harpers-org-yitwbw.txt (48922B)
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At the time, I was new 77 to the music-streaming beat. I had been researching the influence of major 78 labels on Spotify playlists since the previous year, and my first report had 79 just been published. Within a few days, the owner of an independent record 80 label in New York dropped me a line to let me know about a mysterious 81 phenomenon that was “in the air” and of growing concern to those in the indie 82 music scene: Spotify, the rumor had it, was filling its most popular playlists 83 with stock music attributed to pseudonymous musicians—variously called ghost or 84 fake artists—presumably in an effort to reduce its royalty payouts. Some even 85 speculated that Spotify might be making the tracks itself. At a time when 86 playlists created by the company were becoming crucial sources of revenue for 87 independent artists and labels, this was a troubling allegation. 88 89 At first, it sounded to me like a conspiracy theory. Surely, I thought, these 90 artists were just DIY hustlers trying to game the system. But the tips kept 91 coming. Over the next few months, I received more notes from readers, 92 musicians, and label owners about the so-called fake-artist issue than about 93 anything else. One digital strategist at an independent record label worried 94 that the problem could soon grow more insidious. “So far it’s happening within 95 a genre that mostly affects artists at labels like the one I work for, or 96 Kranky, or Constellation,” the strategist said, referring to two long-running 97 indie labels.[56]^* “But I doubt that it’ll be unique to our corner of the 98 music world for long.” 99 100 By July, the story had burst into public view, after a Vulture article 101 resurfaced a year-old item from the trade press claiming that Spotify was 102 filling some of its popular and relaxing mood playlists—such as those for 103 “jazz,” “chill,” and “peaceful piano” music—with cheap fake-artist offerings 104 created by the company. A Spotify spokesperson, in turn, told the music press 105 that these reports were “categorically untrue, full stop”: the company was not 106 creating its own fake-artist tracks. But while Spotify may not have created 107 them, it stopped short of denying that it had added them to its playlists. The 108 spokesperson’s rebuttal only stoked the interest of the media, and by the end 109 of the summer, articles on the matter appeared from NPR and the Guardian, among 110 other outlets. Journalists scrutinized the music of some of the artists they 111 suspected to be fake and speculated about how they had become so popular on 112 Spotify. Before the year was out, the music writer David Turner had used 113 analytics data to illustrate how Spotify’s “Ambient Chill” playlist had largely 114 been wiped of well-known artists like Brian Eno, Bibio, and Jon Hopkins, whose 115 music was replaced by tracks from Epidemic Sound, a Swedish company that offers 116 a subscription-based library of production music—the kind of stock material 117 often used in the background of advertisements, TV programs, and assorted video 118 content. 119 120 For years, I referred to the names that would pop up on these playlists simply 121 as “mystery viral artists.” Such artists often had millions of streams on 122 Spotify and pride of place on the company’s own mood-themed playlists, which 123 were compiled by a team of in-house curators. And they often had Spotify’s 124 verified-artist badge. But they were clearly fake. Their “labels” were 125 frequently listed as stock-music companies like Epidemic, and their profiles 126 included generic, possibly AI-generated imagery, often with no artist 127 biographies or links to websites. Google searches came up empty. 128 129 In the years following that initial salvo of negative press, other 130 controversies served as useful distractions for Spotify: the company’s 2019 131 move into podcasting and eventual $250 million deal with Joe Rogan, for 132 example, and its 2020 introduction of Discovery Mode, a program through which 133 musicians or labels accept a lower royalty rate in exchange for algorithmic 134 promotion. The fake-artist saga faded into the background, another of Spotify’s 135 unresolved scandals as the company increasingly came under fire and musicians 136 grew more emboldened to speak out against it with each passing year. 137 138 Then, in 2022, an investigation by the Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter revived the 139 allegations. By comparing streaming data against documents retrieved from the 140 Swedish copyright collection society STIM, the newspaper revealed that around 141 twenty songwriters were behind the work of more than five hundred “artists,” 142 and that thousands of their tracks were on Spotify and had been streamed 143 millions of times. 144 145 Around this time, I decided to dig into the story of Spotify’s ghost artists in 146 earnest, and the following summer, I made a visit to the DN offices in Sweden. 