Chris Trottier on Nostr: Spotify has been caught red-handed, though they deny it. They claim it isn’t ...
Spotify has been caught red-handed, though they deny it.
They claim it isn’t happening, but reports suggest they’re hiring contractors to create fake artists to pad playlists. Increasingly, the music on Spotify isn’t made by genuine artists—people earnestly trying to make a living in the music industry. Instead, it’s generated by Spotify itself.
Most listeners don’t care. They’re just looking for a mood, a soundtrack to fill their day. They don’t think about who creates the music or what it represents. But at some point, we need to ask ourselves: are we okay supporting this predatory behavior? Sadly, I doubt most people care.
It makes me wonder—when did we, as a society, stop caring about others’ well-being? About whether someone can earn a living doing what they love? We’ve been indoctrinated by capitalism’s survival-of-the-fittest mindset: claim your spot, or someone will take it. But I can’t help feeling disheartened.
I listen to a lot of music and feel connected to the artists. My home is filled with art—paintings, books, vinyl records. When I hear a song, I like to think it tells a story, revealing something about the people who created it. Yet everything feels increasingly artificial.
This isn’t new. Growing up, I knew MTV wasn’t about real music—it sold a lifestyle. The faces in the music videos weren’t living a glamorous life. I met artists who told me touring for 200 days a year was brutal. We worship the glamour, but imagine waking up on a freezing tour bus, miserable. Now, Spotify makes it even harder for musicians to make a living.
Musicians today assume they’ll make next to nothing from recordings. Their songs are now free-to-consume marketing for tours. But even touring is grueling and unpredictable. It’s heartbreaking to see talented people unable to survive on their craft.
I’ve tried to make a living from art. I’ve created, shared, and hoped to connect with others. But the way social media works reduces everything to “content”—just fuel for the algorithm. Your art becomes a commodity, stripped of its humanity, fed into a larger, faceless machine.
This is the world we’re building: Spotifys, YouTubes, TikToks, Facebooks. Does anyone care? They should. We need to reclaim what’s ours—not just as creators but as consumers. We need to care about where our attention goes and what we support.
With platforms growing greedier, controlling what we see and hear, we need to push back. Some argue that removing the old gatekeepers is what caused this mess. But did we really get rid of them? Or did we just trade them for even worse ones? And if so, how do we break down those new walls?
https://harpers.org/archive/2025/01/the-ghosts-in-the-machine-liz-pelly-spotify-musicians/
They claim it isn’t happening, but reports suggest they’re hiring contractors to create fake artists to pad playlists. Increasingly, the music on Spotify isn’t made by genuine artists—people earnestly trying to make a living in the music industry. Instead, it’s generated by Spotify itself.
Most listeners don’t care. They’re just looking for a mood, a soundtrack to fill their day. They don’t think about who creates the music or what it represents. But at some point, we need to ask ourselves: are we okay supporting this predatory behavior? Sadly, I doubt most people care.
It makes me wonder—when did we, as a society, stop caring about others’ well-being? About whether someone can earn a living doing what they love? We’ve been indoctrinated by capitalism’s survival-of-the-fittest mindset: claim your spot, or someone will take it. But I can’t help feeling disheartened.
I listen to a lot of music and feel connected to the artists. My home is filled with art—paintings, books, vinyl records. When I hear a song, I like to think it tells a story, revealing something about the people who created it. Yet everything feels increasingly artificial.
This isn’t new. Growing up, I knew MTV wasn’t about real music—it sold a lifestyle. The faces in the music videos weren’t living a glamorous life. I met artists who told me touring for 200 days a year was brutal. We worship the glamour, but imagine waking up on a freezing tour bus, miserable. Now, Spotify makes it even harder for musicians to make a living.
Musicians today assume they’ll make next to nothing from recordings. Their songs are now free-to-consume marketing for tours. But even touring is grueling and unpredictable. It’s heartbreaking to see talented people unable to survive on their craft.
I’ve tried to make a living from art. I’ve created, shared, and hoped to connect with others. But the way social media works reduces everything to “content”—just fuel for the algorithm. Your art becomes a commodity, stripped of its humanity, fed into a larger, faceless machine.
This is the world we’re building: Spotifys, YouTubes, TikToks, Facebooks. Does anyone care? They should. We need to reclaim what’s ours—not just as creators but as consumers. We need to care about where our attention goes and what we support.
With platforms growing greedier, controlling what we see and hear, we need to push back. Some argue that removing the old gatekeepers is what caused this mess. But did we really get rid of them? Or did we just trade them for even worse ones? And if so, how do we break down those new walls?
https://harpers.org/archive/2025/01/the-ghosts-in-the-machine-liz-pelly-spotify-musicians/