[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.