147 The paper’s technology editor, Linus Larsson, showed me the Spotify page of an 148 artist called Ekfat. Since 2019, a handful of tracks had been released under 149 this moniker, mostly via the stock-music company Firefly Entertainment, and 150 appeared on official Spotify playlists like “Lo-Fi House” and “Chill 151 Instrumental Beats.” One of the tracks had more than three million streams; at 152 the time of this writing, the number has surpassed four million. Larsson was 153 amused by the elaborate artist bio, which he read aloud. It described Ekfat as 154 a classically trained Icelandic beat maker who graduated from the “Reykjavik 155 music conservatory,” joined the “legendary Smekkleysa Lo-Fi Rockers crew” in 156 2017, and released music only on limited-edition cassettes until 2019. 157 “Completely made up,” Larsson said. “This is probably the most absurd example, 158 because they really tried to make him into the coolest music producer that you 159 can find.” 160 161 Besides the journalists at DN, no one in Sweden wanted to talk about the fake 162 artists. In Stockholm, I visited the address listed for one of the ghost labels 163 and knocked on the door—no luck. I met someone who knew a guy who maybe ran one 164 of the production companies, but he didn’t want to talk. A local businessman 165 would reveal only that he worked in the “functional music space,” and clammed 166 up as soon as I told him about my investigation. 167 168 Even with the new reporting, there was still much missing from the bigger 169 picture: Why, exactly, were the tracks getting added to these hugely popular 170 Spotify playlists? We knew that the ghost artists were linked to certain 171 production companies, and that those companies were pumping out an exorbitant 172 number of tracks, but what was their relationship to Spotify? 173 174 For more than a year, I devoted myself to answering these questions. I spoke 175 with former employees, reviewed internal Spotify records and company Slack 176 messages, and interviewed and corresponded with numerous musicians. What I 177 uncovered was an elaborate internal program. Spotify, I discovered, not only 178 has partnerships with a web of production companies, which, as one former 179 employee put it, provide Spotify with “music we benefited from financially,” 180 but also a team of employees working to seed these tracks on playlists across 181 the platform. In doing so, they are effectively working to grow the percentage 182 of total streams of music that is cheaper for the platform. The program’s name: 183 Perfect Fit Content (PFC). The PFC program raises troubling prospects for 184 working musicians. Some face the possibility of losing out on crucial income by 185 having their tracks passed over for playlist placement or replaced in favor of 186 PFC; others, who record PFC music themselves, must often give up control of 187 certain royalty rights that, if a track becomes popular, could be highly 188 lucrative. But it also raises worrying questions for all of us who listen to 189 music. It puts forth an image of a future in which—as streaming services push 190 music further into the background, and normalize anonymous, low-cost playlist 191 filler—the relationship between listener and artist might be severed 192 completely. 193 194 How had it come to this? Spotify, after all, did not start out aiming to shape 195 users’ listening behavior. In fact, in the early days, the user’s experience on 196 the platform centered on the search bar. Listeners needed to know what they 197 were looking for. The company’s CEO, Daniel Ek, is said to have been averse to 198 the idea of an overly curated service. When the platform launched in Europe, in 199 2008, it positioned itself as a way to access music that was “better than 200 piracy,” like a fully stocked iTunes library but accessed over the internet, 201 all of it available via a monthly subscription. The emphasis was on providing 202 entry to “A World of Music,” as an early ad campaign emphasized, with the 203 tagline “Instant, simple and free.” Users could make their own playlists or 204 listen to those made by others. 205 206 Like many other tech companies in the twenty-first century, Spotify spent its 207 first decade claiming to disrupt an archaic industry, scaling up as quickly as 208 possible, and attracting venture capitalists to an unproven business model. In 209 its search for growth and profitability, Spotify reinvented itself repeatedly: 210 as a social-networking platform in 2010, as an app marketplace in 2011, and by 211 the end of 2012, as a hub for what it called “music for every moment,” 212 supplying recommendations for specific moods, activities, and times of day. 213 Spotify made its move into curation the next year, hiring a staff of editors to 214 compile in-house playlists. In 2014, the company was increasing its investment 215 in algorithmic personalization technology. This innovation was intended, as 216 Spotify put it, to “level the playing field” for artists by minimizing the 217 power of major labels, radio stations, and other old-school gatekeepers; in 218 their place, it claimed, would be a system that simply rewarded tracks that 219 streamed well. By the mid-2010s, the service was actively recasting itself as a 220 neutral platform, a data-driven meritocracy that was rewriting the rules of the 221 music business with its playlists and algorithms. 