Which is something I've always wondered! How does the Lofi Girl channel on Youtube always have so much new music from artists I have never heard from?

The answer is surprising: real people and real instruments! (At least at the time of writing). Third-party stock music ("muzak") companies hiring underemployed jazz musicians to crank out a few dozen derivative songs every day to hack the algorithm.

> “Honestly, for most of this stuff, I just write out charts while lying on my back on the couch,” he explained. “And then once we have a critical mass, they organize a session and we play them. And it’s usually just like, one take, one take, one take, one take. You knock out like fifteen in an hour or two.” With the jazz musician’s particular group, the session typically includes a pianist, a bassist, and a drummer. An engineer from the studio will be there, and usually someone from the PFC partner company will come along, too—acting as a producer, giving light feedback, at times inching the musicians in a more playlist-friendly direction.”

I think there's an easy and obvious thing we can do - stop listening to playlists! Seek out named jazz artists. Listen to your local jazz station. Go to jazz shows.

The music was recorded by Seeburg's own orchestra, using songs either in the public domain or for which they had purchased unlimited rights. Just like the modern "ghost artists". So this business model goes back to the 1950s.

The records had a form of copy protection - nonstandard RPM, nonstandard size, nonstandard hole size, nonstandard groove width. So they didn't file copyrights on all this material. As a result, there are sites on the web streaming old Seeburg 1000 content.

Seeburg made jukeboxes with random access, but the background player was simpler - it just played a big stack of records over and over. It's rather low-fi, because the records were 16 2/3 RPM, which limits frequency response.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2Y6OKy4AMc

The entire “wellness” music category is programming driven. Much of my energy is spent building and maintaining relationships with the programmers, even with our direct deals. We take a reduced payout on the master side in return for preferential treatment on playlist positions.

I have an active roster of extremely talented producers. It’s a volume play. I’ve made tracks that I’m quite proud of in 90 minutes that have done 20+ million streams.

It’s a wild system but we’ve made it work. Not really a critique or an endorsement - just making a living making music.

Edit: fun fact, Sleep Sounds is generally the #1 streamed playlist on the entire Apple Music platform.

While AI is evoked, this is not what is talked about here. The article mentions Epidemic Sound, and looking at their page, it "doesn’t currently use generative AI to create music".

It means that we are talking about real people here, there is nothing fake about them and their work, what they do takes skill and effort. That they focus on quantity over quality and are under-recognized does not make them "fake". Otherwise, I bet most of us would be called "fake engineers".

EDIT: If you think about this "scandal" in reverse, that is that Spotify was started as a background, inert restaurant playlist app that paid session musicians to record 50 songs a day for lo-fi chill ambient jazz playlists, and later tried to expand their reach by allowing musicians to upload their songs, it wouldn't be a scandal at all.

A few key points with albums:

- You are listening to the artists vision/journey. The songs are not played in isolation but as part of a collective arrangement.

- Artists get payed more per play than individual songs.

- Albums don't degrade like playlists which can be changed by users or spotify to inject some newer commercial push.

"epic hip hop bangers"

Song 1-13 will indeed be epic hip hop bangers. Then song 14 is some random guy's track, which picks up the playlist momentum from its neighbors. Song 15-23 is epic bangers, then song 24. and on and on. The person who made the playlist is, of course, random guy or one of their friends.

That's why I typically only listen either to whole albums on spotify, or DJ sets on soundcloud or youtube. There are too many individual human beings out there with great taste to bother with the algorithmic stuff.

The sad thing (for artists) is that it seems like most Spotify listeners don't care.

Most of our music consumption today seems to be as a kind of background vibe rather than an appreciation of the music itself.

I definitely noticed this aspect of Discovery Mode but didn't know that it was confirmed or public knowledge. Spotify's recommendations have been terrible for a long time now.

A ton of fake artists take widely used commercial sample packs and copyright-free music, create simple songs and then register them via companies that submit them to ContentID databases. They then use it to monetize content created by other people on Youtube. There is no way to report these because the listener is not the copyright owner.

Just two of the countless cases I've come across:

JasoN SHaRk - Let the Music Play. I've heard a track from an indie artist predating the release by more than half a year. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEGgea4Z2co

Anitoly Akilina - A Nightmare (on My Street). This is a bold one; it uses a free track from Kevin MacLeod, also used in Kerbal Space Program. This means KSP gameplay videos get monetized. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVbZT1iFnlM

Sorry musicians, but approximately 50% of the time, this is exactly what I want. I'm not actually listening to the music, it's just aural wallpaper.

