Spotify Criticized For Letting Fake Albums Appear On Real Artist Pages (arstechnica.com) 9
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: This fall, thousands of fake albums were added to Spotify, with some appearing on real artist pages, where they're positioned to lure unsuspecting listeners into streaming by posing as new releases from favorite bands. An Ars reader flagged the issue after finding a fake album on the Spotify page of an UK psych rock band called Gong. The Gong fan knew that the band had begun touring again after a surprise new release last year, but the "latest release" listed by Spotify wasn't that album. Instead, at the top of Gong's page was a fake self-titled album supposedly released in 2024.
The real fan detected the fake instantly, and not just because the generic electronic music sounded nothing like Gong's experimental sounds. The album's cover also gave the scheme away, using a generic font and neon stock image that invoked none of the trippy imagery that characterized Gong's typical album covers. Ars confirmed with Gong member Dave Sturt that the self-titled item was an obvious fake on Monday. At that time, Sturt said the band was working to get the junk album removed from its page, but as of Tuesday morning, that album remained online, along with hundreds of other albums uploaded by a fake label that former Spotify data "alchemist" Glenn McDonald flagged in a social media post that Spotify seemingly ignored.
On his site, McDonald gathered the junk album data by label, noting that Beat Street Music, which has no web presence but released the fake Gong album, uploaded 240 junk albums on Friday alone. Similarly, Ancient Lake Records uploaded 471 albums on Friday. And Gupta Music added 483 just a few days prior, along with 600 junk albums from Future Jazz Records uploaded between September 30 and October 8. These junk albums don't appear to be specifically targeting popular artists, McDonald told Ars. Rather, generic music is uploaded under a wide range of one-word artist names. However, by using that tactic, some of these fake albums appeared on real artist pages, such as Gong, experimental rock band Swans, and English rock bands Asia and Yes. And that oversight is on Spotify, McDonald suggested. "We are aware of the issue, have relocated the content in question, and are considering our further options against the providing licensor," a Spotify spokesperson said. "When we identify or are alerted to attempts by bad actors to game the system, we take action that may include removing stream counts and withholding royalties. Spotify invests heavily in automated and manual reviews to prevent, detect, and mitigate the impact of bad actors attempting to collect unearned royalties."
The real fan detected the fake instantly, and not just because the generic electronic music sounded nothing like Gong's experimental sounds. The album's cover also gave the scheme away, using a generic font and neon stock image that invoked none of the trippy imagery that characterized Gong's typical album covers. Ars confirmed with Gong member Dave Sturt that the self-titled item was an obvious fake on Monday. At that time, Sturt said the band was working to get the junk album removed from its page, but as of Tuesday morning, that album remained online, along with hundreds of other albums uploaded by a fake label that former Spotify data "alchemist" Glenn McDonald flagged in a social media post that Spotify seemingly ignored.
On his site, McDonald gathered the junk album data by label, noting that Beat Street Music, which has no web presence but released the fake Gong album, uploaded 240 junk albums on Friday alone. Similarly, Ancient Lake Records uploaded 471 albums on Friday. And Gupta Music added 483 just a few days prior, along with 600 junk albums from Future Jazz Records uploaded between September 30 and October 8. These junk albums don't appear to be specifically targeting popular artists, McDonald told Ars. Rather, generic music is uploaded under a wide range of one-word artist names. However, by using that tactic, some of these fake albums appeared on real artist pages, such as Gong, experimental rock band Swans, and English rock bands Asia and Yes. And that oversight is on Spotify, McDonald suggested. "We are aware of the issue, have relocated the content in question, and are considering our further options against the providing licensor," a Spotify spokesperson said. "When we identify or are alerted to attempts by bad actors to game the system, we take action that may include removing stream counts and withholding royalties. Spotify invests heavily in automated and manual reviews to prevent, detect, and mitigate the impact of bad actors attempting to collect unearned royalties."
Noticed this elsewhere too (Score:3)
"Invests heavily" (Score:5, Insightful)
Spotify invests heavily in automated and manual reviews to prevent, detect, and mitigate the impact of bad actors attempting to collect unearned royalties.
But not quite heavily enough to, you know, code any sort of verification system the artists can use to confirm when stuff gets added under their listings.
Quite the "investment" Spotify has, indeed.
Re: (Score:2)
Spotify invests heavily in automated and manual reviews to prevent, detect, and mitigate the impact of bad actors attempting to collect unearned royalties.
But not quite heavily enough to, you know, code any sort of verification system the artists can use to confirm when stuff gets added under their listings.
Quite the "investment" Spotify has, indeed.
But of course they strangely have more than enough cash to get some bro named Rogan that I've yet to meet anyone that listens to any of his shows.
"Unearned royalties" (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
People pay for music from a particular artist that they specifically ask for, they get something completely else, this is fraud. Whether you call it "undeserved royalties" or "unearned royalties" is nitpicking. Call it fraud and be done.
Re: "Unearned royalties" (Score:2)
"We don't think any of our listeners on 104.1FM actually wanted to hear the broadcast of that song, so we won't be paying royalties."
Re: (Score:2)
Big difference between a radio station where the listener has no control over what they are listening to and a service like Spotify where they are (AFAIK) explicitly picking the song or artist they wanted to listen to.
Re: "Unearned royalties" (Score:2)
Yes, but they do even worse (Score:3)
If you search for a band's album, frequently you'll get a playlist instead - which has some, but not all of the tracks from the original album. And the tracks are almost never played in the original order on the album.
And they'll create playlists This is ${band} which features all of the commercial songs, but none of the artistic ones. And even worse, even when the original was/is the best version, they'll litter your feed with "exclusive" poorly recorded live and "unplugged" recordings, awful-sounding remixes, and endless remasters of original works which don't really improve the experience, only sound marginally different. For those with nostalgia for the original recordings, or wanting to figure out how classic rock artists created their unique sound, Spotify is a nightmare. If you want to understand how an artist developed their style, or progressed as an artist from their earlier to their later work, you're out of luck.
Spotify seems to assume that past limitations of recording technology made older recordings somehow less enjoyable compared to the digital mastering we have today. So naturally they boost digitally remastered works, seemingly oblivious to the fact that those limitations, or "coloring" of the original recordings by vintage equipment was a part of the songwriting process. The Rolling Stones, for example, had a very warm, muddy sound in the late sixties which definitely took advantage of the fact that low bass and high treble frequencies were cut off by the recording process; songs like "Goodbye Ruby Tuesday" and "Angie" sound completely different when remastered. The originals were mastered for vinyl, and remastering removes a fundamental aspect of the recording; when they removed the low-midrange "mud" from the recording, Mick Jagger's voice ended up sounding thin and emasculated, and whatever memories the song otherwise evoked are gone. If you hadn't hear the original, you'd think the Rolling Stones were a sixties boy band. The sounds of the sixties have been modified so much that someone who didn't live through them can't really appreciate how the music and the drugs went together - you'd never listen to the remastered versions to just mellow out.