222 223 [57] [Cover-wp-scaled] 224 From the 225 [58] January 2025 issue 226 [59] Download PDF 227 228 From the Archive 229 230 Timeless stories from our 174-year archive handpicked to speak to the news of 231 the day. 232 233 Email address [60][ ] Sign Up 234 Got it! Thanks for signing up! 235 236 [PELLY-GIF-intext] 237 238 In reality, Spotify was subject to the outsized influence of the major-label 239 oligopoly of Sony, Universal, and Warner, which together owned a 17 percent 240 stake in the company when it launched. The companies, which controlled roughly 241 70 percent of the market for recorded music, held considerable negotiating 242 power from the start. For these major labels, the rise of Spotify would soon 243 pay off. By the mid-2010s, streaming had cemented itself as the most important 244 source of revenue for the majors, which were raking in cash from Spotify’s 245 millions of paying subscribers after more than a decade of declining revenue. 246 But while Ek’s company was paying labels and publishers a lot of money—some 247 70 percent of its revenue—it had yet to turn a profit itself, something 248 shareholders would soon demand. In theory, Spotify had any number of options: 249 raising subscription rates, cutting costs by downsizing operations, or finding 250 ways to attract new subscribers. 251 252 According to a source close to the company, Spotify’s own internal research 253 showed that many users were not coming to the platform to listen to specific 254 artists or albums; they just needed something to serve as a soundtrack for 255 their days, like a study playlist or maybe a dinner soundtrack. In the 256 lean-back listening environment that streaming had helped champion, listeners 257 often weren’t even aware of what song or artist they were hearing. As a result, 258 the thinking seemed to be: Why pay full-price royalties if users were only half 259 listening? It was likely from this reasoning that the Perfect Fit Content 260 program was created. 261 262 After at least a year of piloting, PFC was presented to Spotify editors in 2017 263 as one of the company’s new bets to achieve profitability. According to a 264 former employee, just a few months later, a new column appeared on the 265 dashboard editors used to monitor internal playlists. The dashboard was where 266 editors could view various stats: plays, likes, skip rates, saves. And now, 267 right at the top of the page, editors could see how successfully each playlist 268 embraced “music commissioned to fit a certain playlist/mood with improved 269 margins,” as PFC was described internally. 270 271 Editors were soon encouraged by higher-ups, with increasing persistence, to add 272 PFC songs to certain playlists. “Initially, they would give us links to stuff, 273 like, ‘Oh, it’s no pressure for you to add it, but if you can, that would be 274 great,’ ” the former employee recalled. “Then it became more aggressive, like, 275 ‘Oh, this is the style of music in your playlist, if you try it and it works, 276 then why not?’ ” 277 278 Another former playlist editor told me that employees were concerned that the 279 company wasn’t being transparent with users about the origin of this material. 280 Still another former editor told me that he didn’t know where the music was 281 coming from, though he was aware that adding it to his playlists was important 282 for the company. “Maybe I should have asked more questions,” he told me, “but I 283 was just kind of like, ‘Okay, how do I mix this music with artists that I like 284 and not have them stand out?’ ” 285 286 Some employees felt that those responsible for pushing the PFC strategy did not 287 understand the musical traditions that were being affected by it. These 288 higher-ups were well versed in the business of major-label hitmaking, but not 289 necessarily in the cultures or histories of genres like jazz, classical, 290 ambient, and lo-fi hip-hop—music that tended to do well on playlists for 291 relaxing, sleeping, or focusing. One of my sources told me that the attitude 292 was “if the metrics went up, then let’s just keep replacing more and more, 293 because if the user doesn’t notice, then it’s fine.” 294 295 Trying to share concerns about the program internally was challenging. “Some of 296 us really didn’t feel good about what was happening,” a former employee told 297 me. “We didn’t like that it was these two guys that normally write pop songs 298 replacing swaths of artists across the board. It’s just not fair. But it was 299 like trying to stop a train that was already leaving.” 