GET WRAPPED UP IN TALKING ABOUT MUSIC WITH OTHERS INSTEAD OF SPOTIFY
It’s the most musical time of the year, with Spotify and other music streaming platforms releasing their yearly overview of each users’ most played tracks, artists and genres to share with on their Instagram stories. With Spotify Wrapped as the leading face of this operation, this event has transformed how we interact with music, as a hobby, through a multitude of features that prioritize the convenience of their users.
However, as Spotify continues to profit from our need for convenience, it is important to understand that convenience comes at a steep cost for the users, the artists, as well as global affairs.
Artificial Intelligence cost
Spotify’s reliance on generative Artificial Intelligence (AI), specifically Large Language Models (LLMs), has been quite apparent within the past decade. Incorporations of features such as AI playlists, a prompt-based tool to create playlists for users, and the recent DJ, “a personalized AI guide” that selects tracks based on your music listening patterns all while presenting each track like a FM radio host, have transformed the user’s engagement with music.
Spotify’s efforts to “connect listeners with audio deeply personalized and contextually relevant experiences” may be impressive on a technical level, however, those same efforts have leaned towards individualizing the hobby, making it more convenient to trust the LLMs to make choices based on your personalized music taste.
This was particularly present last year, as Spotify Wrapped introduced ‘AI Podcast,’ a “personalized Audio Overview” of users’ artists and track trends of the year through the voice of two podcast hosts.
While I revisited my own Wrapped AI podcast, the personalization attempts from Spotify were lackluster at best, as they repeated my top tracks and my top artist. But what makes me a little concerned, were the shallow comments given to my personal taste. Although this feature may be helpful for the accessibility of visually impaired individuals, it fosters a reliance on the platform to accept their non-nuanced assessments on your personal taste as statistically factual, rather encouraging users to independently make their own or collective conclusion on your music taste.
This level of personalization leans towards the convenience of the individual, discouraging community conversations to discover new music and articulate your reasoning as for why you enjoy said music, which ultimately brings Spotify more profits.
Spotify’s royalties cost
As Spotify is one of the world’s most used music streaming platforms, artists are aware of the need to feature their tracks and albums on the platform to convenience possible listeners to their page, with the dream of gaining a comfortable wage with the royalties from their music.
Despite Spotify reporting “nearly 1,500 artists earn[ing] over $1 million US in royalties” in 2024, the artists in question are industry giants with millions, if not billions, of streams on their platform. Spotify’s royalties model is reliant on the number of streams, with a whopping 0.003 USD per stream, which goes through publishing labels, recording labels, and distributors before reaching to the artist themselves.
For small artists, this compensation model is exploitative, as Spotify directly profits on their work, forcing these artists to rely on alternative ways to gain a livable wage. And with “nearly 86% of all tracks” on the platform not reaching 1,000 plays, Spotify takes advantage of smaller creators by generating revenue through our engagement with an artist’s songs.
As we continue to use Spotify out of convenience, we contribute to a vicious cycle: where artists are not compensated, but are aware of the importance of staying on Spotify and other streaming platforms to potentially build a following, with the hope to one day be compensated for their work.
Investment cost
Daniel Ek, Spotify’s CEO, newest business venture has been a point of controversy, as he invested 700 million USD on an AI centered arms company, named Helsing. The German-based company has been linked to using selling their products to further escalate the genocide in Gaza, as well as Israel’s “series of airstrikes against Iran.”
In response to Ek’s investments, many artists have removed their entire discographies off the platform. This is not the first time artists have left Spotify in mass, with people calling for a boycott of the platform “after Spotify cut 150$ million dollars from songwriter royalties” and Spotify’s complicity in the rampant spread of disinformation about COVID-19 by the podcaster Joe Rogan.
Artists such as Deerhoof and King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard have joined the now growing artist that are no longer found on Spotify, stating that their disapproval of having their royalties actively contribute to genocides. However, these acts of boycott barely affect Spotify’s revenue as mainstream artists like Taylor Swift are responsible for Spotify’s billions of dollars as they retain the majority of listeners on the platform.
As the primary consumers of Spotify’s services, being aware of the platform’s tactics of using our need for convenience while engaging in the hobby of listening to music and the harm that has unfolded from the prioritization of convenience is simply not enough. Instead, a radical shift in how we engage with music must centre the idea that convenience under capitalism is always linked to exploitation.
Rather than promoting Spotify Wrapped this year, decide to support your favorite artists directly through platforms like Bandcamp, using your library card to access free music streaming services such as hoopla, buy physical copies of your favorite album, or simply reduce your time on the platform.
As inconvenient as this may seem, efforts to decentralize the power of companies like Spotify will reorient our prioritization towards artists and their craft, as well as building communal perspective towards music.
