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Spotify Denies Allegations It's Putting Fake Artists On Popular Playlists To Cut Costs (factmag.com)
Last year, music industry publication Music Business Worldwide (MBW) claimed Spotify was putting fake artists in some of its popular playlists. The publication listed 50 artists it claimed were not real. Why would they do such a thing? To keep royalty costs down. MBW claimed that Spotify "was asking producers to create music to specification and paying them a flat fee to own the track outright," reports FACT Magazine. "These tracks -- which MBW alleged were being used to bulk up numbers on ambient, chillout and piano playlists -- are said to be owned by Spotify so that the company could circumvent royalty payments on playlists that have millions of subscribers." From the report: The claims were brought to wider attention by a feature published by Vulture last week, which picked out acts called Deep Watch and Enno Aare as examples of "fake artists" that had racked up two million and 15 million streams despite having no public profile. In a statement given to Billboard last week, Spotify refuted the allegations made by both MBW and Vulture. "We do not and have never created 'fake' artists and put them on Spotify playlists," the company said. "Categorically untrue, full stop. We pay royalties -- sound and publishing -- for all tracks on Spotify, and for everything we playlist. We do not own rights, we're not a label, all our music is licensed from rightsholders and we pay them -- we don't pay ourselves. We do not own this content -- we license it and pay royalties just like we do on every other track." In a piece published yesterday, MBW challenged Spotify's statement, citing anonymous sources in the music business who claimed that the practice has been going on for a "long time."
Enno Aare seems like a real person to me.
Has anybody attempted to look him up on Youtube? Enno has three videos and he actively responds in the comments. He posted a link to the sheet music he created for Water Ripples.
After about a 20 minute search I've established that Enno Aare is a man of Estonian descent. I was unable to get a listing for the man in Estonia, so he could either be unlisted or lives abroad.
Why does that really really suck? 95% of the other occupations on the planet work that way. Most programmers don't own the rights to their work. Manual laborers don't. Financial analysts don't.
whatever one-time payment got them into the studio; well, really, really, sucks to be an artist in that genre.
Not really. That's how most of us work. Get paid for the time spent in the studio/office/shop/warehouse, get fuck all afterwards.
The anomaly is the current fucked up copyright situation where people keep getting paid for something they did 70 years before they fucking died. How the fuck that benefits society hasn't been explained.