[troupo]

> then you'll get a lot of tracks that they don't need to pay royalties for

I love this conspiracy theory. Which track doesn't Spotify pay royalties for? Considering that it licenses 100% of its music from external distributors.

[rpdillon]

> The program, according to Pelly’s reporting in Harper’s Magazine, is designed to embed low-cost, royalty-free tracks into Spotify’s most popular mood- and activity-based playlists. Produced by a network of “ghost artists” operating under pseudonyms, the tracks are commissioned with the intent to reduce the company’s royalty payouts to artists, per Pelly.

https://edm.com/news/spotify-using-ghost-artists-minimize-ro...

[troupo]

> operating under pseudonyms, the tracks are commissioned with the intent to reduce the company’s royalty payouts to artists, per Pelly.

As I already wrote elsewhere, no one, including the article's own authors, understood a single thing from the article.

Spotify doesn't produce its own music. It licenses 100% of its music from external distributors. Apart from a few scammy companies there are dozens of companies whose entire repertoire and catalog is ambient/background/noise/elevator/shopping mall music etc. that they commission from ghost composers.

There is literally money being paid to distributors for these tracks. To quote the original article you didn't even read, this one: https://harpers.org/archive/2025/01/the-ghosts-in-the-machin...

--- start quote ---

Epidemic’s selling point is that the music is royalty-free for its own subscribers, but it does collect royalties from streaming services; these it splits with artists fifty-fifty.

--- end quote ---

Wait, what about "no royalties" crap? Oh, all of that is just "per Pelly". Though I'll admit that there are probably companies that license music for a flat fee (though I assume those would be rare).

Also note: Spotify doesn't pay artists. Spotify doesn't have direct contracts with artists. Spotify pays distributors and rights holders. And then those, in turn, pay royalties based on their contracts with artists. (According to one of the ghost artists interviewed, he is paid significantly more than he would be if he was trying to release music himself, BTW).

[deng]

Erm... things are a bit more complicated than you make them out to be and I'm afraid you do not really know a lot about how all of this works (me neither, btw, this is all very, very messy). It is correct that Spotify pays artists through distributors (and they partly own one, Distrokid, but that's another story) or labels. But there are usually also royalties that need to be paid for songwriting, lyrics and performance, which can (and often do) go to different people. This is extremely complicated and different from country to country, but completely separate from the distributor. The artist/lyricist/performer will receive these royalties (if they registered for it) from entirely different institutions. This is the prime advantage of "royalty-free" music - you need to pay only the artist (or their representation like distributor/label), either flat or per stream/performance/whatever... So in summary: yes, Spotify most definitely saves a ton of money with steering people towards this kind of stuff. I also wouldn't be surprised at all if they actually just pay flat fees for that junk.

[mlrtime]

>Spotify doesn't pay artists.

So Indiy artists can't directly put their music on Spotify? Sorry I have no idea how this works, I guess that's the point of Bandcamp?

[troupo]

> So Indiy artists can't directly put their music on Spotify?

No one can put their music directly on Spotify.

--- start quote ---

https://support.spotify.com/us/artists/article/getting-music...

Distributors handle music distribution and pay streaming royalties.

Work with a distributor to get your music on Spotify.

# Choose a distributor

See our preferred and recommended distributors: https://artists.spotify.com/providers

These distributors meet our highest standards for quality metadata and anti-infringement measures.

Note: Most distributors charge a fee or commission. Each service is unique, so do a little research before picking one.

If you’re a signed artist, your record label likely already works with a distributor who can deliver your music.

--- end quote ---

[ivarv]

Spotify hires musicians to churn out content that fits certain criteria. see https://harpers.org/archive/2025/01/the-ghosts-in-the-machin...

[4d4m]

Create Music Group, they buy your favorite artists catalogs and then use the money to underpay artists to churn out slop songs that Create Music Group then owns and distribute/licenses Yay! :)

[troupo]

Spotify doesn't hire any artists because if it did, major labels would immediately pull their contracts.

