Okay, what is it with Swedes min-maxing their way to the top of pop music? How do they do it? Even Pewdiepie is like another case of chasing algorithmic success.
In this case it's not pop music, it's instrumental ambient music and childrens tunes.. Very particular set of playlists, Spotify-owned, that if you get into them you're essentially guaranteed millions of streams (as those playlists have tens of millions of followers that I'm sure just have them on repeat often - guilty here as well..)
Aside from the sketchy issue with faking 750 artist names, apparently the music is good and has good artistic intent within the genre.
According to the article, you can do deals where you trade away part of your royalty for a higher placement on those Spotify-owned playlists, which in his case seems to be the right business choice to make by far.
Why would this be problematic? Artist commonly work under one or more pseudonyms. 750 is quite a lot for sure, but is there material difference between that and just a few?
Hm actually I remember I read in the studio's reply to this, that there weren't 750 active artist names at the same time, this was over many years and they release under some names, then let it go and do 50 new names etc. Still.. it's some kind of diversion of the consumer's expectations. It's one thing to see a pseudonym, but in this case, it was under "normal sounding" names.
Also, the composers' names were faked as well, so there were 750 artist names and 50 composer names..
We used to have Kommunala Musikskolan, where kids for a relatively low fee could learn to play music. In the year 2000 it had 335 000 pupils (at the time the population of Sweden was less than 9 million people).
It's a pretty well known secret that a large part of why there is a Swedish cottage music industry is the historical ease of welfare fraud, on top of the already generous grants for cultural activities. You could basically get the government to not only pay for your rent, but your studio and equipment as well. Generations of Swedish musicians were living off unemployment checks while getting started. That era has drawn to a close, but there's still significant momentum left in the music industry it spawned.
> A “secret” composer who has released music under hundreds of different names has been identified as Sweden’s most-listened-to artist on Spotify – pulling in more plays than Britney Spears or Abba.
He's basically SEOing Spotify. Search for "peaceful piano" or whatever, and you'll likely find the guy's tracks.
At home, whenever we eat X, we have a habit of asking Spotify to play X. We've made some great discoveries this way (Cornflakes 3D is an Israeli psytrance group, while The Dumplings is a Czech indie band), but these days almost all the searches have been hijacked by "playlist called Italian Restaurant Music" etc.
> At home, whenever we eat X, we have a habit of asking Spotify to play X.
I love this idea! It's a shame it doesn't work so well any more, but I love finding new ways to find music that you'd just never listen to normally. It reminds me of the guy who made it is mission to listen to every album that was made in 2016 specifically, and now has hundreds of albums with so much variety, just by picking some specific theme and going wild with it.
I've recently been pointed at the 1001 album generator[1] I just started on thursday and so far it has shown me Rage against the Machine, and some Jazz 20 years older than I am. Quite the experience.
I would assume this is part of Spotify's business model.
If 10% of the music played is from their "preferred" artists, who get say 5% of the commission that Brittney Spears gets, they make more money. Right? That the guy is based in Stockholm is even more evidence this is the case.
They don't need to collude to do this - if Spotify and the guy follow self-interest, you get this outcome.
Maybe, this is what people actually want to listen to and the algorithm is just doing what it's supposed to. I see people listening to these no name artists, the most boring unimaginative generic contemporary music. Maybe this guy just really knows what the average listener likes. In my opinion Spotify's algorithm is the best in knowing what I will like and probably will replay, I don't think it would work this well if they were manually directing us towards artists.
I feel like Spotify'a recommendations want to funnel me into a cohort whose music taste I supposedly share, but I actually don't. Last.fm seemed to both consider my likes more directly and more creatively. 15% or so of duds are fine, it's better than "oh you liked that dark techno track, it's mini-popular right now so have 20 more".
By the way, last.fm radio exists again, though YouTube is the music source these days.
