I am glad I clicked over here from your wife's Blue Sky feed, as I'm a musician and songwriter with a lot of thoughts on this sort of thing.
There is a musician in my network who I very much admire that makes her living releasing music for sync. She has gotten music onto this show and many others. Her and her team have definitely discovered the key to doing this WELL, and they knock out syncable track after syncable track. It's a skill.
It's a skill that doesn't work for everyone. I have been working pretty hard the last couple of years to learn about sync and build relationships with supervisors and coordinators. The music I make isn't popular. I also don't write specifically for sync, so I'm never going to have lyrics that fit a scene as perfectly as the one you described. I am awfully disappointed at what the streaming services have done to the way music is absorbed and valued, but don't feel that way about musicians who hustle hard enough to write the kind of music you describe here.
Also, coming from a rock background, I hadn't thought of the world of producers (in the pop music sense of the word) making music "on spec", then waiting around and not knowing if they'd ever get paid. Thanks for the detail on that.
Does Pelly have spite for “fake” artists (a harsh term, I agree) or for Spotify’s practice of slowly populating its most popular playlists with far cheaper tracks without being transparent about the fact they’re bankrolling the production of said cheaper tracks? Seems like it’s entirely the latter, no?
While she takes aim at the proliferation of “fake” music, she definitely doesn’t diminish the value of their labor or suggest that people making it should be feel bad (sure, park bench guys does, but that’s his cross to bear). If anything, she suggests Spotify should be paying these “fake” musicians more! (apologies if this is in the book and not the Harper’s piece, my memory may fail me)
The huge issue you’ve sidestepped here is why hasn't Spotify been more transparent about the fact they were slowly replacing artists like Eno, Hopkins, Bibio, et al, with this much cheaper stock music they were bankrolling. Just as we can look up muzak used in a commercial or reality tv show and see who produced it, shouldn’t Spotify listeners be entitled to know who actually made these mystery tracks suddenly infiltrating Spotify’s most popular playlists?
I don’t know Liz, but I suspect you’re right! It’s hard for me to imagine her (a musician herself) having any spite for working-class musicians.
Spotify is a big box retail store, not a library, and certainly not an academic institution. They sell a lot of stuff! But bottom-line is they are trying to sell audio and keep people’s attention, and the bulk of those people are not music fans—they’re passive listeners. People just looking for something to shake the air a bit. Which is to say, I find the zero-sum attention argument to be a logical fallacy. You’re presuming that passive listeners, were there no Spotify or PFC, would still be listening to music. I’m not sure about that.
The burden of paying WFH artists more isn’t on Spotify, it’s on the production houses. Feels like a fairly straightforward free market type situation. A few responses I got on IG were from musicians who make sync music, who renegotiated buyout fee structures when their music was being used for something that ended up being popular. I’d prefer to have steady work that I enjoy over the off-chance I might win the ambient-chill lottery, but that’s just me.
I’m also not convinced that hearing a Jon Hopkins track in a passive discovery setting would convert them into a “real” music fan. In fact I worry it’s the opposite. “Real” electronic ambient music likely was not ambient enough and too interesting. That’s the issue I’d argue Pelly sidestepped: As a product on the shelf of a big box retail store, it just wasn’t doing what it said on the box. For this task, the fake music is almost always performing better than the real stuff.
As for moral rights — those ARE legally protected, at least in Europe. In the good old US I believe you can fully sell yourself out. Either way, it might be a better artistic experience for the listener not to know who was involved, no? You and I have talked about this before: How does it affect your openness to some grimy ignorant dance record if you know that a cis white man with multiple ivy league degrees made it? How important to the way we related to Burial’s music was the lack of biography? That seems to me to be something that should be in the artist’s hands, not the consumers’. But again, I’m old-timey like that.
"For this task, the fake music is almost always performing better than the real stuff."
Is there any evidence of this? Genuinely curious, would love to check it out if it exists, because it seems like they’re using stock music solely because it’s cheaper. Like Facebook and Netflix, they're slinging slop, or enshittifying, to use an overused term. The cheaper content will always win out. If it's true they've found the secret formula to the most efficient, optimized background music playlist, then wouldn't it be only a matter of time before all playlists feature AI-generated music, picked by algorithms, and no human musicians are paid to make anything for Spotify anymore?
Will have to hit you offline about that, but yes. In my case, I was working directly with an editor in charge of a sleep playlist who genuinely wanted to get non-library aka ‘real’ music on the playlist. Even when he managed to sneak on a few of ours, they were almost always removed after a few days for underperforming.
“How important to the way we related to Burial’s music was the lack of biography?”
