Hard to believe Spotify is even worse than I thought...

Oh wait, no it's not.

This piece by Ted Goia hits a little harder when you’ve just found out your audio books are on Spotify, and they’re doing very well. And you’ve never been paid by Spotify, over even agreed to let them have your audiobooks.

In early 2022, I started noticing something strange in Spotify’s jazz playlists.

I listen to jazz every day, and pay close attention to new releases. But these Spotify playlists were filled with artists I’d never heard of before.

Who were they? Where did they come from? Did they even exist?…

Many of these artists live in Sweden—where Spotify has its headquarters. According to one source, a huge amount of streaming music originates from just 20 people, who operate under 500 different names.

Some of them were generating supersized numbers. An obscure Swedish jazz musician got more plays than most of the tracks on Jon Batiste’s We Are—which had just won the Grammy for Album of the Year (not just the best jazz album, but the best album in any genre).

How was that even possible?

Turns out its very possible if Spotify has been padding its own streams and playlists with music it auto-generated to cut down on the royalties it pays to actual artists, most of whom have no say in whether they’re on the platform or not. Because paying them one one-thousandth of a cent per stream might mean that Spotify’s billionaire robber baron gets one less diamond in disco ball this quarter.

God I hate this timeline.

FWIW, I haven’t been paid anything by them as far as I can tell.