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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.
"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?
"Beeb" is their cute way of saying "BBC"
Sounds rather similar to the "Rueda" scam run by the SGAE in Spain. It's the royalty administration organisation, and a small group teamed up to play non-tracks all night when no-one was listening, "earning" themselves a large cut of the royalties and of the votes in the organisation.
If that had been what happened, there would be a press release, followed by a police investigation and report. The silent correction with no explanation suggests it was an inside job. Likely they caught their own staff doing this, and are embarrassed to publicly admit 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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More likely someone was scamming Spotify. Artists get paid per song play, not per minute of stream time, so a bunch of short songs can cost Spotify much more than otherwise. Someone figured out how to fake song plays by different users, probably by hacking the accounts of people with weak passwords and simply using them to play a lot of one-minute rubbish when the legitimate user was offline.
"Will future ages believe that such stupid bigotry ever existed!" -- Ivanhoe
If they make a fake band, then they pay that fake band money, then they're just losing that money. There's no financial benefit here unless they're into money laundering. More likely that someone is trying to scam Spotify.
for those unfamiliar with that age-old scam...
The books themselves were full of gibberish. Each of them was by a different author, but each of those authors wrote nothing but nonsense titles full of gibberish like:
"Everyone else forecast they?d find yourself collectively and partnered by the point they certainly were twenty. Well, they predicted correct; not in how they believed it can result. One-day within their sixteenth seasons, problems get a somewhat dreadful change, and products transform permanently."
The scam worked because back then kindle Unlimited paid out by how many pages you read ... but it measured this by recording the furthest page visited in the book. The genuinely curious would open the book, see the beginning was gibberish, then check further in to see if it was still gibberish. Plus I'm sure bots with Kindle Unlimited accounts "read" quite a few.
There is still one of these titles up:
https://www.amazon.com/Way-Sto...
For the curious, the songs/artists are still available in other places like deezer: https://www.deezer.com/us/albu...