No one actually understands what's written in this article, including the authors themselves.

Also note how you didn't provide a single track that Spotify allegedly pays no royalties for.

[james_marks]

You’re missing the concept of session musicians that can improvise for hours. No license, flat fee.

[troupo]

Again. Spotify doesn't pay musicians directly. Spotify pays distirbutors and rights holders.

Literally in the very article everyone links to but is incapable of reading there's even this text:

--- start quote ---

Epidemic’s selling point is that the music is royalty-free for its own subscribers, but it does collect royalties from streaming services; these it splits with artists fifty-fifty.

--- end quote ---

[vintermann]

The major labels own a good chunk of Spotify directly. Used to be even more. As long as they get their cut they'll jump on any opportunity to screw over their artists (yes I know "unsourced statement" blah blah, sit down lawyers. I won't explain the reasons for my low opinion of these companies right now.)

The allegation is that Spotify pays out to entities which are ultimately owned by themselves, or that they get kickbacks in other ways like ad purchases (probably illegal, but hard to prove if you're at all clever about it).

I remember I found a track a few years ago, by the artist Mayhem. No, not the metal band. The background music artist Mayhem. Which only ever released two tracks. One of which, "Solitude Hymns", happened to get featured in one of Spotify's playlists, and managed to rack up more plays than any track by the more famous metal band at the time.

They haven't scrubbed it. Just look it up.

[troupo]

> As long as they get their cut they'll jump on any opportunity to screw over their artists (yes I know "unsourced statement" blah blah,

It's not really unsourced. It's just very rarely talked about. I think you may get an article once every 10 years questioning the actual rights holders and distributors.

I mean, you get people in these discussions on HN that don't even know that Spotify (and other streaming services) don't even have direct contracts with artists and everything is going through intermediaries.

> I remember I found a track a few years ago, by the artist Mayhem. No, not the metal band. The background music artist Mayhem. Which only ever released two tracks. One of which, "Solitude Hymns", happened to get featured in one of Spotify's playlists, and managed to rack up more plays than any track by the more famous metal band at the time.

Thank you! You're the only one who could point out a weird track.

41K monthly listeners for the band. The track got 20 million plays because it was featured.

That's where the gray zone begins: was this band with two songs picked because it is cheaper to include (for whatever reason) or was it just lucky (like some other bands that got big through streaming like Glass Animals).

[vintermann]

When this was in the music industry news a few years ago, a lot more tracks were mentioned, I don't remember if this one was one of the ones they listed or one I found myself. I did find many myself though, at the time it wasn't hard at all. I just remember this one because it was memorable, their name being the same as a far more Wikipedia-notable band.

What is hard though, is finding out which aggregator/intermediary/record company collected the payments for mayfly Mayhem's plays. I have not succeeded at that, if you find a way to get that information out of Spotify, do tell me. It's probably actually easier to find out who made the music. MBW managed to find out that at least some of these tracks were made by well-connected Swedish producers, as I recall.

[parpfish]

Internally, they refer to it as “perfect fit content” (pfc).

It used to just be stuff like white noise and rain sounds, but it has expanded to essentially be a modern Muzak replacement.

For situations when people don really want “music” and just need “contextually appropriate aesthetically pleasing sound”

[JohnFen]

That makes all the sense in the world to me. I'd call that an entirely legitimate use for AI generated music.

[mattkevan]

The barbers I went to recently were playing a channel on the TV which was an endless series of clips panning through ultra-nostalgic French Riviera-style scenery, accompanied by mellow guitar music. Seemed fine at first glance but like all AI stuff it got weirder the closer you looked - boats on land, outdoor dining areas underwater, giant lanterns larger than houses, mangled looking food, that sort of thing.

Someone had clearly just set up a few prompts and let the AI get on with it, creating probably hundreds of channels of this stuff.

[vintermann]

Sure, as "content".