300 301 Eventually, it became clear internally that many of the playlist editors—whom 302 Spotify had touted in the press as music lovers with encyclopedic 303 knowledge—were uninterested in participating in the scheme. The company started 304 to bring on editors who seemed less bothered by the PFC model. These new 305 editors looked after mood and activity playlists, and worked on playlists and 306 programs that other editors didn’t want to take part in anymore. (Spotify 307 denies that staffers were encouraged to add PFC to playlists, and that playlist 308 editors were discontented with the program.) By 2023, several hundred playlists 309 were being monitored by the team responsible for PFC. Over 150 of these, 310 including “Ambient Relaxation,” “Deep Focus,” “100% Lounge,” “Bossa Nova 311 Dinner,” “Cocktail Jazz,” “Deep Sleep,” “Morning Stretch,” and “Detox,” were 312 nearly entirely made up of PFC. 313 314 Spotify managers defended PFC to staff by claiming that the tracks were being 315 used only for background music, so listeners wouldn’t know the difference, and 316 that there was a low supply of music for these types of playlists anyway. The 317 first part of this argument was true: a statistical breakdown of the PFC 318 rollout, shared over Slack, showed how PFC “streamshare”—Spotify’s term for 319 percentage of total streams—was distributed across playlists for different 320 activities, such as sleep, mindfulness, unwinding, lounging, meditation, 321 calming down, concentrating, or studying. But the other half of management’s 322 justification was harder to prove. Music in instrumental genres such as 323 ambient, classical, electronic, jazz, and lo-fi beats was in plentiful supply 324 across Spotify—more than enough to draw on to populate its playlists without 325 requiring the addition of PFC. 326 327 PFC eventually began to be handled by a small team called Strategic 328 Programming, or StraP for short, which in 2023 had ten members. Though Spotify 329 denies that it is trying to increase PFC’s streamshare, internal Slack messages 330 show members of the StraP team analyzing quarter-by-quarter growth and 331 discussing how to increase the number of PFC streams. When Harper’s Magazine 332 followed up with the company to ask why internal documents showed the team 333 tracking the percentage of PFC content across hundreds of playlists if not to 334 attend to the growth of PFC content on the platform, a spokesperson for the 335 company said, “Spotify is data driven in all that we do.” And though Spotify 336 told Harper’s that it does not “promise placement on any playlists” in any of 337 its licensing agreements, when new PFC providers were brought on board, senior 338 staffers would notify editors to attend to their offerings. “We’ve now 339 onboarded Myndstream,” a StraP staffer wrote in one message. “Please prioritize 340 adding from these as this is a new partner so they can get some live feedback.” 341 That employee shared with the rest of the team a series of lists made by the 342 new partner, sorting their tracks into collections titled “ambient piano 343 covers,” “psilocybin (relax and breathe)” and “lofi originals.” A couple of 344 months later, another team member posted a similar message: 345 346 Our new partner Slumber Group LLC is ready for their first releases. Make 347 sure to have them set up in your Reverb filters for more snoozy content :) 348 349 (“Reverb” refers to an internal tool for managing tracks and playlists.) 350 351 The roster of PFC providers discussed internally was long. For years, Firefly 352 Entertainment and Epidemic Sound dominated media speculation about Spotify’s 353 playlist practices. But internal messages revealed they were just two among at 354 least a dozen PFC providers, including companies with names like Hush Hush LLC 355 and Catfarm Music AB. There was Queenstreet Content AB, the production company 356 of the Swedish pop songwriting duo Andreas Romdhane and Josef Svedlund, who 357 were also behind another mood-music streaming operation, Audiowell, which 358 partnered with megaproducer Max Martin (who has shaped the sound of global pop 359 music since the Nineties) and private-equity firm Altor. In 2022, the Swedish 360 press reported that Queenstreet was bringing in more than $10 million per year. 361 Another provider was Industria Works, a subsidiary of which is Mood Works, a 362 distributor whose website shows that it also streams tracks on Apple Music and 363 Amazon Music. Spotify was perhaps not alone in promoting cheap stock music. 364 365 In a Slack channel dedicated to discussing the ethics of streaming, Spotify’s 366 own employees debated the fairness of the PFC program. “I wonder how much these 367 plays ‘steal’ from actual ’normal’ artists,” one employee asked. And yet as far 368 as the public was concerned, the company had gone to great lengths to keep the 369 initiative under wraps. Perhaps Spotify understood the stakes—that when it 370 removed real classical, jazz, and ambient artists from popular playlists and 371 replaced them with low-budget stock muzak, it was steamrolling real music 372 cultures, actual traditions within which artists were trying to make a living. 