Not sure how Burial relates to any of this. No one is saying an artist can’t decide for themselves to remain anonymous. It’s a different animal when Spotify buys stock music, juices it with a placement in their own already popular playlists with no indication it’s a “Spotify original”, and creates a fake biography (c.f. Ekfat) as if this was a random musician discovered by Spotify as opposed to one bankrolled by them. That’s the “fake music” Pelly has spite for. It’s fair more specific than what you outlined, which includes everything from West African drum circles to producers and songwriters working for “supposedly real artists.” Nowhere in the piece or Mood Machine book are those groups labeled as "fake."
It’s possible I’m misunderstanding things. Spotify, as far as I know, doesn’t bankroll music content. (It does finance, own and produce podcasts.)
Talking about Epidemic Sound for now: My understanding is that Spotify doesn’t own Epidemic Sound, and that Epidemic Sound doesn’t own Spotify (or at least have any operational power that I know of). Am I wrong?
For contractual and legal reasons, Spotify cannot distribute musical content it owns, let alone privilege it in popular playlists. That’s in the agreement. The major labels, who DO or did own portions of Spotify, made sure that wasn’t possible.
Spotify Originals, if I remember correctly, are just covers or alternate versions recorded at Spotify’s studios. I haven’t seen those versions pushed at the expense of the originals.
Just trying to get our terms straight here so I can understand the argument.
Spotify does pay out different royalty rates to different distributors around the world. Some of that is geographical / per country of listener. Because they calculate by overall market share, I suspect the major labels get a slightly higher royalty rate for their music than artists distributed on Distrokid. It’s why something like the Merlin network exists – so Beggars/Secretly/smaller indies can show a higher market share and negotiate a higher rate for their recordings.
Spotify’s Discovery Mode is an opt-in — in exchange for more placement in Spotify algorithmic radio plays, you give up 30% of your royalty share. I have a million thoughts about this and none of them are positive. But it’s an opt-in.
My guess is that Epidemic Sound distributes directly to Spotify/Youtube/etc, no middle distributor, and negotiates a lower rate in exchange for better placements. It’s a store with shelves. Look at New Music Friday — you’ll rarely see an artist on that playlist that isn’t signed or distributed by a major label, who literally co-own the platform and who likely have some bizarre payout structure on that front. Maybe I should be upset about this too?
I guess I’m confused why or how anyone could be upset about artist aliases, or a composer wanting to have multiple artist aliases. Where do band names fit into this exactly? Why is it OK for Maurice Fulton to record as Syclops and Boof but not someone else?
In a word, I understand why people are upset about Spotify. I am too. But in the case of the service using stock music on playlists, I am arguing that we should leave room for the possibility that this is an equally valid form of musical expression, and that ‘fake music’ can sometimes be better than the real stuff in various contexts.
Everything you mention above about the impending AI-ing of all this music is of course awful and scary and I’m kinda at a loss for a response.
“But in the case of the service using stock music on playlists, I am arguing that we should leave room for the possibility that this is an equally valid form of musical expression, and that ‘fake music’ can sometimes be better than the real stuff in various contexts.”
No argument from anyone on that, just wish it was more transparent when the music is stock, similar to how sponcon is labeled for a publication like pitchfork or whatever
Thanks for going back and forth with me here — it’s helpful. For better/worse, I think I’ve become numb to artists being “creative” (we’ll say) with biographical detail. the experience of music is sound plus persona, so why would you not give attention to how the artist persona affects the experience, etc. But I remember a few journalists a few years ago were upset by the number of bands and artists using women’s names, for instance, because they felt that it was a disingenuous ploy to get the music media’s attention. I suspect you and I (and Liz!) are entirely aligned on everything else except where you guys see deception I see something else. Which is helpful for me to know and think more about on my own…
Appreciate your adding context to the industry stuff. I'm not a working musician and am very much in the dark in regards to how that stuff works.
To clarify, I just didn't think it was fair to accuse Liz of maligning the people who make stock music or gatekeeping what is "real" music and what isn't. The only target in her crosshairs is the 120+ billion dollar streaming company, not musicians of any ilk. Questions of artist persona, identity, etc, those concepts re all very interesting when played with by musicians, but Spotify isn't foregrounding its background music playlists in the interest of having a postmodern lark. They're just figuring out how to get more cheap content on their platform and further alienate the musicmakers and audiences from each other.
This all makes sense to me except for the Fulton part. When he records as Boof he doesn’t misrepresent himself by saying he’s like, an Icelandic teen who studied at such and such school and whatever a la the Ekfat scenario mentioned in the Harper’s piece. That feels like a huge distinction, no? He also isn’t making music as any of those entities w the express goal of getting on a playlist, but I guess you could argue with that?
