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Ghost artists on Spotify

Spotify’s plot against musicians

While it’s true that the business of sync licensing can be complicated, musicians from the Ivors Academy, a British advocacy organization for songwriters and composers, say that the “frictions” companies like Epidemic seek to smooth out are actually hard-won industry protections. It is in the financial interest of streaming services to discourage a critical audio culture among users, to continue eroding connections between artists and listeners, so as to more easily slip discounted stock music through the cracks, improving their profit margins in the process. During a 2023 conference call, Daniel Ek noted that the boom in AI-generated content could be “great culturally” and allow Spotify to “grow engagement and revenue.” That’s an unsurprising position for a company that has long prided itself on its machine-learning systems, which power many of its recommendations, and has framed its product evolution as a story of AI transformation.

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