this post was submitted on 21 Dec 2024
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This article is a TLDR of an investigatory book coming out next month already, but the double TLDR:
Spotify has begun targeting "background music genres" like jazz and electronic music for "Perfect Fit Content". It's made by nameless "artists" (mentioned to possibly be AI generated) and they get no royalties (don't have to be paid).
Spotify takes this song, posts it to dozens, if not hundreds of fake artists' pages, and boosts them to the top of the algorithm to get hundreds of millions of listens. More listens than actual popular human artist. This artificially pumps Spotify's stock prices, and then the CEO of spotify dumped their stock, making nearly a billion dollars this year.
Likened to Payola, this hurts actual artists' payout rates on Spotify.