In a move that’s both completely unsurprising and still unnerving, a new report by journalist Liz Pelly has alleged that Spotify is padding playlists with ghost artists in order to minimize royalty costs.
Per Pelly’s findings, published in Harper’s Magazine, some of Spotify’s most popular “put it on in the background” playlists — ranging from jazz, ambient and classical to lo-fi hip-hop — are being filled with material by artists who don’t actually exist, meaning that Spotify can increase its profits without paying living, breathing artists any money.
Known as “Perfect Fit Content” (PFC), these ghosts in the machine were introduced to Spotify’s editors in 2017 and designed to maximize profits by teaming with a collection of international production companies.
As reported by Pelly, the issue was first revealed earlier this year — at the time, a Spotify spokesperson claimed the allegations were “categorically untrue, full stop”, and denied the company was creating these fake songs.
That much does, in fact, appear to be true — Spotify itself is not creating this phony music, but it appears as though it’s been partnering with production companies that are.
As Pelly notes, “While Spotify may not have created them, it stopped short of denying that it had added them to its playlists.”
Pelly’s report also pointed to music writer David Turner, who used analytics to show Spotify’s “Ambient Chill” playlist had been cleared of artists like Brian Eno, Bibio and Jon Hopkins and replaced by tracks from Epidemic Sound, a Swedish company that offers a subscription-based library of production music; that includes the sort of stock music used in the background of ads and TV shows.
One former employee said of the practice: “Some of us really didn’t feel good about what was happening. We didn’t like that it was these two guys that normally write pop songs replacing swaths of artists across the board. It’s just not fair. But it was like trying to stop a train that was already leaving.”
By 2023, hundreds of playlists were reportedly being monitored by the team responsible for PFC. Over 150 playlists, including “Ambient Relaxation,” “Deep Focus,” “100% Lounge,” “Bossa Nova Dinner,” “Cocktail Jazz,” “Deep Sleep,” “Morning Stretch” and “Detox,” were nearly entirely made up of PFC.
“Many of the playlist editors — whom Spotify had touted in the press as music lovers with encyclopedic knowledge — are uninterested in participating in the scheme,” Pelly’s report continued. “The company started to bring on editors who seemed less bothered by the PFC model.”
This practice means that Spotify’s revenue is continuing to grow as people stream these fabricated playlists, the streaming profits of which are then given to PFC partners and non-working artists. Dark shit!
You can read Pelly’s whole report here.
