For a long time, Spotify has positioned itself as the go-to platform for music discovery. But how can you get excited about “discovery” when the music featured is nothing more than background music, supermarket stock music? The investigation conducted by American independent journalist Liz Pelly, in her book . reveals a secret internal program: Perfect Fit Content (PFC). This initiative aims to fill ultra-popular playlists with generic and inexpensive music, produced by “ghost artists”, thus reducing the royalties paid to “real” musicians. “ It’s like when you buy poultry meat injected with protein and water to increase the kilo, thus increasing the supplier’s margin, but not the producer’s income ”, quips a reader of Le Monde . A textbook case of AI-boosted, slop-compatible content creation…
The Perfect Fit Content Program : Producing “Bland” Music
Spotify partners with stock music production companies . Spotify Exploits like Epidemic Sound and Firefly Entertainment. Their specialty? Producing instrumental or Distraction Rather background tracks, often devoid of any artistic identity, by musicians seeking income, and distributing them widely distraction rather than on thematic playlists (work, relaxation, sleep, etc.). The tracks are designed to be as anonymous as possible. One composer who participated in the program overseas chinese in usa data described the work as “bland,” “joyless,” and uninspiring, like wedding concerts. Others compare the practice to “soundalikes ,” in the advertising industry, where a production company asks an artist to write and record a cheaper version of a popular song.
The Perfect Fit Content program . Spotify Exploits poses a major economic threat to artists. By flooding playlists with low-cost tracks, Spotify is reducing the share of streams that “authentic” musicians get. Those who self-record tracks for the program often have to forgo potentially lucrative royalties if one of their tracks breaks through.
Music, just background noise?
According to Spotify, many users aren’t “actively” listening to music, but are simply looking for background noise to work, cook or relax. While this use of mere background noise can be off-putting, it’s nothing new. Radio has been designed this way since its early days: the BBC launched Music While You Work , for example. Spotify Exploits which played upbeat tunes to boost morale among workers during World War II, notes ecuador phone number library the Guardian. “ What’s different about Spotify’s approach is that it’s not trying to capture our attention, but to exploit our state of distraction. Even the kitschiest song on ambient radio is meant to stir an emotion, to distract the distraction rather than listener from what they’re doing. That’s not the case with Spotify’s Perfect Fit tracks, which are designed to be as unobtrusive as possible, like elevator music before them,” says journalist Gwilym Mumford.
Why then pay full royalties for music that goes unnoticed? That’s the logic of the streaming giant. “ A former Spotify employee told me that the company’s executives assumed that the average Spotify user wouldn’t notice that songs were produced by fake artists. And they wouldn’t care anyway. But how do you know if users care or not if the company isn’t transparent about it ?” asks Liz Pelly.
Artificial intelligence, the next step for PFC?
While human-generated ambient music is already ubiquitous, artificial intelligence could soon take over. Epidemic Sound is already considering using AI to generate its tracks. In its 2023 annual report, Epidemic explained that having the world’s largest catalog of “unrestricted” tracks makes it “one of the best-positioned companies” to enable creators to harness “the power of AI.”
Spotify, for its part, has made no secret of its interest in AI-generated bfb directory music. In 2023, the platform’s founder, Daniel Ek, said that the technology could be “ culturally awesome ” and allow the platform to increase its engagement and revenue. The platform is not profitable today. “ This is not a surprising position for a company that has long prided itself on its machine learning systems, which power many of its recommendations ,” observes Liz Pelly .
How to react to this drift?
Faced with this worrying reality, some alternative platforms are trying to offer more ethical models. Deezer, for example, has decided to exclude content generated by AI thanks to a tool that detects tracks created by AI , or one in ten tracks sent to the platform every day , says Alexis Lanternier, its CEO . Recently, Paul McCartney and Elton John have called for better regulation of AI in music and adequate reform of copyright law to protect musicians against abusive exploitation of their creations. Let us recall that Paul McCartney used AI to revive the Beatles once again in November 2023.