But unless these tracks are treated differently in Spotify's payout system, they're extremely profitable, and because payments come from a common pool, they hoover up payments which would otherwise have gone to artists people actually like.

[james_marks]

Not a conspiracy theory. Spotify hires session musicians (pre-AI) to pay a flat fee for hours of background music.

Since many high volume Spotify users just want “something jazzy” in the background, it helps them reduce royalties.

[troupo]

> Spotify hires session musicians (pre-AI) to pay a flat fee for hours of background music.

Spotify doesn't do it because Spotify doesn't produce music and doesn't have direct contracts with musicians.

> Since many high volume Spotify users just want “something jazzy” in the background, it helps them reduce royalties.

How does it help them reduce royalties when they don't produce their own music and license 100% of their music from distributors and rights holders?

[iamacyborg]

You're being unnecesarily pedantic. They might not hire the musicians directly but if they're hiring an agency to do that, it's effetively the same thing. Ultimately they're trying to get generic music for cheap to reduce royalty payments to artists.

[troupo]

> Ultimately they're trying to get generic music for cheap to reduce royalty payments to artists.

1. Spotify doesn't pay artists. Spotify doesn't have direct contracts with artists. Spotify pays rights holder and distributors.

I really wish people who have strong opinions on music industry learned at least the absolute bare minimum about the subject.

2. Again, bringing back to my original comment: where's the evidence for that? E.g. the one and only article everyone links [1] and doesn't bother to understand literally has statements like this:

--- start quote ---

But at the end of the day, [the ghost musician] said, it was still a paycheck: “I did it because I needed a job real bad and the money was better than any money I could make from even successful indie labels, many of which I worked with,” he told me.

...

Epidemic’s selling point is that the music is royalty-free for its own subscribers, but it does collect royalties from streaming services; these it splits with artists fifty-fifty.

--- end quote ---

That doesn't mesh well with the narrative of "Spotify bad, doesn't pay royalties, etc.", does it?

[1] https://harpers.org/archive/2025/01/the-ghosts-in-the-machin...

[iamacyborg]

> 1. Spotify doesn't pay artists. Spotify doesn't have direct contracts with artists. Spotify pays rights holder and distributors.

You are still being unnecessarily pedantic. Most of us understand that there are layers to this, but ultimately, what we care about is how much an artist is paid per stream and what streams are being preferred over others.

[miki123211]

There are artists that Spotify has different deals with. Spotify promotes their music in their playlists, but the artists get a much smaller cut of the profits in exchange. Win-win for everybody.

This only happens in genres where most listeners don't care about the artists they're listening to, think "chillout", "focus" or "easy listening." That kind of music is a commodity, Taylor Swift (or Metallica or Mozzart or whatever) is not. This has been proven.

My hypothesis is that those genres would otherwise lose Spotify the most money, as people often play that kind of music and never turn it off. Because Spotify pays per listen, the user who attentively listens to their favorite artist a few times a week is much better for them than somebody who has "chillout" playing on their echo 24/7.

[troupo]

> There are artists that Spotify has different deals with.

Spotify doesn't have deals with artists because Spotify doesn't have direct contract with artists. Only with distributors.

> My hypothesis is that those genres would otherwise lose Spotify the most money,

How would they "lose Spotify money", and how is this different from top artists on Spotify?

[germinalphrase]

You can’t substitute Taylor Swift, but you may be able to substitute generic synthwave (or whatever people play for general ambiance).

[troupo]

I have no idea what this is in response to :)

[autoexec]

I'm not saying they are doing it now, but what's stopping them from generating their own tracks? What's to stop them from creating some bullshit company to generate AI slop and then licensing music from themselves at fractions of what they'd pay a real artist just to keep up the illusion so that real artists don't leave their platform?

If a corporation can do something that will make them more money than they'd make not doing it you should expect them to do the profitable thing. Corporations don't care about ethics or even the law. Maximizing shareholder value is their purpose. They exist only to take from the many and give to the few. It's not a conspiracy theory to assume that they'll be doing exactly what they are designed to do.