I am glad I clicked over here from your wife's Blue Sky feed, as I'm a musician and songwriter with a lot of thoughts on this sort of thing.
There is a musician in my network who I very much admire that makes her living releasing music for sync. She has gotten music onto this show and many others. Her and her team have definitely discovered the key to doing this WELL, and they knock out syncable track after syncable track. It's a skill.
It's a skill that doesn't work for everyone. I have been working pretty hard the last couple of years to learn about sync and build relationships with supervisors and coordinators. The music I make isn't popular. I also don't write specifically for sync, so I'm never going to have lyrics that fit a scene as perfectly as the one you described. I am awfully disappointed at what the streaming services have done to the way music is absorbed and valued, but don't feel that way about musicians who hustle hard enough to write the kind of music you describe here.
Also, coming from a rock background, I hadn't thought of the world of producers (in the pop music sense of the word) making music "on spec", then waiting around and not knowing if they'd ever get paid. Thanks for the detail on that.
Does Pelly have spite for “fake” artists (a harsh term, I agree) or for Spotify’s practice of slowly populating its most popular playlists with far cheaper tracks without being transparent about the fact they’re bankrolling the production of said cheaper tracks? Seems like it’s entirely the latter, no?
While she takes aim at the proliferation of “fake” music, she definitely doesn’t diminish the value of their labor or suggest that people making it should be feel bad (sure, park bench guys does, but that’s his cross to bear). If anything, she suggests Spotify should be paying these “fake” musicians more! (apologies if this is in the book and not the Harper’s piece, my memory may fail me)
The huge issue you’ve sidestepped here is why hasn't Spotify been more transparent about the fact they were slowly replacing artists like Eno, Hopkins, Bibio, et al, with this much cheaper stock music they were bankrolling. Just as we can look up muzak used in a commercial or reality tv show and see who produced it, shouldn’t Spotify listeners be entitled to know who actually made these mystery tracks suddenly infiltrating Spotify’s most popular playlists?
(thank you for reading and correcting me here)
I don’t know Liz, but I suspect you’re right! It’s hard for me to imagine her (a musician herself) having any spite for working-class musicians.
Spotify is a big box retail store, not a library, and certainly not an academic institution. They sell a lot of stuff! But bottom-line is they are trying to sell audio and keep people’s attention, and the bulk of those people are not music fans—they’re passive listeners. People just looking for something to shake the air a bit. Which is to say, I find the zero-sum attention argument to be a logical fallacy. You’re presuming that passive listeners, were there no Spotify or PFC, would still be listening to music. I’m not sure about that.
The burden of paying WFH artists more isn’t on Spotify, it’s on the production houses. Feels like a fairly straightforward free market type situation. A few responses I got on IG were from musicians who make sync music, who renegotiated buyout fee structures when their music was being used for something that ended up being popular. I’d prefer to have steady work that I enjoy over the off-chance I might win the ambient-chill lottery, but that’s just me.
I’m also not convinced that hearing a Jon Hopkins track in a passive discovery setting would convert them into a “real” music fan. In fact I worry it’s the opposite. “Real” electronic ambient music likely was not ambient enough and too interesting. That’s the issue I’d argue Pelly sidestepped: As a product on the shelf of a big box retail store, it just wasn’t doing what it said on the box. For this task, the fake music is almost always performing better than the real stuff.
As for moral rights — those ARE legally protected, at least in Europe. In the good old US I believe you can fully sell yourself out. Either way, it might be a better artistic experience for the listener not to know who was involved, no? You and I have talked about this before: How does it affect your openness to some grimy ignorant dance record if you know that a cis white man with multiple ivy league degrees made it? How important to the way we related to Burial’s music was the lack of biography? That seems to me to be something that should be in the artist’s hands, not the consumers’. But again, I’m old-timey like that.
"For this task, the fake music is almost always performing better than the real stuff."
Is there any evidence of this? Genuinely curious, would love to check it out if it exists, because it seems like they’re using stock music solely because it’s cheaper. Like Facebook and Netflix, they're slinging slop, or enshittifying, to use an overused term. The cheaper content will always win out. If it's true they've found the secret formula to the most efficient, optimized background music playlist, then wouldn't it be only a matter of time before all playlists feature AI-generated music, picked by algorithms, and no human musicians are paid to make anything for Spotify anymore?
Will have to hit you offline about that, but yes. In my case, I was working directly with an editor in charge of a sleep playlist who genuinely wanted to get non-library aka ‘real’ music on the playlist. Even when he managed to sneak on a few of ours, they were almost always removed after a few days for underperforming.
“How important to the way we related to Burial’s music was the lack of biography?”
