The next time you fire up Spotify, you may hear an artist you’ve never listened to before. A new book alleges that, in some cases, that’s because the artist doesn’t exist and may be part of an elaborate scheme by the company to reduce royalty rates.
The Swedish music and podcast streaming giant funnels listeners toward what it dubs “perfect fit content,” or what author Liz Pelly less-charitably describes as “low-budget stock muzak” in her forthcoming book, “Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist.”
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Pelly’s book accuses the company of conspiring to make “ghost artists” make up more of the music played on their platform.
The process would benefit Spotify in two ways. First, it would mean more plays for songs that do not require paying royalties. Second, it would drive down the rate Spotify pays top artists based on their percentage of the platform’s overall streams.
She alleges that, to make this happen, the company relies on a network of over a dozen production firms and even had employees slot the tracks into some of its widely streamed curated playlists.
Pelly’s book follows years of reports about the company’s alleged involvement with ghost artists.
Pelly traveled to Sweden to find the production companies that produced the tracks. She also spoke with musicians and Spotify employees and reviewed internal documents and Slack messages.
One Slack message from a Spotify employee raised concerns about the fairness of using ghost artists.
“I wonder how much these plays ‘steal’ from actual ’normal’ artists,” the employee wrote.
Spotify has repeatedly denied creating fake artists. A Spotify spokesperson told Harper’s, the outlet publishing Pelly’s book excerpt, that it welcomes artists who publish under a pseudonym.
However, the advantages Spotify gains may be very small because the streamer pays artists a fraction of a cent each time a listener plays one of their songs.