373 Or perhaps the company was aware that this project to cheapen music 374 contradicted so many of the ideals upon which its brand had been built. Spotify 375 had long marketed itself as the ultimate platform for discovery—and who was 376 going to get excited about “discovering” a bunch of stock music? Artists had 377 been sold the idea that streaming was the ultimate meritocracy—that the best 378 would rise to the top because users voted by listening. But the PFC program 379 undermined all this. PFC was not the only way in which Spotify deliberately and 380 covertly manipulated programming to favor content that improved its margins, 381 but it was the most immediately galling. Nor was the problem simply a matter of 382 “authenticity” in music. It was a matter of survival for actual artists, of 383 musicians having the ability to earn a living on one of the largest platforms 384 for music. PFC was irrefutable proof that Spotify rigged its system against 385 musicians who knew their worth. 386 387 In 2023, on a summer afternoon in Brooklyn, I met up with a jazz musician in a 388 park. We talked about the recent shows we had seen, our favorite and least 389 favorite venues, the respective pockets of the New York music scene we moved 390 through. He spoke passionately about his friends’ music and his most cherished 391 performance spaces. But our conversation soon turned to something else: his 392 most recent side gig, making jazz for a company that was described, in one 393 internal Spotify document, as one of its “high margin (PFC) licensors.” 394 395 He wasn’t familiar with the term PFC, but his tracks have been given prominent 396 placement on some of Spotify’s most PFC-saturated chill-jazz playlists. Like 397 many musicians in his position, there was a lot he didn’t know about the 398 arrangement. He had signed a one-year contract to make anonymous tracks for a 399 production company that would distribute them on Spotify. He called it his 400 “Spotify playlist gig,” a commitment he also called “brain-numbing” and “pretty 401 much completely joyless.” And while he didn’t quite understand the details of 402 his employer’s relationship with Spotify, he knew that many of his tracks had 403 landed on playlists with millions of followers. “I just record stuff and submit 404 it, and I’m not really sure what happens from there,” he told me. 405 406 As he described it, making new PFC starts with studying old PFC: it’s a 407 feedback loop of playlist fodder imitated over and over again. A typical 408 session starts with a production company sending along links to target 409 playlists as reference points. His task is to then chart out new songs that 410 could stream well on these playlists. “Honestly, for most of this stuff, I just 411 write out charts while lying on my back on the couch,” he explained. “And then 412 once we have a critical mass, they organize a session and we play them. And 413 it’s usually just like, one take, one take, one take, one take. You knock out 414 like fifteen in an hour or two.” With the jazz musician’s particular group, the 415 session typically includes a pianist, a bassist, and a drummer. An engineer 416 from the studio will be there, and usually someone from the PFC partner company 417 will come along, too—acting as a producer, giving light feedback, at times 418 inching the musicians in a more playlist-friendly direction. The most common 419 feedback: play simpler. “That’s definitely the thing: nothing that could be 420 even remotely challenging or offensive, really,” the musician told me. “The 421 goal, for sure, is to be as milquetoast as possible.” 422 423 This wasn’t a scam artist with a master plan to steal prime playlist real 424 estate. He was just someone who, like other working musicians today, was trying 425 to cobble together a living. “There are so many things in music that you treat 426 as grunt work,” he said. “This kind of felt like the same category as wedding 427 gigs or corporate gigs. It’s made very explicit on Spotify that these are 428 background playlists, so it didn’t necessarily strike me as any different from 429 that. . . . You’re just a piece of the furniture.” 430 431 The jazz musician asked me not to identify the name of the company he worked 432 for; he didn’t want to risk losing the gig. Throughout our conversation, 433 though, he repeatedly emphasized his reservations about the system, calling it 434 “shameful”—even without knowledge of the hard details of the program, he 435 understood that his work was creating value for a company, and a system, with 436 little regard for the well-being of independent artists. In general, the 437 musicians working with PFC companies I spoke with were highly critical of the 438 arrangement. One musician who made electronic compositions for Epidemic Sound 439 told me about how “the creative process was more about replicating playlist 440 styles and vibes than looking inward.” Another musician, a professional audio 441 engineer who turned out ambient recordings for a different PFC partner, told me 442 that he stopped making this type of stock music because “it felt unethical, 443 like some kind of money-laundering scheme.” 