Not sure how Burial relates to any of this. No one is saying an artist can’t decide for themselves to remain anonymous. It’s a different animal when Spotify buys stock music, juices it with a placement in their own already popular playlists with no indication it’s a “Spotify original”, and creates a fake biography (c.f. Ekfat) as if this was a random musician discovered by Spotify as opposed to one bankrolled by them. That’s the “fake music” Pelly has spite for. It’s fair more specific than what you outlined, which includes everything from West African drum circles to producers and songwriters working for “supposedly real artists.” Nowhere in the piece or Mood Machine book are those groups labeled as "fake."
It’s possible I’m misunderstanding things. Spotify, as far as I know, doesn’t bankroll music content. (It does finance, own and produce podcasts.)
Talking about Epidemic Sound for now: My understanding is that Spotify doesn’t own Epidemic Sound, and that Epidemic Sound doesn’t own Spotify (or at least have any operational power that I know of). Am I wrong?
For contractual and legal reasons, Spotify cannot distribute musical content it owns, let alone privilege it in popular playlists. That’s in the agreement. The major labels, who DO or did own portions of Spotify, made sure that wasn’t possible.
Spotify Originals, if I remember correctly, are just covers or alternate versions recorded at Spotify’s studios. I haven’t seen those versions pushed at the expense of the originals.
Just trying to get our terms straight here so I can understand the argument.
Spotify does pay out different royalty rates to different distributors around the world. Some of that is geographical / per country of listener. Because they calculate by overall market share, I suspect the major labels get a slightly higher royalty rate for their music than artists distributed on Distrokid. It’s why something like the Merlin network exists – so Beggars/Secretly/smaller indies can show a higher market share and negotiate a higher rate for their recordings.
Spotify’s Discovery Mode is an opt-in — in exchange for more placement in Spotify algorithmic radio plays, you give up 30% of your royalty share. I have a million thoughts about this and none of them are positive. But it’s an opt-in.
My guess is that Epidemic Sound distributes directly to Spotify/Youtube/etc, no middle distributor, and negotiates a lower rate in exchange for better placements. It’s a store with shelves. Look at New Music Friday — you’ll rarely see an artist on that playlist that isn’t signed or distributed by a major label, who literally co-own the platform and who likely have some bizarre payout structure on that front. Maybe I should be upset about this too?
I guess I’m confused why or how anyone could be upset about artist aliases, or a composer wanting to have multiple artist aliases. Where do band names fit into this exactly? Why is it OK for Maurice Fulton to record as Syclops and Boof but not someone else?
In a word, I understand why people are upset about Spotify. I am too. But in the case of the service using stock music on playlists, I am arguing that we should leave room for the possibility that this is an equally valid form of musical expression, and that ‘fake music’ can sometimes be better than the real stuff in various contexts.
Everything you mention above about the impending AI-ing of all this music is of course awful and scary and I’m kinda at a loss for a response.
“But in the case of the service using stock music on playlists, I am arguing that we should leave room for the possibility that this is an equally valid form of musical expression, and that ‘fake music’ can sometimes be better than the real stuff in various contexts.”
No argument from anyone on that, just wish it was more transparent when the music is stock, similar to how sponcon is labeled for a publication like pitchfork or whatever
Thanks for going back and forth with me here — it’s helpful. For better/worse, I think I’ve become numb to artists being “creative” (we’ll say) with biographical detail. the experience of music is sound plus persona, so why would you not give attention to how the artist persona affects the experience, etc. But I remember a few journalists a few years ago were upset by the number of bands and artists using women’s names, for instance, because they felt that it was a disingenuous ploy to get the music media’s attention. I suspect you and I (and Liz!) are entirely aligned on everything else except where you guys see deception I see something else. Which is helpful for me to know and think more about on my own…
Appreciate your adding context to the industry stuff. I'm not a working musician and am very much in the dark in regards to how that stuff works.
To clarify, I just didn't think it was fair to accuse Liz of maligning the people who make stock music or gatekeeping what is "real" music and what isn't. The only target in her crosshairs is the 120+ billion dollar streaming company, not musicians of any ilk. Questions of artist persona, identity, etc, those concepts re all very interesting when played with by musicians, but Spotify isn't foregrounding its background music playlists in the interest of having a postmodern lark. They're just figuring out how to get more cheap content on their platform and further alienate the musicmakers and audiences from each other.
This all makes sense to me except for the Fulton part. When he records as Boof he doesn’t misrepresent himself by saying he’s like, an Icelandic teen who studied at such and such school and whatever a la the Ekfat scenario mentioned in the Harper’s piece. That feels like a huge distinction, no? He also isn’t making music as any of those entities w the express goal of getting on a playlist, but I guess you could argue with that?