🎧 Spotify's secrets revealed

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long time no see, do gooders. it’s a new year meaning a slightly new email look and feel. my priority here is to make this thing easy to skim so that you can get in, get what you need, and gtfo as quickly as possible. always keep the feedback coming. baby steps, people, baby steps!

remember that all typos are intentional just to make sure you’re paying attention.

OPENING ACTS

this week in music headlines

• Kidz Bop released it’s 50th album this week, meaning you can now listen to your nose-picking little cousin sing about coffee

• this was definitely the biggest snub of the Oscars

• Kristen Stewart launched her music career

• a statistical analysis of the most underappreciated artists of all time. i am playing the smolest violin for the cast of Glee.

• Brittany Howard, lead singer of the Alabama Shakes, has started a hardcore band

HEADLINER

Spotify is on the highway to hell

i will start off by acknowledging the inherent contradiction of what i am about to write. yes, while i really detest many of Spotify’s practices, this newsletter also depends on it. i consume my discover weekly playlist like the gremlin that i am, i make the weekly ‘ten good songs’ playlist using Spotify’s platform, and hell i’ll admit it, i was a campus ambassador for Spotify in college! okay now that that’s out of the way…

this year, there have already been a slew of headlines that have portrayed Spotify in a remarkably negative light, mainly spurred by the release of Liz Pelly’s new book Mood Machine, which details the inner workings of Spotify’s money-making operation. if you’d like to dig in to the headlines yourself, check these out and make sure to have a pillow next to you so you can scream into it:

• The Ghosts in the Machine (Harpers Magazine)

• What Spotify Took from Us by Giving Us Everything (The Verge)

• You Can’t Outrun Spotify (Vulture)

if you’d like the TLDR, i regret to inform you that…

• labels pay big money for a position in your Discover Weekly and Daily Mix playlists

• some playlists are 50% comprised of commissioned filler tracks that are paid for by Spotify for pennies on the dollar

• fraud runs rampant on Spotify’s platform, squandering the already paltry royalties that are paid to artists, and Spotify isn’t very motivated to fix it

in essence, the game is rigged and Spotify would rather you listen to filler music that they put there themselves instead of music by… ya know… artists who are trying to make a living?

with the pivot to video podcasts and the introduction of audiobooks, we can already see that Spotify is making strides to be a “content” platform instead of a “music” platform. but with that broader focus will come an inevitable enshittification of the experience. no longer does Spotify want to curate your life with music you love, they simply want to fill all empty space with noise that is good enough and comes at the lowest cost to them.

i think this marks a unique opportunity for smaller platforms to thrive in what is one of the most corrupt ecosystems that exists today. by focusing on artist payouts, artist promotion, music curation, and genuine connection, companies can differentiate themselves by treating their customers like human beings and enriching their lives.

if you are looking for examples of platforms that are trending towards this ethos, check out NTS (for music curation), TIDAL (for the highest royalty streaming platform), DICE (for ethical ticketing), and bandcamp (for its indie-centric focus.)

JUST A THOUGHT

Lord Huron is thriving

if you’ve spent enough time with me, you may have encountered one of my favorite games that i typically initiate when the unnerving veil of boredom descends upon our souls and blankets the room. the game is called “did they make it” and the rules are simple:

we name a band from this millennium and we decide whether they “made it” out of the decade that spawned them, riding the wave of their popularity on to new genres and bigger horizons, or whether they were swallowed whole by indifference and were never able to rise to the same heights of their initial popularity. here are some examples.

those that made it and continue to thrive:

• Bon Iver

• Vampire Weekend

• Hozier

• Glass Animals

those that did not make it and are goners

• Vance Joy

• The Mowgliis

• Kodaline

• WALK THE MOON

• Young the Giant (yet they are still trying really hard)

(please note that if you disagree with any of these, it is proof that the game is fun.)

this is all to say that there is one band where for the life of me, i cannot really understand why they made it. and that band is Lord Huron.

listen, Lord Huron is a band i’ve always loved. i bought Lonesome Dreams with a Best Buy gift card when i was in high school. it was the first record i ever owned.

but when i think of this band, they embody a lot of the tropes that dragged a lot of other folk/indie rock bands of the 2010’s down. lots of major cords, chamber vocals, sprawling instrumentation, whatever. i put them in the same bucket as Edward Sharpe, The Oh Hellos, Of Monsters and Men, The Lumineers, etc.

and yet! they prevailed. they continue to release music with stream counts that reach nine figures, make music videos with Kristen Stewart, and are currently the 178th most streamed artist on Spotify. and i can’t figure out how a very similar sound has endured for so long.

do people hear what i’m saying? is this resonating? no? this is just me? okay. fine. 

NEW RELEASES

what i’m listening to this week

ALBUM

front to back

an album where you can bet your bottom dollar that every song is fantastic

THE PLAYLIST

ten good songs

💿 click here for the ten good songs playlist that has ten song-pops for your ear-tongues to suck on