When MBW’s story broke, some dismissed the importance of “fake artists” to Spotify’s economic status, suggesting that the total amount of streams accumulated by these acts wasn’t large enough to have a material impact on the firm’s bottom line. An ex-Spotify insider was once quoted by Variety as suggesting that this was a deliberate company strategy: “It’s one of a number of internal initiatives to lower the royalties paying to the major labels,” they said. The important bit: if “fake artists” are paid lower contractual royalty rates than “real” acts, and then, driven by playlist inclusion, claim a certain percentage of Spotify’s total monthly streams, Spotify ends up keeping more money. This means – as explained on Rolling Stone previously – that the firm divides its total industry payout across the entirety of artists on its platform, based on their portion of overall streams. Why? Because Spotify pays out royalties on a pro rata basis. Yet the same acts barely had any other internet presence – including zero social media credentials – and their names did not appear on any other music services (save for fans of their music ripping their songs off Spotify and uploading them to YouTube). Each had only uploaded a handful of songs to their profile, all of which achieved very prevalent placings in first-party Spotify “mood” or “activity” playlists – such as Deep Focus, Sleep or Peaceful Piano, which count millions of followers on the platform. There were a number of suspicious elements to these acts. The exposé listed 50 artists we suspected were fictional, and who, it was speculated, were playing a key role in a money-saving exercise by Spotify. Two summers ago, Music Business Worldwide ran a report on “f ake artists” appearing on Spotify, which caused ripples across the global music industry. The frontman appeared to hint that the Pistols – for many, the purest distillation of the punk aesthetic – may have been flirting with artifice all along.įast-forward to the streaming-dominated music industry of 2019, and Rotten’s pugnacious kiss-off doesn’t only sound depressingly prophetic – it’s actually become a business model. That classic line, delivered by Johnny Rotten in January 1978 during The Sex Pistols’ farewell show at San Francisco’s Winterland Ballroom, remains the stuff of legend. Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?
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