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The Mystery Tracks Being 'Forced' on Spotify Users (musicbusinessworldwide.com)
It's been nearly two years since news blog MusicBusinessWorld kicked off a global conversation over 'fake artists' on Spotify. That debate is about to roar back into life. From a report: Multiple Spotify users have been complaining that their official listening history on Spotify appears to have been infiltrated by acts that they don't simply recognize. The trend was spotted by the BBC, which reported on Friday that plays of 'mystery' tracks from artists such as Bergenulo Five, Bratte Night, DJ Bruej and Doublin Night were being credited within individual Spotify user accounts -- despite these same users knowing nothing about this music.
"Apart from being musically unremarkable, they generally have a few things in common: short songs with few or no lyrics, illustrated with generic cover art, and short, non-descriptive song titles," said the Beeb of these acts -- some of whom had managed to rack up tens of thousands of plays. Albums from these artists contained more than 40 songs apiece, with each track just a minute or two in duration. After the BBC alerted Spotify to the trend, all of these artists disappeared from its platform entirely.
"Apart from being musically unremarkable, they generally have a few things in common: short songs with few or no lyrics, illustrated with generic cover art, and short, non-descriptive song titles," said the Beeb of these acts -- some of whom had managed to rack up tens of thousands of plays. Albums from these artists contained more than 40 songs apiece, with each track just a minute or two in duration. After the BBC alerted Spotify to the trend, all of these artists disappeared from its platform entirely.
My favorite band on Spotify is Various Artists (or maybe it's The Various Artists). They rock. Versatile, too.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Makes me think Spotify was in on it too for one reason or the other. Probably to see what they can get away with.
"Apart from being musically unremarkable, they generally have a few things in common: short songs with few or no lyrics, illustrated with generic cover art, and short, non-descriptive song titles," said the Beeb of these acts -- some of whom had managed to rack up tens of thousands of plays.
Are they quoting Justin Bieber here?
#DeleteChrome
Buy MP3s (or rip CDs) of just the music you like, store it locally on your PC and Mobile device, and only listen to those tracks.
Which I do, but a bunch of tracks are suffering from bit rot, so I need to re-rip them. But I have something like 100+GB of rips (of CDs that I physically own) so capacity is still an issue on portable devices.
Another down side to this is that because I am in a music bubble of my own making and have probably been missing a bunch of new music that I would actually like.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
It depends on spelling. "The Beeb" is British Broadcasting Corporation, whereas "the Bieb" is Justin Bieber.
..But, AC, that would mean you're not drinking the corporate Kool-Aid that makes you want to pay, Pay, PAY every month forever and ever! You'll make the Baby Jesus cry! THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!1!
All these 'cord cutters' who think they were so smart by moving to 'streaming' everything are now starting to see the potential for abuse inherent in it, and the bait-and-switch, first-taste-is-free strategy is turning on them. Streaming services are charging more and more, approaching the diminishing returns point for subscribers. Glad I never fell for that.
This sounds like the technique GPS map makers use to "watermark" their maps. They will add nonexistent features, and then can use those to see when someone simply copies their maps. For instance, I live near a large national park and my GPS claims there is a lake out there in the middle which never existed. perhaps Spotify is doing something similar with these ghost artists.
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> After the BBC alerted Spotify to the trend, all of these artists disappeared from its platform entirely.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
>Another down side to this is that because I am in a music bubble of my own making and have probably been missing a bunch of new music that I would actually like.
I think you may be grossly overestimating the quality of current North American-produced music. There are only a very few tracks worth listening to.
Europop was getting *just* listenable again, but has suffered a setback in 'old steady' acts incorporating autotune. K- and J-Pop have become so bland over the last decade that it's like trying to enjoy the sound of pipes draining.
The big problems making NA pop music unlistenable are
a) a divorce between instrumental melody and vocals. The vocalists aren't just making the music 'their own', but are taking it home, microwaving it, and serving it as appetizers without ever listening to the rest of the song.
b) increasing repetitiveness within songs. Consider Fleetwood Mac, which is typically really repetitive. They typically have songs that consist of a few, repeated verses and choruses. However, they have solid instrumentals backing their vocalists up. Now consider a slightly more recent act like Imagine Dragons, which frequently plays tracks consisting of an imaginative idea, very few lyrics to go along with it, and what amounts to synthesizer, drum and bass to back it. There are frequent repetitions *within* the verse and chorus, with very little attempt at structure, rhythm, or aesthetics.
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Nah. I'd rather pay money so I can Just Hit Play on a genre nickname that supposedly represents the unique, inestimable Me.
Never mind that they're all coming from one giant vat that mixes BONE MEAL and EARWIG HONEY.
Oops, wrong joke. The feeds say CURRENT PRIORITIZATIONS and ADS.
So, radio. But with an app!
I'm not against the idea of having tunes that are not tied to a particular artist (for whatever reason). There's no reason to force the association.
However, to group bunches of tune under a single (fake) artist and treat it like a real artist is misleading to the consumer and is a practice that encourages rigging the system to gain more listeners by creating (fake) mega artists.
If they are "anonymous collections", then clearly label them as such so the consumer knows what they are looking at.
Table-ized A.I.
NA-pop, Euro-pop, J-pop, K-pop...
Maybe the problem is your preference for pop music. There are lots more options out there...
for those unfamiliar with that age-old scam...
It'd be kinda cool if it had been a machine-generation experiment.
Liberty - Security - Laziness - Pick any two.
For the curious, the songs/artists are still available in other places like deezer: https://www.deezer.com/us/albu...