I see this as two separate markets:

- there's music I actively want to listen to, even sing along to, maybe even dance to, that needs to be full of emotional resonance and relatable lyrics. Stuff I'll talk to my friends about, or ponder the meaning of at length, and dig into.

- then there's the background stuff that should be (in the words of the article) "as milquetoast as possible". It's just there to cover up incidental sounds and aid my concentration on some other task (usually coding). If it makes me feel anything or it snags my attention at all then it's failing.

So it's not a devaluation of music in the streaming era, it's just a different, possibly new, way of listening (or not) to music.

I really don't see the harm in Spotify sourcing this background stuff cheaply and providing it in bulk. As the article says, this is not "artistic output" from a musician expressing their soul.

It's the difference between an oil painting and wallpaper - both are pictures put on the wall, but they serve very different purposes and have very different business models. We don't object to wallpaper being provided cheaply in bulk, without crediting the artist. But we would consider treating an oil painting in the same way as borderline immoral.

For example, I'll say: "OK Google, Play 'Hey Jude' by 'The Beatles'". Sometimes I'll get that song. But many others I'll get "Hey Jude" by a Beatles tribute band... I wouldn't be surprised if the version by the tribute band is cheaper to play.

But sometimes, I want to put something on in the background that doesn't call attention to itself, but just sets a mood. I don't want Brian Eno or Miles Davis because then I'd be paying attention -- I just want "filler".

And I have absolutely no problem with Spotify partnering with companies to produce that music, at a lower cost to Spotify, and seeding that in their own playlists. If the musicians are getting paid by the hour rather than by the stream, that's still a good gig when you consider that they don't have to do 99% of the rest of the work usually involved in producing and marketing an album only to have nobody listen to it.

The article argues that this is "stealing" from "normal" artists, but that's absurd. Artists don't have some kind of right to be featured on Spotify's playlists. This is more like a supermarket featuring their store-brand corn flakes next to Kellogg's Corn Flakes. The supermarket isn't stealing from Kellogg's. Consumers can still choose what they want to listen to. And if they want to listen to some background ambient music that is lower cost for Spotify, that's just the market working.

Such a downfall for what could've been a nice company in the long run. And disrupting them is now harder than ever due to consolidation.

All of these things suck for artists but they also suck for consumers. The product is slowly getting worse but at a rate where nobody notices until there will be little quality left.

I also find it staggering how little empathy my fellow software developers have for artists. If AI does eventually decimate the number of software dev jobs I'm sure you'll be as pragmatic as you expect others to be.

a lot of the 'ghost' tracks also come from actual ghost producers who moved from making ghost productions for labels to doing it indie.

not all producers are some kind of artist brand or make consistently the same theme of music every track. i got tons of projects i out stuff under, like categories.. some have 1 track, others lots. (no i dont make money from it, but often ppl do... just a few buck on the side)

The real fraud Spotify hasn't done enough to address is when these AI-generated albums show up under real artist profiles https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/10/spotify-criticiz...

- Skew of supply and demand. There will be always be another musician willing to earn less money because they still get to do their ”dream job”.

- The need for background music. No matter how joyless it feels to produce this stuff, there’s a need for it.

I think companies like Epidemic offers an alternative route for musicians to earn some money on the side of their artistic vision.

Biggest issue which is more a philosophical one is how Spotify is shaping how we consume music.

It's glorious, being a digital prepper.

Take all the easy listening covers that every single cafe seems to be playing on end. It’s the perfect storm:

Cafe wants quiet music and music customers know. Spotify wants to pay only songwriting royalty instead of both songwriting and performance royalties.

I don't think this is limited to streaming. I think other companies have similar schemes for other types of media and interactions, and one of the main uses of generative AI will be to create it.

At some point, the path of least friction will guide us into having chatbot friends, read AI-generated articles, and consume either anonymous filler or outright AI generated artistic media.

The author acts like this ghost thing ruined spotify for artists. I think artists realized it was a ripoff long before that.

Ah. So that's where all those appallingly bad covers of Xmas music heard in stores are coming from.

True, but there is more music than any group of people can ever listen to. Is aggregating blogs like Hype Machine, or reviewing songs like Pitchfork or the New Yorker, any better? The alternatives to collaborative filtering are different shades of nepotism; or, making barriers to entry much, much higher.

