On Spotify and Us

To trace the roots of Spotify and the dominance of curated playlists today, we must rewind back to the 1970s and mixtapes. Mixtapes emerged with the advent of cassette tapes and, more importantly, the launch of the Sony Walkman, which made portable music accessible to the masses for the first time. Mixtapes were personal, curated playlists recorded onto cassettes, often shared and copied further. At the same time, radio hosts (e.g. Top 40 shows) were using curated playlists to keep listeners tuned into their frequency.

Into this world came consumer computers, CD/DAT technology, and the digital universe that opened up to the music industry. Sound quality improved, and copying became vastly easier. Around the turn of the millennium, much of this development at the grassroots level was ideologically driven: "information wants to be free!" Sharing music without regard for copyright protections or royalties was seen as cool. If you remember Napster or Pirate Bay, this is the landscape in which they emerged as heroes opposing a greedy music industry.

In the years that followed, legal battles began. Some may remember "DVD-Jon", who stood trial in 2002 for his DeCSS program, which bypassed copyright protections on DVDs. He was not convicted but ceased his work. The legal case against Pirate Bay began in 2006 and ended with a conviction in 2009.

In 2006, Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon entered the digital music scene. These two were not from the music industry but came directly from marketing. They registered Spotify as a brand and began working to establish a legal streaming service. Within a year, they secured deals with most major record labels worldwide and could offer a solid catalogue to an ever-growing number of listeners.

Around 2012, Spotify introduced editorial playlists curated by their in-house team with catchy names like "Rock This!", "Most Necessary", and "100% Lounge." Ek and Lorentzon then acquired Tunigo, a market leader in playlist curation. They hired Tuma Basa, who created "The Rap Caviar," making hip-hop suddenly accessible in a music industry that had previously been restrictive towards the genre. By 2016, Spotify employed 50 curators.

Their goal has always been quantity: to hold listeners' hands and guide them through their day with curated playlists for mornings, work/study, commutes, dinner, evening walks, and sleep. Spotify "cured" the fear of silence by creating a 24-hour music universe with no sharp edges. The platform moulded consumers into passive listeners—background music while doing anything else.

Musical quality, however, has never been a criterion at any stage of this development.

Most of what happened flew under the radar in the established music world. Few understood what was happening, why, or what would eventually come of it. Major artists had lawyers and marketers who could navigate the system and exploit it to their advantage, but most others saw CD sales vanish. Royalty income shrank to a bare minimum.

In this context, Spotify saw an opportunity for greater profit. They gradually filled their PFC (Perfect Fit Content) playlists with self-generated music—either through ghost artists (e.g., Ekfat), often released under the Karlstad-based label Firefly, or phenomena like The Velvet Sundown. Initially, this involved live, uncredited, anonymous musicians who waived all royalties and rights. Over time, however, the music became increasingly AI-generated. Listeners didn't notice the difference, so why pay musicians? For the record: only 2% of Spotify users create their own playlists.

As if this weren't enough, we must also consider the data Spotify collects on every single listener. They store all data—every click you've made in the app, every choice you've made—tied to precise times and locations. As we know from Facebook and Google, this data is incredibly valuable.

First, Spotify can continue developing its "one-button" concept: you turn on Spotify, and the music is chosen for you. Spotify knows you and knows what you want. Second, this data can be sold, which raises concerns about darker scenarios. At the very least, your data is sold via brokers like Acxiom and combined with all your other digital footprints online. This is called "ID syncing".

And, as if that weren't enough, in 2020, Spotify launched its "Discovery Mode", where artists can waive royalties in exchange for a potential increase in playlist placement opportunities.

Benn Jordan, an active YouTuber and Patreon creator, has conducted in-depth research on this topic. As he points out, neither Apple Music nor Tidal is blameless—their payments to artists have declined over the past four years. However, they do not generate fictitious artists and claim to remove AI-generated content where they find it, at least according to their stated guidelines.

Bandcamp was the only alternative that actually paid artists directly, but it has since been acquired by Epic Games, which quickly sold it to Songtradr. Songtradr, in turn, laid off half the staff and is now focused on increasing profitability.

Benn Jordan argues that, with the internet as it functions today, we don't need large providers like the ones mentioned above. Using apps like Signal or Mastodon as examples, he suggests building "networks of networks" for user-generated sharing platforms. Perhaps this could be a potential project for NMH?