> I see you toned down the "defrauded" rhetoric to a much more ambiguous "yeah, it was against the spirit of the deal".
I didn't, particularly. It's just another angle on it.
I do think "defrauded" has both legal and moral dimensions, don't you? This is obviously abject shitty treatment or they wouldn't have been secretive about it.
I'm not convinced this isn't both dimensions, though -- not clear who is being defrauded but both the labels and the musicians unions should do their best to establish whether it could be them.
Spotify have crossed a pretty obvious line here. Weird that you appear to think it's, like, no harm no foul if the customers don't notice. Fast food service logic.
There is already quite extensive legal precedent and practice about supermarket own-brand stuff; fifty years of it, with supermarkets retaining teams of lawyers, operating proper clean-room reverse-engineering processes, etc. It's well-trodden legal territory. Supermarkets work right up to the line. But it's no secret that they do, and brands sometimes push back against own-brand deceptions. Mostly supermarkets threaten each other over their own, own-brand stuff. Caterpillar cakes, vodkas etc.
If Spotify were honest that they were adding "own brand" music into the mix, then this would be a different discussion.
(Amazon are required in the UK and EU to identify which are their own brands, and they mostly comply)
> I would bet that it would make zero difference in the amount of plays those tracks got.
Well given that they are inserted into generated playlists and offered up as "similar" playlist suggestions instead of tracks by authentic artists, probably not.
For this to really be resolved they would have to stop putting these tracks in those lists or suggestions panels.
The fact that they evidently list the same track under completely different titles suggests that they are not going to act ethically here.
I didn't, particularly. It's just another angle on it.
I do think "defrauded" has both legal and moral dimensions, don't you? This is obviously abject shitty treatment or they wouldn't have been secretive about it.
I'm not convinced this isn't both dimensions, though -- not clear who is being defrauded but both the labels and the musicians unions should do their best to establish whether it could be them.
Spotify have crossed a pretty obvious line here. Weird that you appear to think it's, like, no harm no foul if the customers don't notice. Fast food service logic.
There is already quite extensive legal precedent and practice about supermarket own-brand stuff; fifty years of it, with supermarkets retaining teams of lawyers, operating proper clean-room reverse-engineering processes, etc. It's well-trodden legal territory. Supermarkets work right up to the line. But it's no secret that they do, and brands sometimes push back against own-brand deceptions. Mostly supermarkets threaten each other over their own, own-brand stuff. Caterpillar cakes, vodkas etc.
If Spotify were honest that they were adding "own brand" music into the mix, then this would be a different discussion.
(Amazon are required in the UK and EU to identify which are their own brands, and they mostly comply)