444 445 According to a former Spotify employee, the managers of the PFC program 446 justified its existence internally in part by claiming that the participating 447 musicians were true artists like any other—they had simply chosen to monetize 448 their creative work in a different way. (A Spotify spokesperson confirmed this, 449 pointing out that “music that an artist creates but publishes under a band name 450 or a pseudonym has been popular across mediums for decades.”) But the PFC 451 musicians I spoke to told a different story. They did not consider their work 452 for these companies to be part of their artistic output. One composer I spoke 453 with compared it to the use of soundalikes in the advertising business, when a 454 production company asks an artist to write and record a cheaper version of a 455 popular song. 456 457 “It’s kind of like taking a standardized test, where there’s a range of right 458 answers and a far larger range of wrong answers,” the jazz musician said. “It 459 feels like someone is giving you a prompt or a question, and you’re just 460 answering it, whether it’s actually your conviction or not. Nobody I know would 461 ever go into the studio and record music this way.” 462 463 All this points to a disconcerting context collapse for musicians—to the way in 464 which being an artist and the business of background music are increasingly 465 entwined, and the distinctions of purpose increasingly blurred. PFC is in some 466 ways similar to production music, audio made in bulk on a work-for-hire basis, 467 which is often fully owned by production companies that make it easily 468 available to license for ads, in-store soundtracks, film scores, and the like. 469 In fact, PFC seems to encompass repurposed production-music catalogues, but it 470 also appears to include work commissioned more directly for mood playlists, as 471 suggested by one the Spotify StraP team’s discussion of an ongoing “wishlist 472 for PFC partners” on Slack. 473 474 Production music is booming today thanks to a digital environment in which a 475 growing share of internet traffic comes from video and audio. Generations of 476 YouTube and TikTok influencers strive to avoid the complicated world of sync 477 licensing (short for music synchronization licensing, the process of acquiring 478 rights to play music in the background of audiovisual content) and the 479 possibility of content being removed for copyright violations. Companies like 480 Epidemic Sound purport to solve this problem, claiming to simplify sync 481 licensing by offering a library of pre-cleared, royalty-free production music 482 for a monthly or yearly subscription fee. They also provide in-store music for 483 retail outlets, in the tradition of muzak. 484 485 As Epidemic grew, it started to behave like a record label. “Similar to any 486 label, we were doing licenses with DSPs,” one former employee told me, 487 referring to digital service providers such as Amazon Music, Apple Music, and 488 Spotify. “Epidemic’s content is primarily being made for sync, so it’s 489 primarily non-lyrical. This includes ambient content, lo-fi beats, classical 490 compositions. Things a YouTube creator might put over a landscape video. And 491 this content tends to also do well in playlists such as ‘Deep Focus,’ for 492 example, on Spotify.” 493 494 Unsurprisingly, one of the first venture-capital firms to invest in Spotify, 495 Creandum, also invested early in Epidemic. In 2021, Epidemic raised 496 $450 million from Blackstone Growth and EQT Growth, increasing the company’s 497 valuation to $1.4 billion. It is striking, even now, that these venture 498 capitalists saw so much potential for profit in background music. “This is, at 499 the end of the day, a data business,” the global head of Blackstone Growth said 500 at the time. The Spotify–Epidemic corporate synergies reflect how streaming has 501 flattened differences across music. The industry has contributed to a massive 502 wave of consolidation: different music-adjacent industries and ecosystems that 503 previously operated in isolation all suddenly depend on royalties from the same 504 platforms. And it has led to the blurring of aesthetic boundaries as well. The 505 musician who made tracks for Epidemic Sound and ended up on many PFC-heavy 506 playlists told me that he was required to release the tracks under his real 507 artist name, on his preexisting Spotify page. “My profile on Spotify picked up 508 a lot once my Epidemic compositions found their way onto playlists,” he said. 509 “The sad thing is that rarely results in playlist listeners digging deeper into 510 the artist of a track they hear or like.” 511 512 The Epidemic artist explained how each month started with the company 513 presenting a new playlist it had created. “You are then to compose however many 514 tracks you and Epidemic agree on, drawing ‘inspiration’ from said playlist,” he 515 told me. “Ninety-eight percent of the time, these playlists had very little to 516 do with my own artistic vision and vibe but, rather, focused on what Epidemic 517 felt its subscribers were after. So essentially, I was composing bespoke music. 