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Spotify Is Burying Tracks From Musicians Who Give Exclusives To Apple and Tidal (bloomberg.com)
The music-streaming market is very competitive these days, especially since Apple released Apple Music last year. In retaliation for musicians giving Apple exclusive access to their new music, Spotify has reportedly been making their songs harder to find on its service. Bloomberg reports: "Artists who have given Apple exclusive access to new music have been told they won't be able to get their tracks on featuring playlists once the songs become available on Spotify, said the people [familiar with the strategy], who declined to be identified discussing the steps. Those artists have also found their songs buried in the search rankings of Spotify, the world's largest music-streaming service, the people said. Spotify said it doesn't alter search rankings. Spotify has been using such practices for about a year, one of the people said, though others said the efforts have escalated over the past few months. Artists who have given exclusives to Tidal, the streaming service run by Jay Z, have also retaliated against, the person said, declining to identify specific musicians."
Sounds like a case of sour grapes. I don't really understand how this benefits Spotify as it doesn't improve the service in any way that I can see, and such a move likely makes it worse for users for petty business reasons that have nothing to do with the users.
Business discourages business from displaying favoritism to competitor! News at 11.
Seriously, if you're going to put some silly exclusive marketing deal over an opportunity to spread your music as far as possible so it can be selected on merit, I welcome as many obstacles as everyone is willing to put in your way.
It was nice for a moment when it looked like online publishers might present music such that every artist had an equal opportunity, but now it looks like the New Guy is playing the same dirty tricks as the Old Guy.
(This said, I'm not sure how real humans who need the time and energy left to work a job can cope with using iTunes, given how much of a fuck-up it is. So an iTunes exclusive is effectively restricting your market to people who don't do anything with their lives other than jack about with Apple tech, so not much of value is lost.)
even ESPN "buries" sports for which they don't own the property rights, and "highlights" those they do.
More like Adify. So many ads. Fuck that trash.
why do artists keep giving rich corporations their money? with all of the social media out there, all you need to do is engage your fans and they will visit your website and perhaps buy your stuff? No middleman tim cook, jay z, or daniel ek taking a cut.
the walled garden shit is quite annoying as a music connoisseur , purchase from website --> direct flac / mp3 download ---> have a nice day
Easy to see how this could back-fire and cause more harm to Spotify. Seems like a childish reaction instead of doubling down & re-grouping to make their service better and more appealing.
I mean, the last time I used Apple Music, I think I said something out loud along the lines of, "This app [on my phone] is buggiest, most confusing and counter-intuitive piece of crap I've ever used." And yet Spotify is still scrambling...
Identify at least one artist so we can verify your statement or fuck off.
"The music-streaming market is very competitive these days" ... That means that its good for the customers, because streaming services can't afford to rip them off.
Any one who uses the pre-built playlists on Spotify has noticed this for quite a while now. They go out of their way to use:
1) covers of hit songs (lower their costs)
2) lesser-known or even obscure songs (lower their costs)
3) whatever the labels are trying to propagandize this week (for which they get paid)
They even try to cast vice #2 as a virtue by labeling it as "discoverability." I really wanted to like Spotify as a service that doesn't require credit card or real identity information and that seemingly provided a lot of playlists so I didn't have to invest in creating my own, but as long as they continue with "pay for play" I will leave my subscription in lapsed status.
Why would Spotify feature artists they're not making as much money on? Anyone who's surprised by this is probably the same sort of person who asks their waiter for a food recommendation at a restaurant (hint: it's whichever entree gets him the bigger tip). If you think any company's curated list of [product] is more than an excuse to push the products they make the most money off of, I've got a bridge to sell you.
The claims that Spotify is intentionally manipulating their search results is just dumb.
We're talking about Drake here. Show of hands: Who cares if Spotify doesn't include Drake in its promoted tracks? If people want to hear Drake (which in itself is a little unsettling), then they can still listen to his music on Spotify.
