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The music industry is engineering artist popularity

Numerous tactics, including payola-like deals on Spotify, are promoting artists people haven’t chosen to hear – but the industry refuses to discuss it

Every other week, a post goes viral on X asking why Chappell Roan’s Good Luck, Babe!, or Sabrina Carpenter’s Espresso, or Billie Eilish’s Birds of a Feather, are constantly being put into a user’s autoplay queue by the streaming service’s algorithm, regardless of what they were listening to previously. Taylor Swift has maintained a chokehold on the charts not just because of widespread listenership of her album The Tortured Poets Department, but because she has savvily released geolocked alternate versions of the record when a competitor, such as Charli xcx, comes within spitting distance of the No 1 spot. Photograph: Erika Goldring/Getty ImagesAnd then, of course, there’s “discovery mode”, a controversial new Spotify feature that allows artists to forgo a portion of their royalties in order to receive a boost in algorithm-led zones of the app such as the autoplay queue, radio, and mixes.

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