The Mystery Tracks Being 'Forced' on Spotify Users (musicbusinessworldwide.com) 63
It's been nearly two years since news blog MusicBusinessWorld kicked off a global conversation over 'fake artists' on Spotify. That debate is about to roar back into life. From a report: Multiple Spotify users have been complaining that their official listening history on Spotify appears to have been infiltrated by acts that they don't simply recognize. The trend was spotted by the BBC, which reported on Friday that plays of 'mystery' tracks from artists such as Bergenulo Five, Bratte Night, DJ Bruej and Doublin Night were being credited within individual Spotify user accounts -- despite these same users knowing nothing about this music.
"Apart from being musically unremarkable, they generally have a few things in common: short songs with few or no lyrics, illustrated with generic cover art, and short, non-descriptive song titles," said the Beeb of these acts -- some of whom had managed to rack up tens of thousands of plays. Albums from these artists contained more than 40 songs apiece, with each track just a minute or two in duration. After the BBC alerted Spotify to the trend, all of these artists disappeared from its platform entirely.
"Apart from being musically unremarkable, they generally have a few things in common: short songs with few or no lyrics, illustrated with generic cover art, and short, non-descriptive song titles," said the Beeb of these acts -- some of whom had managed to rack up tens of thousands of plays. Albums from these artists contained more than 40 songs apiece, with each track just a minute or two in duration. After the BBC alerted Spotify to the trend, all of these artists disappeared from its platform entirely.
Now this is music (Score:5, Funny)
My favorite band on Spotify is Various Artists (or maybe it's The Various Artists). They rock. Versatile, too.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Original_Caste
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTBx-hHf4BE&ab_channel=SoheilKoushan
Only removed when "discovered" (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Only removed when "discovered" (Score:5, Interesting)
Sounds rather similar to the "Rueda" scam run by the SGAE [wikipedia.org] in Spain. It's the royalty administration organisation, and a small group teamed up to play non-tracks all night when no-one was listening, "earning" themselves a large cut of the royalties and of the votes in the organisation.
Re:Only removed when "discovered" (Score:5, Interesting)
The books themselves were full of gibberish. Each of them was by a different author, but each of those authors wrote nothing but nonsense titles full of gibberish like:
"Everyone else forecast they?d find yourself collectively and partnered by the point they certainly were twenty. Well, they predicted correct; not in how they believed it can result. One-day within their sixteenth seasons, problems get a somewhat dreadful change, and products transform permanently."
The scam worked because back then kindle Unlimited paid out by how many pages you read ... but it measured this by recording the furthest page visited in the book. The genuinely curious would open the book, see the beginning was gibberish, then check further in to see if it was still gibberish. Plus I'm sure bots with Kindle Unlimited accounts "read" quite a few.
There is still one of these titles up:
https://www.amazon.com/Way-Sto... [amazon.com]
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If that had been what happened, there would be a press release, followed by a police investigation and report. The silent correction with no explanation suggests it was an inside job. Likely they caught their own staff doing this, and are embarrassed to publicly admit it.
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Possible, but most companies usually spin that situation like "never fear, we found the evildoers hacking our servers and we've taken steps to address the security problem" even if they don't actually take any steps whatsoever.
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Might be to see if someone reacted and how long it would take before they did.
Never underestimate the ways people are tracked today.
Re:Only removed when "discovered" (Score:5, Insightful)
More likely someone was scamming Spotify. Artists get paid per song play, not per minute of stream time, so a bunch of short songs can cost Spotify much more than otherwise. Someone figured out how to fake song plays by different users, probably by hacking the accounts of people with weak passwords and simply using them to play a lot of one-minute rubbish when the legitimate user was offline.
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If they make a fake band, then they pay that fake band money, then they're just losing that money. There's no financial benefit here unless they're into money laundering. More likely that someone is trying to scam Spotify.
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Unless they contracted some musicians for a fixed rate to produce tracks which Spotify then owned fully.
Then the listeners who let that stuff be played to them are still paying for music, but Spotify would not need to pay an artist for it. That would be profit straight to themselves.
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for one reason or the other.
...Profit!
"The Beeb"? (Score:2, Funny)
"Apart from being musically unremarkable, they generally have a few things in common: short songs with few or no lyrics, illustrated with generic cover art, and short, non-descriptive song titles," said the Beeb of these acts -- some of whom had managed to rack up tens of thousands of plays.
Are they quoting Justin Bieber here?
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"Apart from being musically unremarkable, they generally have a few things in common: short songs with few or no lyrics, illustrated with generic cover art, and short, non-descriptive song titles," said the Beeb of these acts -- some of whom had managed to rack up tens of thousands of plays.
Are they quoting Justin Bieber here?
"Beeb" is their cute way of saying "BBC"
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Beeb vs. Bieb (Score:2)
It depends on spelling. "The Beeb" is British Broadcasting Corporation, whereas "the Bieb" is Justin Bieber.
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Newbies are getting rickrolled (Score:1)
Film at 11
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Buy MP3s (or rip CDs) of just the music you like, store it locally on your PC and Mobile device, and only listen to those tracks.
Which I do, but a bunch of tracks are suffering from bit rot, so I need to re-rip them. But I have something like 100+GB of rips (of CDs that I physically own) so capacity is still an issue on portable devices.
Another down side to this is that because I am in a music bubble of my own making and have probably been missing a bunch of new music that I would actually like.
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>Another down side to this is that because I am in a music bubble of my own making and have probably been missing a bunch of new music that I would actually like.
I think you may be grossly overestimating the quality of current North American-produced music. There are only a very few tracks worth listening to.
Europop was getting *just* listenable again, but has suffered a setback in 'old steady' acts incorporating autotune. K- and J-Pop have become so bland over the last decade that it's like trying to en
Re: Easy way to avoid (Score:2)
NA-pop, Euro-pop, J-pop, K-pop...
Maybe the problem is your preference for pop music. There are lots more options out there...
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All these 'cord cutters' who think they were so smart by moving to 'streaming' everything are now starting to see the potential for abuse inherent in it, and the bait-and-switch, first-taste-is-free strategy is turning on them. Streaming services are charging more and more, approaching the diminishing returns poi
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Nah. I'd rather pay money so I can Just Hit Play on a genre nickname that supposedly represents the unique, inestimable Me.
Never mind that they're all coming from one giant vat that mixes BONE MEAL and EARWIG HONEY.
Oops, wrong joke. The feeds say CURRENT PRIORITIZATIONS and ADS.
So, radio. But with an app!
Captain Obvious Here. (Score:1)
perhaps a "watermark" (Score:2)
ghost money? (Score:2)
> After the BBC alerted Spotify to the trend, all of these artists disappeared from its platform entirely.
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labelling issue? (Score:1)
I'm not against the idea of having tunes that are not tied to a particular artist (for whatever reason). There's no reason to force the association.
However, to group bunches of tune under a single (fake) artist and treat it like a real artist is misleading to the consumer and is a practice that encourages rigging the system to gain more listeners by creating (fake) mega artists.
If they are "anonymous collections", then clearly label them as such so the consumer knows what they are looking at.
reverse-Payola? (Score:3)
AI generated music maybe? (Score:2)
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Still available elsewhere (Score:3)
For the curious, the songs/artists are still available in other places like deezer: https://www.deezer.com/us/albu... [deezer.com]