent business unit is the talent itself.

[troupo]

> One big difference is that these shows and movies are not "ghost," they credit their crew and talent like any other production, and those folks negotiate their pay rates similar to other productions. If you are a grip on a Netflix original movie, you will get listed in the credits like any other movie.

The only reason is because unions in the movie business negotiated this. That's it.

There are no unions of note in the music business, and artists get shafted left and right.

[jamie_ca]

The difference is how they're consumed you don't sit down on Netflix and say "put some scifi on shuffle for 8h", you sit down and choose a show.

If you're the kind of person who would manually queue up 100% of your songs for the day then Spotify Generic songs aren't an issue. If you just hit a "2020s R&B" playlist and go that's where it feels more sketchy.

[Spivak]

It's so funny reading this in 2025 when this is exactly how TV works. You would literally put on the SciFi channel. How far we've come.

[georgebcrawford]

Good point. Music is much more personal, perhaps?

[cdrnsf]

I'd agree with this. I'll seek out work by specific bands, their members and side projects. I'll do the same for actors in film and TV but Spotify is commissioning work from session musicians I have no relationship to and offering a fictitious name. I'm sure these musicians are capable, but I'd rather discover new, novel music — not something commissioned by a company for a specific mood or playlist. That feels antithetical to what makes music or art interesting.

[wmeredith]

A) It's not how every streaming service does it, and B) this is whataboutism. Even if it was true, it doesn't make Spotify less shitty.

[maybsum1else]

gotta mix in a little baby powder, ya know?

[defrost]

Don't worry, everything'll be alright: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKlDlDvjTuA

( If you need a baby break try @ 1:20 in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7DAGXVC1tQ )

[xp84]

Wow. The ghost artists - that’s horrifying. Clearly Spotify would prefer to completely squeeze out everybody below the clout level of the top 10 artists, and replace the rest with stock music. I would bet anything they’ll cut out the middle-artist any day now and fill their playlists with AI sloptunes.

Spotify really wants to convert music into a commodity they can buy cheaply, own, and sell to an indifferent audience.

[hydrogen7800]

>Now the sound music comes in silver pills

>Engineered to suit you, building cheaper thrills

>Music of rebellion makes you wanna rage

>But it's made by millionaires who are nearly twice your age

The Sound of Muzak by Porcupine Tree (2002)

[electroglyph]

Great band!

[tambourine_man]

Also, the UX is deliberately user-hostile.

Its only use case seems to be algorithm playlist. It’s an atrocious music player any other way.

[troupo]

> Paying musicians cheap wages

Spotify doesn't pay artists at all. You know why? Because they pay the rights holders. Literally no one with their performative outrage against Spotify ever ask where are the billions of dollars that Warner Music, Sony, Universal collect.

"Oh, Spotify is so bad it doesn't pay artists". Spotify pays 70% of its revenue (that is, money before all the taxes, expenses etc.) to rights holders. What more do you expect them to pay?

The article at Harpers that you quote frequently makes rounds. And even though the article itself literally writes how Spotify is completely beholden to rights holders and pays them 70% of its revenue... it still goes on to blame Spotify and only Spotify for everything.

> to make boring music (ghost artists) for playlists they promote

1. IIRC Spotify doesn't produce any music of their own

2. The article confuses Spotify and companies that are literally in the business of providing that music (and besides the scammy ones there are legitimate ones that have been in this business forever).

And, again, Spotify doesn't deal with artists directly.

Can't say anything about PFC or Strategic Programming (even though I worked at Spotify. Even if I knew anything, I probably couldn't say anything anyway).

As for the bullshit about "keeping intiatives under wraps". Lol. At any given time Spotify is involved in about a hundred different "initiatives". It doesn't have to advertise all of them. Especially not things like (pure speculation:) "there's probably a 5% increase in listening to stock music, can we get preferential contracts with companies that already provide 70-80% of stock music".

And to top it off. Read the quote from one of the musicians you so deride: "The money was better than any money I could make from even the successful indie labels".

Performative outrage is performative.

> Not paying musicians anything at all if they don't have enough streams

1000 streams per year comes out to $3-$5 per year, perhaps less. That's the cutoff. I'm ambivalent about this decision, but again stop with the performative outrage.

> Not preventing the deluge of AI-generated music flooding the platform

Here's an AI-generated artist. Please tell me how you're going to detect that it's AI-generated and remove it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3Uyfnp-jag Or, indeed, why it's worse than the brain rot that Taylor Swift (to give an example) outputs by the ton.

So Spotify does what any sensible company does since they have no choice: let generative music in (btw, generative music has been a thing since computers were invented), and attempt to curb the flood of slop (for some definition of slop).

Just as with any other performative outrage no one discusses what exactly Spotify (or other platforms) can do to stop this.

[denismi]

> Not paying musicians anything at all if they don't have enough streams

... 1000 plays in a year?

We're taking a handful of people (Close friends? A proud mother? The artist themselves?) listening a few times a week.

If an artist has no following, and creates music that listeners consider substitutable for AI slop or low-effort shovelware, then they are hobbyists with no reasonable right to renumeration?

[barbs]

Also:

- the chief executive invests money into AI weaponry https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-09-12/spotify-boycott-danie...

[Zanfa]

It's perfectly reasonable for a Swede to invest in miltech, given current political climate. In fact, it would be irresponsible not to.