518 This annoyed the fuck out of me.” 519 520 But at the end of the day, he said, it was still a paycheck: “I did it because 521 I needed a job real bad and the money was better than any money I could make 522 from even successful indie labels, many of which I worked with,” he told me. 523 “Honestly, I had no idea which tracks I made would end up doing well. . . . 524 Every track I made for Epidemic was based on their curated playlist.” 525 526 While it’s true that the business of sync licensing can be complicated, 527 musicians from the Ivors Academy, a British advocacy organization for 528 songwriters and composers, say that the “frictions” companies like Epidemic 529 seek to smooth out are actually hard-won industry protections. “Simplicity is 530 overrated when it comes to your rights,” Kevin Sargent, a composer of 531 television and film scores, told me. In claiming to “simplify” the mechanics of 532 the background-music industry, Epidemic and its peers have championed a system 533 of flat-fee buyouts. The Epidemic composer I spoke with said that his payments 534 were routinely around $1,700, and that the tracks were purchased by Epidemic as 535 a complete buyout. “They own the master,” he told me. Epidemic’s selling point 536 is that the music is royalty-free for its own subscribers, but it does collect 537 royalties from streaming services; these it splits with artists fifty-fifty. 538 But in the case of the musician I spoke with, the streaming royalty checks from 539 tracks produced for Epidemic Sound were smaller than those for his non-Epidemic 540 tracks, and artists are not entitled to certain other royalties: to refine its 541 exploitative model, Epidemic does not work with artists who belong to 542 performance-rights organizations, the groups that collect royalties for 543 songwriters when their compositions are played on TV or radio, online, or even 544 in public. “It’s essentially a race to the bottom,” the production-music 545 composer Mat Andasun told me. 546 547 The musician who made ambient tracks for one of the PFC partner companies told 548 me about power imbalances he experienced on the job. “There was a fee paid up 549 front,” he explained to me. “It was like, ‘We’ll give you a couple hundred 550 bucks. You don’t own the master. We’ll give you a percentage of publishing.’ 551 And it was basically pitched to me that I could do as many of these tracks as I 552 wanted.” In the end, he recorded only a handful of tracks for the company, 553 released under different aliases, and made a couple thousand dollars. The money 554 seemed pretty good at first, since each track took only a few hours. But as a 555 couple of the tracks took off on Spotify, one garnering millions upon millions 556 of streams, he started to see how unfair the deal was in the long term: the 557 tracks were generating far more revenue for Spotify and the ghost label than he 558 would ever see, because he owned no part of the master and none of the 559 publishing rights. “I’m selling my intellectual property for essentially 560 peanuts,” he said. 561 562 He quickly succumbed to the feeling that something was wrong with the 563 arrangement. “I’m aware that the master recording is generating much more than 564 I’m getting. Maybe that’s just business, but it’s so related to being able to 565 get that amount of plays. Whoever can actually get you generating that amount 566 of plays, they hold the power,” the musician told me. 567 568 “It feels pretty weird,” he continued. “My name is not on it. There’s no 569 credit. There’s not a label on it. It’s really like there’s nothing—no composer 570 information. There’s a layer of smoke screen. They’re not trying to have it be 571 traceable.” 572 573 A model in which the imperative is simply to keep listeners around, whether 574 they’re paying attention or not, distorts our very understanding of music’s 575 purpose. This treatment of music as nothing but background sounds—as 576 interchangeable tracks of generic, vibe-tagged playlist fodder—is at the heart 577 of how music has been devalued in the streaming era. It is in the financial 578 interest of streaming services to discourage a critical audio culture among 579 users, to continue eroding connections between artists and listeners, so as to 580 more easily slip discounted stock music through the cracks, improving their 581 profit margins in the process. It’s not hard to imagine a future in which the 582 continued fraying of these connections erodes the role of the artist 583 altogether, laying the groundwork for users to accept music made using 584 generative-AI software. 