"Burying" is not the same as "not promoting". The music is there, but there isn't any incentive for Spotify to promote it.
Plus, it's Drake. I mean, come on...
You are welcome on my lawn.
Giving exclusive access to ANYONE, especially Apple who has the shittiest store and associated software ecosystem is worthy of a total boycott.
It's not sour grapes, it's tit for tat. Treating the artist the same way they're treating you. The artist is telling Spotify that they're not that important to him, so they'll be giving Apple or Tidal an exclusive. Spotify is returning the favor and telling the artist he is not as important to them either, and not promoting him as highly.
Please note that tit for that is one of the best strategies in the Prisoner's Dilemma. Consistently treating others the way they treat you is one of the best ways to get others to treat you better (or as fair as possible given that perfect fairness is impossible).
If the artist relents and gives up the exclusive, but Spotify continues not promoting him, then it's sour grapes, or revenge.
So if I were an artist in the 1995 and I'd give Wal-mart an exclusive to my new CD for 6 months, should I be surprised that in month 7 when it's finally available at Best Buy it's not going to get a very prominent place in their store? Of course not. 6 month down the road it's "old sh1t" and people have moved on to newer stuff.
When the copyright term is "forever minus a day", live every day like it's the last.
Should be illegal end of story.
"GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 51230 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; Setec Astronomy)"
it just refers to "people" without any real sources, and this has already been debunked otherwhere on Internet, with people posting screenshots of where some of these artists' tracks appear in the top listings etc. It's just another attempt to bring Spotify down to make the American services appear better.
If Spotify's rankings are based on #times streamed, especially if that's modulated by time on market, then it should be pretty simple logic to see that #times streamed=0 for exclusive content.
All Spotify would have to do is record the release date as the actual release date rather than the date they were allowed to host it. Then it would look to the algorithm like the song sucked bad enough to have zero views for 6 months. It would probably take a while after being available for that to average out!
But OK you could say that using the "real" release date is still manipulating the data (older songs that were just added to their library obviously couldn't have that metric applied or it would look like 0 times streamed for years or decades!) But even then, the chances that a 6 month old song gets streamed anywhere near as much as the brand new ones is slim, so while the song wouldn't be set back quite as bad in this scenario, its still going to be fighting an uphill battle compared to both songs that have 6 months of history behind them as well as new songs that have fresh listeners.
The "featured playlists" bit I can't guess on. I've never used Spotify so I can't really guess how those playlists are generated and they're likely more focused (ie: take more data points into account) than simple rankings.
They really aren't messing with songs, in either direction?
People who really like that artist, who would add them to playlists and listen to them on repeat, probably now use that other exclusive service to do so.
When it releases it gets very few plays because most people who like it listen to it elsewhere, and other people might not even be aware that a six-month old album by an artist they only sort-of like just "releasedâ.
The result: it is not in fact a top song on Spotify, do they don't feature it. And they're certainly not going to bend the rules to *help* someone who just made an exclusive deal with a competitor...
Sources?
From the original article:
"An escalating battle between Apple Inc. and Spotify Ltd. is leaving some musicians caught in the crossfire ... according to people familiar with the strategy ... said the people ... the people said ... according to a person familiar with the plans ... according to two people familiar with the matter."
That's all they provide.
I bought the Spotify 'summer special' $.99/month offer, but I don't think I'll will renew at full price. I will be going back to keep my all my music on the device method. I mostly listen to music while driving, anyway...
If "content creators" sounds too much like "happy gods", a better term might be "authors and publishers". A songwriter is an "author" as defined in the copyright statute, as is a recording artist or film director.
An app on Google Play Store will be excluded from search results unless it's available both A. in your country and B. on your device. When I view the document at that URL while logged into a Google account to which a Galaxy Tab A 8.0" (2016) and a Nexus 7 (2012) are registered, I see the following:
I expected the document to include a list of suggested devices to purchase on which to run this app, but it did not.