> David Turner had used analytics data to illustrate how Spotify’s “Ambient Chill” playlist had largely been wiped of well-known artists like Brian Eno, Bibio, and Jon Hopkins, whose music was replaced by tracks from Epidemic Sound, a Swedish company that offers a subscription-based library of production music—the kind of stock material often used in the background of advertisements, TV programs, and assorted video content.

I really don't see the issue with this. We can talk about AI or whatever but there's no indication it's anything other than a company that makes b-roll music realizing that there's a niche of listeners who desire their content and then partnered with Spotify through an intermediary (a label perhaps) to get them on official playlists through a sweetheart royalty deal.

And it makes decent music. In multiple languages and musical styles. Helps if you know a bit of music theory.

Shameless plug: My musical - in - progress : https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6CFiKHtsvsntUmyVe6VSm302...

These are the farm animal characters that I have been writing for kids about my farm except kids don’t want to read anymore. I think I can make this work.

    many users were not coming to the platform to listen to specific artists or albums; they just needed something to serve as a soundtrack for their days, like a study playlist or maybe a dinner soundtrack

    Production music is booming today thanks to a digital environment in which a growing share of internet traffic comes from video and audio. Generations of YouTube and TikTok influencers strive to avoid the complicated world of sync licensing (short for music synchronization licensing, the process of acquiring rights to play music in the background of audiovisual content) and the possibility of content being removed for copyright violations. Companies like Epidemic Sound purport to solve this problem, claiming to simplify sync licensing by offering a library of pre-cleared, royalty-free production music for a monthly or yearly subscription fee. They also provide in-store music for retail outlets, in the tradition of muzak.

The practice described in TFA aligns with their union busting and they are fundamentally a politically activist organisation rather than a business trying to serve a market. Piratbyrån, which started the Pirate Bay, was a rather socialist project, and Spotify did basically the same thing but as reactionary activism that subsequently was accepted by the entertainment industry elites.

If you enjoy background noise, just go for some web radio, there are tens of thousands of channels, many ad free. When you hear an artist you like there's a good chance they're on Bandcamp so you go there and give them ten bucks. Try Transistor in F-Droid for example.

Unless, of course, you support the politics Spotify represent. Then your monthly fee is a more direct donation than going through a political party that will then use state bureaucracy and so on to funnel money and power from work to owners.

This is no different to working for a salary and not getting equity. And being a star has always been more about exposure than talent.

It's a shame for the real artists trying to write bland crap though. But the fault is with listeners. And let's face it, most musicians are probably only doing it hoping to one day become a star and get loaded... which is why there's so much competition.

All we can really say is Spotify etc and powerful DAWs have broken down barriers to being able to make and release music, which should be a good thing shouldn't it?

But yeah, Spotify stuffing playlists with their choices instead of popular music sounds bad... except only playing popular music would only reward the early birds on the platforms, so that's a tricky one too...

Have you ever bought a CD in the days of CDs because you heard a song or two from the album on the radio and found that only those that you'd already heard were any good? Hair metal was particularly rife with this. Flower power stuff from the 60s stands out, mostly utter hot garbage, you can find entire mixes of the low quality knockoff crap getting sold at night on PBS. There are people that have every motley crue album (and not just the first 2 like more cultured people such as myself), and listen to them regularly. There has always been a massive market for low quality garbage.

Radio stations used to get paid to put crap in rotation. Anyone remember Limp Bizkit? They got famous by buying slots on Seattle radio stations. Who didn't grow out of that garbage? A lot of people, unfortunately.

You've got playlists, played by lazy people that don't care about anything but the mood or vibe, that they didn't curate, going on in the background while they ride the elevator and youre surprised that it's elevator music? How often do you hear billboard top 100 hits while on hold with the cable company? Complain when someone tries to play one of those tracks and a cover band plays instead, that's when someone is getting screwed over.

Subscription services have always been and will always be a race to the bottom. Quality art has always had to be manually curated by the enjoyer. The best stuff has always been hidden behind the stuff people were trying to sell you. People looking to squeeze out an extra buck were always willing to sell lower quality to those who would tolerate it. So if you don't want low quality crap in your life, take the time to pick what's in your life and pay fairly for it. There was never going to be a miracle cure to the downfall of the music industry for the low low price of ten dollars a month.