"…journalist Liz Pelly has conducted an in-depth investigation, and published her findings in Harper’s—they are part of her forthcoming book Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist.
…
"Now she writes:
‘What I uncovered was an elaborate internal program. Spotify, I discovered, not only has partnerships with a web of production companies, which, as one former employee put it, provide Spotify with “music we benefited from financially,” but also a team of employees working to seed these tracks on playlists across the platform. In doing so, they are effectively working to grow the percentage of total streams of music that is cheaper for the platform.’
In other words, Spotify has gone to war against musicians and record labels."
It was started in Sweden where its operations are still based, but it’s headquartered in Luxembourg and it chose to IPO on the New York Stock Exchange.
Luxembourg screams “tax efficiency” to me, so their list of pre-IPO investors must be quite the thing.
I disagree, I live in Scandinavia in one of the best democracies in the world.
EU is mostly OK IMO. Democracy can never be perfect, because it’s about compromises. But without the compromises you’ll have a real dystopia.
But here is just about as good as it gets at our current level of development.
So get real why don’t you?
Sure they have it better than most of oecd but the corporate take over is underway, they botched the immigration policy which resulted with serious crime rates…
A tiny foil wearing person would think that this was done on purpose to undo Swedish strong socio economic policy
Time will tell but the trend for Sweden is not looking good same way as other countries…
OK before you claimed it had already happened stating: “All western regimes sold out us out, mate” .
Now you claim it WILL happen: “the corporate take over is underway”.
That’s called moving the goal post, and is a VERY dishonest way to argue a point.
You are either confused or dishonest.
It’s normal if you accept it. You do not have to accept it. There’s also a good chance that it’s illegal in Spotify’s case, if not in the US then likely in Europe.
I suppose you could argue that Spotify can abuse its position in the same way that Walmart bullies its suppliers and Microsoft freezes out competition, but it doesn’t sound like that’s what’s happening here. Like I said, it sounds like they’re just preferring cheaper sources.
But they aren’t just preferring cheaper sources, they’re funding production houses that crank out music cheaper than it would cost to pay a single artist, and then putting that “mass” produced music on playlists that they themselves promote, allll to avoid promoting actual artists and paying them potentially more than they’re paying the production house.
It’s in terribly bad faith because I myself am an artist that distributes through Spotify, not only because I can reach the widest audience, but I’m hoping on some level Spotify is promoting my new music to people outside of my own purview. But they aren’t. They’re flooding the market with cheap music and only promoting it.
IANAL but it seems akin to the antitrust case against Microsoft for bundling their own web browser in with Windows or movie studios also owning theaters and giving preferential treatment to their own films.
I’m just surprised that anyone didn’t assume this was happening. If most people are using playlists generated by Spotify, how are they not expecting Spotify to choose songs that are also in their interest? Furthermore, how would this be different from the practices of a radio station? Seems like manufactured outrage to me.
From the article:
"…journalist Liz Pelly has conducted an in-depth investigation, and published her findings in Harper’s—they are part of her forthcoming book Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist.
…
"Now she writes:
‘What I uncovered was an elaborate internal program. Spotify, I discovered, not only has partnerships with a web of production companies, which, as one former employee put it, provide Spotify with “music we benefited from financially,” but also a team of employees working to seed these tracks on playlists across the platform. In doing so, they are effectively working to grow the percentage of total streams of music that is cheaper for the platform.’
In other words, Spotify has gone to war against musicians and record labels."
Once they get maket shared they start extracting…
To normal people this is called enshitification
This should theoretically at least be illegal, as they abuse the power of the platform to favor certain tracks unfairly.
Any action would require a government that pretends to care for the pedons.
Spotify is AFAIK Swedish, so there you go.
PS:
I guess you mean peons.
Pedons is apparently types of soil: https://www.britannica.com/science/pedon
It was started in Sweden where its operations are still based, but it’s headquartered in Luxembourg and it chose to IPO on the New York Stock Exchange.
