Saw this post earlier on reddit, and wondered if you guys have heard about this? One of the top comments suggests that the practice is akin to old labels hiring session musicians for one gig royalty-free, so that they don’t have to actually pay out artists for plays. 
Found the original article that the video in the post references: The Fake Artists Problem Is Much Worse Than You Realize
okay apparently this is very old known news guys my bad just finding this out 
Next step: spotify generating its own music.
OK so I’m gonna go Devils Advocate here for a moment.
Karen signs up for a streaming service that let’s her play whatever music she wants for a single price. She’s not bought a CD in 10 years and her car doesn’t even have a CD player anymore.
She asks her home assistant for songs from her teenage years, some albums that have been her favourites since 2000.
She might even use the app on her phone now and then, but she doesn’t own any headphones, so its easier to play it on the speaker in her living room and ask with her voice.
Sometimes she doesn’t know what she wants.
She wants some chill out guitar music or some classical stuff plays in the background, she isn’t really listening to it but it fits her mood.
Now, why does Karen care about any of the music’s source?
She’ll care if the song from her childhood is a cover, but that’s not the case here.
If the Spotify “Chillout” playlist listed every artist as Spotify on it, she’d still save the playlist or request it again if she liked the content.
And what’s wrong with that?
She paid for music on demand, she likes the music being played and its part of the service. Let her enjoy what she likes?
Spotify are able to spend their own money however they like, just like Netflix can.
If they want to pay for some content to be produced exclusively for their platform, what does it matter if its a ‘named’ artist or a session artist?
If half of Netflix or Spotify is platform-generated content, what does it matter if people are choosing to consume it?
So yeah, I don’t see the issue here. If people don’t like the content, they won’t consume it. If they don’t consume it, it’s a loss to the business and the practice stops, or the platform folds (depending on the investment)
They are not being blocked from finding other content?
If the issue is that the music is given a “fake name” and not clearly labeled as “made by spotify” then I think people bothered by that are going to have a real hard time when they realise what “Marketing” is and the number of products that are rebranded and repackaged in the name of capitalism…
Disclaimer: I buy CDs, rip to HiRes and play them on my Sony ZX300
Including using their dominance in the market to drive down revenues for real, human musicians ? Yay, capitalism !
Yes, that’s capitalism.
The end user doesn’t care about the source.
Systems like Spotify act to further distance the end consumer from the producer.
Since they don’t have to pay royalties for those pieces, does that mean they could pay the rest of us a higher rate per play? 
Unfortunately this is not how simple things work in the real world. This suggests that marketing doesn’t work. You can push things onto people if you market it right. Certainly if it means more profit is involved when doing so.
You see how these two statements don’t really go to getter necessarily ? 
…tik tok deserves all the rant possible…
once there was a pop culture…from now on, it’s all about what pops…we forgot about culture yesterday already…ready…ready…ready…ready?..ready!!!..copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of acopyacopyacopyacopyyyacopppyyyyyacccccoooppppyyyyyy…
They could … but what they obviously will do is compare the costs of these new methods of music generation with traditionally made music (the originating artists gets a royalty) and say “well, why on earth would we pay more to ‘real’ artists, when we have cheaper ways of doing it. Let’s pay real artists no more than what it costs by these new methods”
…aaaand one day…i wanna be a truuuu fake artist tooooo…
california claiming…fake it, til u make it…
chinese countering…coppy the poppy…
People can be contradictory creatures.
BTW those two statements are aimed at 2 different people.
The first one is aimed at my “typical consumer” Karen, who is one of the people that listen to these playlists. If they don’t like it, they will skip it, whoever made it
The second is aimed at the person that is unhappy that Spotify has created their own content, because the practice happens everywhere. So many products on Walmart shelves are branded a company that does not exist.
…anyone here with enough time to still read the small print…?
or even between the lines ?..
This. This is the end goal.
This is capitalism.
They have peoples playing data. They can use that resource to generate content that’s juuuust good enough to satisfy a percentage of users.
They will have run the numbers and shown how its good for shareholders.
Spotify doesn’t care about artists. The solution is not to have a Spotify account and to encourage others to do the same.
…buuuut its sooooo convenient…
So is ordering off Amazon and look at what that’s doing to small independent stores.
I know 
The point was not the difference between the people those text were aimed at, but in general that I’m of the opinion that it’s just not as simple as “if Karen doesn’t like it, she doesn’t consume it”. If the goal is maximum profit you could think of a marketing scheme to push a cheap sound (literally cheap to produce) onto consumers until they start consuming it. Just a matter of repeating it over and over. This is how pop has been pushed onto people for decades. Not saying you can push the sound of nails on chalkboard onto people until they’ll consume it, but you catch my drift
We are entirely in agreement.
This is what Spotify are doing. They are leveraging their position to maximise their own profits and encourage their customers to accept cheaper, lower quality produce.
Every fast food chain has done the same and been highly successful. I believe Spotify will be highly successful too.
Yeap.
Now the question is, is this a good thing?
You beat me to it. But I want to say it like this: This is music by people who don’t care about musicians, for people who don’t care about music.
From a creative viewpoint, it’s fine, I think.
However, it’s still problematic for career musicians, in at least two ways:
Spotify doesn’t pay per play in a precise manner. They pay more like an old collection agency. They distribute the money they have made available for payout such that if your songs haven’t hit some threshold, you wont actually get paid because the money already got paid to the people with more plays.
Spotify is pushing its playlists, so listeners are more likely to play the music Spotify doesn’t have to pay out for, whilst at the same time taking the listeners attention away from music that could have lead to a musician getting paid. As they are one of the top three streaming services, this is a significant attack against all other musicians that had been told “get on the streaming services for reach and income”. In the past, radio supported casual listening, but radio had to pay fees to collection agencies, and thus more musicians would get paid by the attention (or lack-of-attention) economy. It was a system that was a little more fair to musicians.
(yes, I know I used collection agencies in both a positive and negative mode in this message. The music industry has always tried to drive down the cost of music making except for the insane 70s and 80s period where it seemed to actively encourage extravagance around the higher grossing artists)
No this is not a good thing.
This is, however, a continuation of trends within every industry and a reflect of society’s values.
I challenge that this is “society’s values”. These are the values of people who have the capital to fully express their values. I’m certain you can find a lot of people with less power/influence that do no share these values.