I’m not defending Spotify nor do I like the company but I have two problems with this article’s rhetoric:
1) the word payola isn’t technically correct to describe Spotify “optimizing” its cost of goods sold by replacing with mass produced, farmed content. It’s more similar to Amazon Basics category of goods.
So payola is not the right term, since no one’s paying them to promote some music on the platform. Actually there’s real payola and that’s from companies like Universal music promoting drake etc
2) calling the Spotify owned content “slop” is kinda unfair to the creators. Afaik it’s not AI generated and there is real musicians making money off of this (albeit little)
3) I’m almost positive that Spotify will just start using AI exclusively for creating this slop very soon
To directly address point #2, this may be music played by real musicians, but it is produced in a way that systemically forces it to be slop. Consider these quotes from the Liz Pelly investigation cited where a musician who created some of this music described how the process went:
> As he described it, making new PFC starts with studying old PFC: it’s a feedback loop of playlist fodder imitated over and over again. A typical session starts with a production company sending along links to target playlists as reference points. His task is to then chart out new songs that could stream well on these playlists. “Honestly, for most of this stuff, I just write out charts while lying on my back on the couch,” he explained. “And then once we have a critical mass, they organize a session and we play them. And it’s usually just like, one take, one take, one take, one take. You knock out like fifteen in an hour or two.” With the jazz musician’s particular group, the session typically includes a pianist, a bassist, and a drummer. An engineer from the studio will be there, and usually someone from the PFC partner company will come along, too—acting as a producer, giving light feedback, at times inching the musicians in a more playlist-friendly direction. The most common feedback: play simpler. “That’s definitely the thing: nothing that could be even remotely challenging or offensive, really,” the musician told me. “The goal, for sure, is to be as milquetoast as possible.”
1) the word payola isn’t technically correct to describe Spotify “optimizing” its cost of goods sold by replacing with mass produced, farmed content. It’s more similar to Amazon Basics category of goods.
So payola is not the right term, since no one’s paying them to promote some music on the platform. Actually there’s real payola and that’s from companies like Universal music promoting drake etc
2) calling the Spotify owned content “slop” is kinda unfair to the creators. Afaik it’s not AI generated and there is real musicians making money off of this (albeit little)
3) I’m almost positive that Spotify will just start using AI exclusively for creating this slop very soon