Luxembourg screams “tax efficiency” to me, so their list of pre-IPO investors must be quite the thing.
@[email protected]
Hmm
All western regimes sold out us out, mate
Exploiting us is the MO as workers and customers
I disagree, I live in Scandinavia in one of the best democracies in the world.
EU is mostly OK IMO. Democracy can never be perfect, because it’s about compromises. But without the compromises you’ll have a real dystopia.
But here is just about as good as it gets at our current level of development.
So get real why don’t you?
Well put. Cheers, gallons of glogg and a Merry Christmas to you.
Sweden has regressing with the rest of the west.
Sure they have it better than most of oecd but the corporate take over is underway, they botched the immigration policy which resulted with serious crime rates…
A tiny foil wearing person would think that this was done on purpose to undo Swedish strong socio economic policy
Time will tell but the trend for Sweden is not looking good same way as other countries…
OK before you claimed it had already happened stating: “All western regimes sold out us out, mate” .
Now you claim it WILL happen: “the corporate take over is underway”.
That’s called moving the goal post, and is a VERY dishonest way to argue a point.
You are either confused or dishonest.
Indeed. Regulation is deeply unpopular these days. At least with the oligarchs.
We got enough of their bootlickers in this thread lol
Can someone explain why this is bad? It seems like normal behaviour of corporations.
Or has spotify previously committed to being a fair market?
This is like a soup joint that’s trying to see how much they can piss in the broth before customers notice.
That would be a health hazard, so it’s not really comparable.
It seems more like a soup joint using cheaper ingredients in their dishes, which is just… normal? I don’t get what the big deal is.
It’s normal if you accept it. You do not have to accept it. There’s also a good chance that it’s illegal in Spotify’s case, if not in the US then likely in Europe.
Under what law?
Likely antitrust.
That said if you’ve gone down the path of reasoning that says things that aren’t illegal are okay, then I don’t know what to tell you.
I suppose you could argue that Spotify can abuse its position in the same way that Walmart bullies its suppliers and Microsoft freezes out competition, but it doesn’t sound like that’s what’s happening here. Like I said, it sounds like they’re just preferring cheaper sources.
But they aren’t just preferring cheaper sources, they’re funding production houses that crank out music cheaper than it would cost to pay a single artist, and then putting that “mass” produced music on playlists that they themselves promote, allll to avoid promoting actual artists and paying them potentially more than they’re paying the production house.
It’s in terribly bad faith because I myself am an artist that distributes through Spotify, not only because I can reach the widest audience, but I’m hoping on some level Spotify is promoting my new music to people outside of my own purview. But they aren’t. They’re flooding the market with cheap music and only promoting it.
This is behavior is anti competitive under both US and EU and member states’ law.
Issue is the regulatory capture along with strong corporate lobbying on these issues.
If you are with it, that’s cool. But behavior has historical precedent and it requires the state to set boundaries on the extraction practices
This is a completely disingenuous comparison.
Better check the TOS doesn’t include acceptance of various concentrations of piss…
The normal behavior of corporations IS bad. By definition.
IANAL but it seems akin to the antitrust case against Microsoft for bundling their own web browser in with Windows or movie studios also owning theaters and giving preferential treatment to their own films.
You seem to be saying that something normal and legal cannot be bad.
Just because it’s normal doesn’t me it isn’t bad.
Unfair competition.
I’m just surprised that anyone didn’t assume this was happening. If most people are using playlists generated by Spotify, how are they not expecting Spotify to choose songs that are also in their interest? Furthermore, how would this be different from the practices of a radio station? Seems like manufactured outrage to me.
Her article: https://harpers.org/archive/2025/01/the-ghosts-in-the-machine-liz-pelly-spotify-musicians/
Published in January 2025, seeing the URL, huh.
The article is an excerpt from the full report, which comes out next month.
So basically Payola 2.0