I forget who may of said this, but often, the DNA of a company is rooted in how they were founded. Facebook, Instagram, and Threads are deeply uninspiring utilitarian chaos apps. Meta is not a creative company nor innovative. All of Mr. Zuckerberg's success was through acquisitions and building one of the most successful ad businesses ever.
Spotify's use of good-enough AI generated background music or Ghost Artists(Liz Pelly's book, Mood Machine, references it as such) is undercutting real artists through playlists, which people put on not to listen but as white noise. Elizebeth Lopatto of the Verge wrote a go-read-this-now piece:
Spotify was initially designed as an advertising company; its paid tier was the result of a concession to major labels in early negotiations over streaming rights.
No surprise this kind of move was done by an advertising company, dressed up as a music streaming service. Spotify original draw was that it's playlists were so much better than Apple's iTunes later Music. Discovery in new music while rotating through your own playlist of favorites was fantastic way to curate songs as background music. But that changed the relationship of listeners had with their music. Ms. Lopatto again:
The playlist model meant listeners didn’t have a relationship with artists — they had a relationship with playlists.
This is powerful way in understanding Spotify's success. Playlists were the beachhead to listeners moving away from iPods/iPhones Apple iTunes/Music. Sure you can do it on your own on Apple Music. But you didn't quite have the same access of every song or album imaginable like you did on Spotify. It was a la carte by song or album on Apple. Shuffling through 10,000 songs was the best an iPod could do at the time.
I find the move Spotify did in using Ghost Artists as a means to decreasing royalty payments to real artists indicative of enshitification. It's a predictable development if the original DNA of a place is in advertisement.
Go read the article. It's chuck full of very interesting insights on Spotify. You may come away with it feeling a little less excited about Spotify. If so, may I suggest rediscovering your iPod.
