What is the reality of Spotify's royalty reduction program that fills popular playlists with 'ghost artists'?
It has been pointed out that music streaming service Spotify has many songs by artists who work under fictitious names, known as 'ghost artists,' on its popular playlists. Spotify calls these songs 'Perfect Fit Content (PFC)' and actively uses them as part of its monetization strategy, as revealed by author Liz Perry in her book '
The Ghosts in the Machine, by Liz Pelly
https://harpers.org/archive/2025/01/the-ghosts-in-the-machine-liz-pelly-spotify-musicians/
Fejkade artister på Spotify spelas miljontals gånger - DN.se
The Ugly Truth About Spotify Is Finally Revealed
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Since around 2017, Perry has been hearing rumors that 'Stock music by ghost artists is filling up popular playlists on Spotify.' Official Spotify playlists have relatively high play rates and are a valuable source of income for artists and music labels, so if stock music dominates the playlists, artists and labels will lose their source of income.
Perry was initially skeptical of the rumor, but received reports of the issue from many musicians and labels. Around the same time, an article was published on the Internet claiming that Spotify was filling some of its playlists with cheap fake artists created by the company, causing a stir. However, a Spotify spokesperson denied the report, saying it was 'categorically untrue.'
In 2023, music writer David Turner reported that Spotify's 'Ambient Chill' playlist had been nearly wiped of famous artists and replaced with music from Swedish stock music company Epidemic Sound.
Perry points out that these 'ghost artists' have characteristics such as 'millions of plays on Spotify and appear on various playlists,' 'they often have a Spotify verified artist badge,' 'they are often affiliated with stock music companies such as Epidemic Sound,' 'their profile images are likely AI-generated, and their bios often lack any artist bios or links to their official websites,' and 'if you Google their names, you won't find any information about them.'
In addition, Swedish daily newspaper Dagens Nyheter compared Spotify streaming data with documents obtained from copyright collection organization STIM and reported that 'around 20 composers have produced music for more than 500 'artists', whose songs have been played millions of times on Spotify.'
Perry has been investigating ghost artists for over a year by talking to former Spotify employees, reviewing Spotify's internal records and Slack messages, and communicating with many musicians. As a result, it was revealed that Spotify has partnerships with some stock music companies, and some Spotify teams are adding songs from these stock music companies to playlists across the platform. This stock music can be streamed more cheaply than music produced by human artists, so Spotify is working to increase the total number of streams of stock music.
A series of programs including partnerships between Spotify and stock music companies are called PFC, and they pose a threat to human artists and have led to criticism that Spotify is sacrificing the quality of music in pursuit of profits. In addition, artists who produce PFC songs are only paid a few hundred dollars (tens of thousands of yen) per song, and the ownership of the master recordings belongs to the stock music companies, so artists cannot earn any future revenue. In addition, there are numerous restrictions, such as artists who belong to performing rights societies being unable to participate in PFC.
Still, some of the artists Perry interviewed said they had to take on jobs producing PFC songs to make a living. One artist said he didn't get any joy out of producing PFC songs.
According to a former Spotify employee, PFC's managers justified its existence and activities by arguing that 'musicians who participated in the program simply chose to monetize their creative work in a different way.' A Spotify spokesperson confirmed the existence of PFC, pointing out that 'artists have been releasing music under the names of their bands or other acts for decades.'
The production of PFC songs is patterned, and after the stock music company sends the artist a link to the target playlist, the artist creates the song based on instructions such as 'simple,' 'avoid challenging or aggressive elements,' and 'as ordinary as possible' to avoid excessively attracting the attention of the listener. In addition, the production time of the song is short, and it seems that about 15 songs can be recorded in 1 to 2 hours. In most cases, the recording of the song is done in one take.
However, in recent years, with the development of AI technology, many of the songs used in PFC can now be generated by AI. Spotify itself has also shown a positive attitude towards introducing AI-generated music to its platform, and Perry is concerned about the possibility that ghost artists will be replaced by AI in the future and that this could affect employment in the music industry.
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