Our Take on the Spotify Dilemma
Before we start, we must point out all the facts involved, in order to give you the most non-Bias article, since all the information we’ve seen is based on the publisher’s own experience, not applying neutral thinking. At the end of the day, Spotify might be right.
Spotify plans to charge a $10 fee to artists involved in artificial streams.
Artists receive strikes if considered using artificial streams.
Content Take-downs, Songs and Playlists altogether.
Bad Actors taking advantage of the royalty system. (Ghost Producers)
Spotify’s users bot attack each other.
Shady players take advantage of artists by giving artificial streams.
Some independent and major artists feel Spotify is taking advantage of them.
Spotify must be a profitable business in order to continue offering a service.
Spotify saved the music industry from torrent practices.
Fast-forward to nowadays, everyone is able to upload music to Spotify and, with some minor work and investment, find new fans. This in the past was considered impossible. There are around 60 thousand songs uploaded to Spotify on a daily basis, but a large portion of those songs are from ghost producers doing bad practices, playing songs in a loop, getting money from Spotify and from other artists that are actually trying to make a career. Since the money that Spotify makes goes to a pool and the total is distributed between all the participants, you may understand that legit artists are being hurt by ghost producers’ practices. Why, may you ask? because they upload hundreds of songs, using different profiles every day, while a real artist can upload 10 or 14 songs per album top, every 3 months. Spotify understood this situation and took action. However, things started to get difficult because Spotify is also targeting legit artists in this purge.
Some independent artists and some curators are innocent, even if they result in having artificial streams. I will give you 1 example. Some shady player wants to try bots, and they pick some small artists and send the bots their way just for a test. (Unfortunately, we cannot give more examples to avoid people getting more creative) but I believe you understood, those artists were innocent.
Then how should Spotify act with bots and ghost producers? It is easy, all the bot traffic should be ignored and that’s it; no payment for that, but also no punishment. Eventually, ghost producers will understand the strategy is not working anymore and everything should go back to normal. That’s what we believe should be implemented instead of fees, strikes or take-downs, otherwise this can be weaponized, and we could go back to the torrenting system or something worse.
Let us know if you liked our take. We will update this information since this is an ongoing situation.
We will keep you guys posted.
Until next time…