Agree. Actually I’m feed quite feed up with Spotify, and this week decided to get a proper HiRes audio and buy music from places like BandCamp or the CD edition and ripping it.
I miss curating my collection and playlists. It seems that the convenience of having almost all music available in a couple of clicks is making the listening experience less valuable.
I know it's a hipster thing, but if you feel like this, consider getting a record player if you haven't.
I still use Spotify for background music but when I cook or am in another situation where I want to appreciate the music, I put on a record and it feels a lot better. There are a number of psychological effects in play there, like the fact that I am forced to listen to the tracks in the set order, that I've made a commitment by purchasing the record and that it adds atmosphere to the room to have a visibly rotating disc.
He seems to be essentially releasing content PURELY to make the algorithms light up, though, not out of any sort of "honest" artistic intention.
Like all those "$bandname for kids" releases that are just midis played through xylophone, marimba patches, or occasionally strings. Credited to legitimate sounding "artists" like the "Vitamin Quartet".
I am more bothered by the part with having over 650 different artist names that hide their link to each other (unlike Prince/TAFKAP, Kanye/Ye, etc).
I mean: your gripe is basically Spotify's entire raison d'etre. On the other hand, there is absolutely no reason to hide your true identity to such an extent, except to be able to act as your own competition.
That is, I think this person knows very well that by using different artist names, he will get Spotify revenue the listeners think is going to different artists.
Isn't that basically what many authors do? Many authors are afraid of diluting their brand so when they write books in a different genre or style they create a new pen name to keep the works distinct from their main name. For example Stephen King used to write additional books under the name of Richard Bachman, before that identity was linked to him, and the late Samuel Youd used to write under a half-dozen names, most famously as John Christopher (of Tripods and No Blade of Grass fame).
Sure, but the extent differs greatly. Imagine someone doing this to enter an additional genre unburdened by their well-known works - so not "quit the band, band reformed under new name" stuff. In how many genres can a very prolific and competent artist deliver quality works concurrently? 10? 20?
How many profitable genres are there even on Spotify? 100? 200? Where is the line between "revenue-generating label" and "relegated-to-obscurity-by-your-own-choice label"?
I believe an artist can believably perform decently in several genres, but not in hundreds of genres. Moreover, I can understand being cautious when entering a radically new main genre from your usual fare, but I think there are plenty of adjacent genres where there is no significant taint (eg, sword&sorcery / high fantasy / urban fantasy).
As such, to me, there's a crossover point/zone somewhere beyond "several" and before "hundreds" where you're no longer doing it for separating your output along clearly distinct categories where such separation is expected/needed/warranted, but faking an abundance of choice to increase profit.
To me, 650 pseudonyms falls into the latter category - as another comment put it: SEO'ing Spotify to maximise profits. I dislike that, because it has nothing to do with competing on artistic merit.
Yeah, nothing fishy here at all. Why pay tribute to other artists if you can make a deal with one and promote him on all the playlist to pocket back your money. Just give him the machinery and funding to create all of it and voila!
You can apparently trade off 3/4 of your royaltys for a higher placement on the coveted Spotify-owned playlists of different types of ambient music, childrens songs etc. According to the article. But stuff like that is not very transparent I guess..
To answer your question, they pocket it back by paying it to themselves. The artist is only formally an external ”artist”, but in this case he’s essentially one of their own. They curate him, let him on all the most promoted playlists and keep an appearance as if they’re paying it to some artist just like they do to anyone else. That artist gets all this firepower by agreeing to keep less of the cut while paying more of it back to Spotify in some other ways and it is all kept under the radar. That’s what I suppose.
Just a guess but maybe not all deals between Spotify and artists are the same (% royalties paid)?
If that was the case and Spotify music picking algorithms chose artists with lower % royalty, Spotify would save money.
My understanding is that that's not really how Spotify's financials work, in that how much will be paid as royalties _in general_ to everyone is calculated first as the "royalty pool" (something like 66% of revenue), and then how that money is split and to whom is calculated secondarily (using an algorithm called "streamshare").
