The Ugly Truth About Spotify Is Finally Revealed

I listened to a few ambient playlists on Spotify and Youtube and they were just slop. Even when I was doing something else (e.g. programming) I became annoyed that the background music was so bad. Same with the lo-fi beats channel that is so popular.

I'm not sure there is a problem if a proportion of the listeners don't recognize they are listening to slop. I do, however, think its a problem if Spotify is giving preferential treatment to slop, as is claimed in this post. I also would prefer a system that better supported musicians, while having the ease of use of Spotify.

I don’t get the problem here. You can listen to whatever you want on Spotify. I listen to it everyday, already knowing what I want to listen to, and never encountered this. However, it sounds like they are paying real musicians to create music directly for Spotify, to bypass record labels. That sounds like a good thing all around- record labels don’t seem to do anything useful.

My main grief as as a very long Spotify customer, their app is still bad and doesn't progress. It has often problems when the [edit] phone is offline e.g. and it doesn't work beyond songs - radio play, audiobooks especially in playlists are PITA.

There are a lot of people here who don't seem to have a problem with the bait and switch business Spotify is doing here.

As a former (paid) composer, I know how, pardon my words, the music industry is utterly fucked up today.

That said we shouldn't just be cool with what Spotify is doing. Let me put it this way, what is happening is similar to Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.

Personally I don't think much of Spotify today, and hope that we go back to buying music on medias and owning the music purchases. That is the key, to bringing back some sense to the Music (and Game btw) industry.

> Our single best hope is a cooperative streaming platform owned by labels and musicians.

There’s a coop Bandcamp alternative being built right now: https://subvert.fm/

Hopefully

The ugly truth is that most people (I dare to say 99%+) don't care much about music. They just need to listen to something while doing their jobs.

I’m not defending Spotify nor do I like the company but I have two problems with this article’s rhetoric:

1) the word payola isn’t technically correct to describe Spotify “optimizing” its cost of goods sold by replacing with mass produced, farmed content. It’s more similar to Amazon Basics category of goods.

So payola is not the right term, since no one’s paying them to promote some music on the platform. Actually there’s real payola and that’s from companies like Universal music promoting drake etc

2) calling the Spotify owned content “slop” is kinda unfair to the creators. Afaik it’s not AI generated and there is real musicians making money off of this (albeit little)

3) I’m almost positive that Spotify will just start using AI exclusively for creating this slop very soon

> Our single best hope is a cooperative streaming platform owned by labels and musicians.

Remember when the music labels themselves were the baddies?

> At this point, I need to complain about the stupid major record labels who have empowered and supported Spotify during its long history. At some junctures, they have even been shareholders.

I’ve warned repeatedly that this is a huge mistake. Spotify is their adversary, not their partner. The longer they avoid admitting this to themselves, the worse things will get.

I think this confuses record labels with artists. I don't see labels having a problem with replacing their artists with AI, as long as they still get the royalties.

I forced myself to use YouTube Music 7 years ago and haven’t switched back (included with YouTube premium), also improved a lot the latest years

This seems analogous to a supermarket selling its own private label product. Should be disclosed though.

How is this any different than Walmart or Amazon having their own brands that are sold alongside name brands from other companies?

The TLDR is that Spotify is flooding it's platform and padding playlists with cheap and generic music. They've went full "buffet" strategy, serving lots of fries so you stay away from the meats.

I think calling this payola, as the article insinuates,is wrong.

I was always more interested in finding artists than I was in finding songs. I've noticed Spotify recommendations being worse and worse, and I can happily say I've left the platform half a year ago. Didn't regret it a single bit.

Mp3s still work great

Yes, this totally tracks with what I know about Spotify. I am in touch with numerous employees of Spotify and they all said that the biggest threat to Spotify are the music publishers who have them by the balls. I think they have now realized that the only way to make it into a successful business is to deploy AI generated music or at least music in which they are not paying extremely large royalties.

The questions is really are the other platforms doing the exact same thing? You have to use playlists generated by other users. Any playlists or radio generated by the platform is obviously going to direct you to the music the platform wants you to listen to.

i agree that we need a cooperative streaming platform. well, it already exists: https://resonate.coop/. please give it some love.

in addition, its original stream2own model allows you to automatically spend more on the artists you listen to more and even own (= stop paying for) and download the tracks you listened to at least 9 times. i think that it is a much fairer revenue-distribution model than “the big money pot” model used by spotify (and almost all other music streaming platforms out there) where people listening to the highest amount of tracks decide where other people’s money goes.

People are complaining cause pandora is being paid to put in frank sinatra songs in their smooth jazz playlist.. .anyone who outsources what they listen to to spotify has already lost.. oh spotify gets paid by barry white to put his song in... dum dum dum... listen to music you want to listen to. "duh, i thought spotify was going to only promote music that matched my profile without recieving any comopensation."

It was inevitable that if most of your user base is just listening to AI generated playlists that Spotify would look to cheaper versions of songs to save costs.

It had become increasingly clear that "You are not the customer, you are the product" extends to all public companies.

I don't get why so many people fell for Spotify. To me, from the moment it launched there were so many red flags, like dark patterns everywhere and terrible UX-design decisions. Clearly a business that does not care at all about quality or their contributors/customers.

All I know about Spotify is their embedded player, that gets added to music articles, has been designed to nag you.

A popover will randomly cover the controls with a signup banner so that you can’t play the next song without saying no.

It’s a subtle tell but when you see even a small dark pattern you know the company behind it has no moral compass.

Have nothing to do with them.

> nobody in the history of music has made more money than the CEO of Spotify

This seems vaguely important?! Yet this story got utterly nuked off HN (can't find it on the first 10 pages). Meanwhile this still lingers on page 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42461530

Yeah I know discussing votes and flags and rankings and all that stuff is very boring. However we're dealing with people who throw money around to manipulate what people see and hear so they can make more money, so.

The only way for the music industry to fight back is to ensure diversity in streaming platform, and fighting for easy way for users to port their data between them. This for one will both benefit users and the industry.

There are so many “so what?” responses to this that I can’t help wondering what an analogous situation would be for programmers?

Maybe something like “I don’t see the problem with this app being buggy and almost unusable - I just like having nice icons on my HomeScreen. I don’t see anything unethical about this [MEGA-CORP] fixing the market with their own cheap and poor quality programmers - most people don’t care if their apps work anyway”.

if true, beyond the pale. actively making music worse for everyone.

Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42461530

Just leave Spotify 1-star reviews with excerpts of this article in it.

I mean, the actual problem is that people listen to playlists and recommendations from Spotify itself. They voluntarily eat turds, then complain that what they just ate tastes like shit.

The solution is simple - curate your own playlists, or find people with tastes similar to yours that shared theirs.

Don't give a company power to pick music for you, then complain that they have such power.