Liz Pelly, writing for Harper’s Magazine, details how Spotify has quietly been swapping music by well-known artists from its playlists with tracks it commissioned from unknown artists: Before the year was out, the music writer David Turner had used analytics data to illustrate how Spotify’s “Ambient Chill” playlist had largely been wiped of well-known artists […]

The Baffler: Spotify specifically wants to be seen as a mood-boosting platform. In Spotify for Brands blog posts, the company routinely emphasizes how its own platform distinguishes itself from other streams of digital content, particularly because it gives marketers a chance to reach users through a medium that is widely seen as a “positive enhancer”: […]

Spotify, like Netflix, wants you to stream. That’s the point of a streaming service. To achieve that both platforms do two things: they make sure that the system nudges you into endless streaming (e.g. by auto-playing episodes) and they produce content which streams well. The Baffler argues that there is now a new type of […]

Le critiche alla ‘sostenibilità’ di Spotify e altri servizi di streaming rispuntano con frequente cadenza. Spesso si parla di microguadagni, o stream di centesimi per gli artisti, ma come un articolo su Medium fa notare il problema — più che Spotify — è legato all’industria discografica, alle etichette discografiche e a come, semplicemente, gli artisti […]

Spotify è un ottimo servizio per l’utente, lo è un po’ di meno per chi la musica la fa: From 78 r.p.m. records to the age of iTunes, artists’ record royalties have been counted as a percentage of a sale price. On a 99-cent download, a typical artist may earn 7 to 10 cents after deductions […]