So in this case, its affecting the "streamshare" calculation, but not the "royalty pool" one, and so not affecting how much money is in Spotify's pocket.
Yep, most people never heard of Max Martin - another Swede - but probably listed to his songs so many times.
The Weeknd, Katy Perry, Bon Jovi, Usher, Pink and many more have their hit songs made by this guy. It's amazing, he somehow trained his neural networks to produce global hit songs.
He is doing this straight from 1998 to this day starting with "...Baby One More Time" of Britney Spears. This year he already has 2 songs as #1 on the Billboard HOT 100.
I just picked for style diversity and recentness but sure Britney Spears and Backstreet Boys are definitely some of the biggest names who have hits by Max Martin.
What I wonder is if Spotify's algorithm works in such a way that it ranks based on users fully listening and liking most songs, wouldn't he have actually been better off releasing all his music under one name, vs many? Because he is still releasing quite a bit of volume to achieve this
Not necessarily, it might be better to stratify by genre (like buying a separate domain for different product verticals), to make the algorithm think each one is super relevant and specific.
Exactly. Listeners expect an artist to stay in their lane. A cross-genre artist would be wildly unpopular. Think of a guy releasing both country and hip hop music: he would be disliked by both listeners.
you have to remember this is the tactic food industry have understood for decades by selling multiple branda of potato chips masquarading as 'choices' to capture as wide a market as possible. Can you blame a person for doing the same.
Whether you think music streaming in its current form is a net good or bad for humanity, consider not supporting Spotify the company. From the very start, they're nothing but grifters.
Daniel Ek has his background in ads, SEO and related stuff –basically every possible way to make a buck using this newfangled internet thing – including selling virtual clothes for virtual dolls to kids age 9-17.
The teaming up with Martin Lorentzon was never about music, but simply finding an untapped market, a niche in which to apply their particular set of skills of hawking stuff online. They teamed up with the guy behind µTorrent and eventually convinced the major labels to buy into the idea (by getting a cut). The idea that they are on the side the art form, let alone artists, is pure mythogenesis to serve their brand.
Recently, music hasn't been enough to feed the growth. They want to colonize podcasts, an open ecosystem, and have put billions of dollars into investments and deals locking popular podcasts onto their platforms. They now intend to do the same with audio books.
Spotify has from the very start had an incestuous relationship with labels and various middlemen. It was never a fair game, they make special deals whenever it serves their purpose (driving the price down). Everyone involved is guaranteed to make a cut before the artist, and the entire ecosystem is built upon the idea that the less they pay out to the artist, the better their numbers look. Nowadays they don't even pay out anything at all unless you have 1000 streams, which just happens to be about two thirds of the catalogue. Is it in their best interest to keep songs with 500 streams from getting more streams, or not?
Why would they care about money laundering, or legitimate artists having their entire body of work deleted by a middleman because someone maliciously sent a bot their way?[1] The cheaper they can amass content, the better. Hence these backroom deals with what are basically content farms. What the featured article describes is not only sanctioned, it's the entire strategy going forward.
Once generative AI comes further along, what their algorithm will push will continue to be what serves their bottom line, i.e. the cheap stuff. You'll soon see the audio book equivalent of Johan Röhr, churning out thousands of books, narrated in real time by a non-human voice, algorithmically pushing out authentic works from all the lists.
> How much Röhr, who has worked as a conductor on pop stars’ tours and on TV, has earned from his agreement with Spotify is not known. However, his private company reportedly made 32.7mn kronor (£2.4m) in 2022, when it had a record year.
Well Britney Spears and Abba are not 90% of humanity and he is reportedly listened-to more than them.
This makes me wonder how big musicians make most of their money actually. Live concerts? Selling merchandise? Genuine question. For all I know it's not topping the Spotify.