585 586 “I’m sure it’s something that AI could do now, which is kind of scary,” one of 587 the former Spotify playlist editors told me, referring to the potential for AI 588 tools to pump out audio much like the PFC tracks. The PFC partner companies 589 themselves understand this. According to Epidemic Sound’s own public-facing 590 materials, the company already plans to allow its music writers to use AI tools 591 to generate tracks. In its 2023 annual report, Epidemic explained that its 592 ownership of the world’s largest catalogue of “restriction-free” tracks made it 593 “one of the best-positioned” companies to allow creators to harness “AI’s 594 capabilities.” Even as it promoted the role that AI would play in its business, 595 Epidemic emphasized the human nature of its approach. “Our promise to our 596 artists is that technology will never replace them,” read a post on Epidemic’s 597 corporate blog. But the ceaseless churn of quickly generated ghost-artist 598 tracks already seems poised to do just that. 599 600 Spotify, for its part, has been open about its willingness to allow AI music on 601 the platform. During a 2023 conference call, Daniel Ek noted that the boom in 602 AI-generated content could be “great culturally” and allow Spotify to “grow 603 engagement and revenue.” That’s an unsurprising position for a company that has 604 long prided itself on its machine-learning systems, which power many of its 605 recommendations, and has framed its product evolution as a story of AI 606 transformation. These automated recommendations are, in part, how Spotify was 607 able to usher in another of its most contentious cost-saving initiatives: 608 Discovery Mode, its payola-like program whereby artists accept a lower royalty 609 rate in exchange for algorithmic promotion. Like the PFC program, tracks 610 enrolled in Discovery Mode are unmarked on Spotify; both schemes allow the 611 service to push discount content to users without their knowledge. Discovery 612 Mode has drawn scrutiny from artists, organizers, and lawmakers, which 613 highlights another reason the company may ultimately prefer the details of its 614 ghost-artist program to remain obscure. After all, protests for higher royalty 615 rates can’t happen if playlists are filled with artists who remain in the 616 shadows. 617 618 [63]Liz Pelly 619 620 is the author of [64]Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the 621 Perfect Playlist, from which this excerpt is taken. It will be published in 622 January by One Signal Publishers, an imprint of Atria Books. 623 624 625 Tags 626 627 [65]Amazon Music [66]Apple Music [67]Artificial intelligence [68]Corporate 628 profits [69]Epidemic Sound (music production company) [70]Exploitation [71]Jazz 629 [72]Liz Pelly [73]Music [74]Music production [75]Music streaming services [76] 630 Musicians [77]Perfect Fit Content (PFC) [78]Playlist editors [79]Publishing 631 rights [80]Record labels [81]Scandals [82]Slack [83]Songs [84]Sony Music 632 Entertainment [85]Spotify [86]Stock music [87]Strategic planning [88]Sweden 633 [89]TikTok [90]Universal Music Group [91]Warner Brothers Records [92]Yoshi 634 Sodeoka [93]YouTube 635 Adjust 636 [94] [95] 637 Share 638 [96] [97] [98] 639 640 Seven sources requested to remain anonymous out of fears of professional 641 retaliation. 642 643 [100] [logo] 644 [101] Subscribe for Full Access 645 646 • [102] Current Issue 647 [103] Advertising [104] Permissions and Reprints [105] Internships [106] 648 Customer Care 649 • [107] The Latest 650 [108] Contact [109] Classifieds [110] Help 651 • [111] Archive 652 [112] Submissions [113] Find a Newsstand 653 • [114] Masthead 654 • [115] About 655 [116] Media [117] Store [118] Terms of Service [119] Privacy Policy 656 657 • [120] Current Issue 658 • [121] The Latest 659 • [122] Archive 660 • [123] Masthead 661 • [124] About 662 • [125] Advertising [126] Permissions and Reprints [127] Internships [128] 663 Customer Care 664 • [129] Contact [130] Classifieds [131] Help 665 • [132] Submissions [133] Find a Newsstand 666 • [134] Media [135] Store [136] Terms of Service [137] Privacy Policy 667 668 © Copyright 2025 Harper's Magazine Foundation [138] Do Not Sell My Personal 669 Information 670 [139] [140] [141] [142] 671 [143] 672 [144]< Previous Issue | [145]View All Issues | Next Issue > 673 674 January 2025 675 676 [146]< Previous Issue | [147]View All Issues | Next Issue > 677 [148]Table of Contents 678 [149]Close 679 [aja] 680 Must be logged in to access Microfiche Images. 681 Close 682 [NYT-Pop-Up] 683 684 “An unexpectedly excellent magazine that stands out amid a homogenized media 685 landscape.” —the New York Times 686 687 [151] Subscribe now 688 Close 689 [Frame-1-40] 690 “An unexpectedly excellent magazine that stands out amid a homogenized media 691 landscape.” —the New York Times 692 [152] Subscribe now 693 Close 694 [153] 695 You’ve read one of your two free articles this month. 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