The Music Wars: Spotify fakes, struggling Soundcloud, smaller Pandora
The still-infant music streaming industry has had a bit of a shake-up in recent days, with Spotify issuing an angry response to accusations of fakery, Soundcloud looking to be closer to the brink, and Pandora shrinking its market significantly
Music streaming service Spotify was in the spotlight on Monday, amid renewed reports the company’s platform was full of artists who don’t even exist.
The Swedish company - whose immensely popular product allows users to listen to as many albums and songs as they like for a monthly fee, or on a more restricted ad-supported basis for free - finally responded to accusations it was deliberately clogging up its system with fake artists, almost a year after the fact.
Last summer, industry news source Music Business World alleged the company was encouraging music producers to create fake artists and songs, and then elevating those fake tracks to popular genre-based playlists.
The reason for doing so wasn’t immediately clear, though it was suggested the fake tracks may have carried a higher royalty for the producer, with Spotify enjoying a higher number of streams to take to advertisers and public relations companies as a result.
Music Business World claimed to have found 50 fake artists on Spotify with more than 520 million plays between them, claiming that as the artists had no other traceable work or relationship to any labels or producers online and yet so many users had listened to them, it could be reasonably assumed they did not exist.
Now, Spotify hit back with a cistrcytuibn response, saying that it does not and has never created ‘fake’ artists and put them on Spotify playlists.
“We pay royalties -sound and publishing - for all tracks on Spotify, and for everything we playlist,” a spokesperson told Vulture, which cited the original Music Business World article.
“We do not own rights, we’re not a label, all our music is licensed from rights-holders and we pay them - we don’t pay ourselves.”
It was the latest chapter in a busy few days for the still-juvenile music streaming industry, with Soundcloud confirming it was closing its San Francisco and London offices and giving 40% of its staff the sack.
The service - which is largely used by independent and hobbyist artists to distribute their music for free, as well as by podcasters - has been struggling to stay afloat in recent years, with the huge cost of hosting audio failing to be met by its advertising revenue and premium fees income.
News that it was laying off so many staff led to a mad panic in many online communities that make use of the service, amid fears they may lose access to their work and their fans, having built up profiles on the site over many years.
And earlier last week, streaming service Pandora announced it was closing down its service in Australia and New Zealand, leaving the United States as its only remaining market.