[troupo]

> I'm not saying they are doing it now, but what's stopping them from generating their own tracks? What's to stop them from creating

When they do that, let's talk. But that's not what I asked, is it?

[butlike]

It's not really a conspiracy theory. YouTube users can use royalty-free music, it stands to reason Spotify would have the same (potentially internally) to decrease costs.

"Why pay royalties if it's just going to be BGM for a massage parlor?" could be their reasoning.

[fortran77]

I only go to massage parlors that display their ASCAP or BMI license in the window. I wouldn't be happy getting an ending if some musician is being ripped off.

[vintermann]

Yet another person who plays the bogeyman card of "conspiracy theory" when what is described is garden variety corruption, only takes a trivial amount of secret coordination in a group smaller than your average terrorist cell, and could probably even be defended as legal with a small legal team (Spotify probably has a big one).

There are a billion ways you could cash in on this. A dead easy one is "music written for hire by a company you own".

Even if Spotify is not doing the slightest thing like this, suggesting that they might is not a conspiracy theory. Quit trying to tar every proposed view of the world you disagree with with that label. You're just making it easier for the actual grand conspiracy theorists.

[troupo]

> Yet another person who plays the bogeyman card of "conspiracy theory"

> Even if Spotify is not doing the slightest thing like this, suggesting that they might is...

...textbook definition of conspiracy theory

Also note how your entire text is just unsubstantiated claims. Including emotionally charged words like "terrorist cell" that give your words so much weight and meaning.

[vintermann]

Your "textbook definition" is BS. A theory that someone conspires is not enough to call something a conspiracy theory.

You would not call a prosecutor who accuses someone of "criminal conspiracy" a conspiracy theorist, even though they have a theory that someone is conspiring.

A terrorist cell is just another example of a real type of group which obviously conspires. You're not a conspiracy theorist for believing they exist.

Conspiracy theorists is something we call people who believe in a grand conspiracy, one which, had it been real, would have required superhuman levels of coordination and secrecy. That's the brush you for some mysterious reason want to tar critics of Spotify with.

And for the second time this week, someone demands "evidence" for expressions of distrust.

[troupo]

> And for the second time this week, someone demands "evidence" for expressions of distrust.

Funny then that to illustrate your point you use this example: "You would not call a prosecutor who accuses someone of 'criminal conspiracy' a conspiracy theorist". You know what separates criminal prosecutors from conspiracy theorists? They have to provide evidence.

Or this example: "A terrorist cell is just another example of a real type of group which obviously conspires. You're not a conspiracy theorist for believing they exist." Yes, because we have evidence that they exist.

See how this works? A theory with no supporting evidence is a crackpot theory.

For example, I can say anything I want about you. When asked about evidence, I can lapse into demagoguery about terrorist cells or something. Perhaps you are a part of a terrorist cell? Otherwise, why bring them into discussion?

[vintermann]

To repeat the salient part, lawyer guy: Conspiracy theorists is something we call people who believe in a grand conspiracy, one which, had it been real, would have required superhuman levels of coordination and secrecy. That's the brush you for some mysterious reason want to tar critics of Spotify with.

And sure, if you insist I'll refrain from speculating why you're so obsessed with defending a megacorporation and insisting they deserve the benefit of doubt. Feel free to provide evidence to explain. (Remember, by your own standard, your own opinions aren't evidence).

[troupo]

> if you insist I'll refrain from speculating why you're so obsessed with defending a megacorporation and insisting they deserve the benefit of doubt

I'm pointing out unsubstantiated claims, often to people who don't know jack shit about music industry (e.g. that's why almost every comment in this thread has a variation of "Spotify doesn't pay artists, Spotify pays rights holders")

Note how you still haven't said anything of substance except emotions and ad hominems. But sure, your position is correct and valid, and not mine.