Spotify - anyone heard of it?

Momus at the top of my Discover Weekly!

My Discover Weekly was so so, but it did make me discover the song Seabird by Alessi Brothers.

― MarkoP, Wednesday, March 9, 2016 11:13 AM (two years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah that's how i heard about this song too, although it was in the film Hunt For the Wilder People

> "the next 30 minutes are ad-free"
> ad

Not sure if my account's been hacked, but about a week ago about 3 playlists appeared on my feed of Chinese (?) pop music. I deleted them but one appeared again earlier this week and now one's appeared again. Other than that everything seems fine.

Have you changed your password?

I did after the third time.

any good Chinese (?) pop music to report?

Um, no. Lots of rather dull piano ballads like this https://open.spotify.com/track/5h6R8U3G3GLZc6nMsrxBV4?si=gn-gBv3RQYuBixA9KdkzDw

Was hoping for some k-pop weirdness but sadly not.

So hmm.

https://www.billboard.com/articles/business/8455375/spotify-removes-r-kelly-music-playlists-new-hate-content-conduct-policy

This begs a LOT of questions.

yeah I tweeted this but I'm really curious to see what his metrics were before his stuff got pulled. not even in a gotcha sense, I genuinely do wonder whether the news stories have had any measurable impact whether in the short- or the long term (obviously the biggest of the news stories predates Spotify).

(obviously they aren't having much measurable impact for like xxxtentacion, but he's a new artist where r. kelly is a legacy artist)

(it also goes without saying that if R. Kelly's metrics really were flagging, then that's... not something I can be too upset about, all things considered)

if I was working at Spotify I'd feel bad about promoting R Kelly through popular playlists

I no longer play Ignition when I dj anymore, rarely listen to his tunes (although I admit that sometimes I really want to hear "You Are Not Alone" by MJ which was written/plagiarized by R Kelly)

XXXTentacion out as well

https://pitchfork.com/news/spotify-removes-r-kelly-from-its-playlists/?mbid=social_twitter

what about the ukulele covers of these songs though? this question sounds snide but i mean... how does the policing here work, exactly

I think that's a fair question, probably a bit more difficult to decide, but I imagine they wouldn't want to promote covers either

I don't think it's a bad idea because it raises complex questions

There are gonna have to be a fuckton of other artists they pull from their playlists too.

chuck berry?

the beatles had a short run on spotify

Yeah, I would think they'll only apply this to living artists

Incidentally, there is a full compliment of Bill Cosby albums on Spotify

But are tracks from Cosby albums featured in playlists?

It makes sense that they wouldn’t to promote artists who are currently in the news for bad things. I wouldn’t expect them to go through rock history and start picking & choosing others, unless something bubbles up, new info comes out about an older artist and everyone’s talking about it (as with Kelly), etc. They say it’s about their “values” but of course it’s more about shielding themselves from criticism; nothing wrong w/that, of course.

Ahhh for some reason I read this as if they were pulling their music entirely.

Duke University Student Affairs VP, what's on your Spotify playlist?

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/05/then-the-censors-came-for-rap-music/560003/

https://open.spotify.com/user/spotify/playlist/37i9dQZF1DXaKIA8E7WcJj?si=6hOC7rvMSSidvk1jy8RDyg

xpost
Re: the central question raised by the author of that piece – about how/why community & commercial "standards" are different for lyrics than other forms of mass media – obviously, there are "clean" versions of songs/albums released for radio play, and when (uncensored) Spotify playlists are used in place of the radio, there is a possibility for the standards set by radio to be exceeded (I say this without taking anything away from the awfulness of the employees being fired, of course). I guess a rough analogy would be if a cafe were playing uncut R-rated movies on a TV, instead of a cable network like USA or Lifetime.

This “pushback” is unexpected (not by the artists themselves, I expected that, but by others): http://variety.com/2018/biz/news/spotifys-ban-on-hateful-content-and-conduct-is-too-subjective-and-concerning-experts-say-1202807394/

I guess Spotify must have screwed up the messaging... but it’s clear that, in the current climate, they simply don’t want to feature artists on their playlists who are the subject of active controversies involving mistreatment of women. All the “Whatabout... (X) artist from the past? Who gets to be judge & jury?” etc. questions seem disingenuous to me.

at the end of the day this is really just a PR win for Spotify. I have to imagine the revenue cut to the artists is minimal.

I agree — and I guess that’s partly why I’m surprised there’s “OMG censorship”–type pushback. It’s about as mild an action as Spotify could possibly take.

Reading over the article again, it seems like an obvious attempt to stir up a controversy (they even contacted the ACLU for comment!).

It also states no system of policing content or behavior beyond content monitoring, “expert partners” and “Your Help,” the latter via an online form

Those three pillars don’t constitute a “system”(?)

But Variety’s agenda aside, the “experts” quoted do seem legit, and their assessments are more what surprise me.

Been noticing some odd behavior not exactly the same as the shuffle problems discussed recently, but not completely different either. My main New Music list has about 1000 tracks, and I periodically add new albums as they get released. When I play on shuffle, tracks from the most recently added albums don't show up in queue. It seems like it takes a while, weeks maybe, for those tracks to come up in regular rotation when I shuffle. Quite possibly they start to turn up more when I add newer albums, but I'm not sure. Anyone else see stuff like this?

they reversed the xxxtentacion demotion

https://www.stereogum.com/1997996/spotify-to-promote-xxxtentacion-again-after-backlash/news/

iirc both kendrick and xxxtentacion are on universal subsidiaries

Just noticed that on Spotify the tracks (all but one) on the first two Chaka Khan albums are now credited to a 'Lew Hahn' as well. Turns out he was an additional recording engineer on the Chaka album, who also did remixing for it, and is credited for recording and mixing on Naughty (on Discogs, not on the original album sleeve, fairly or unfairly). In other words, he didn’t even write, produce or play on any of the tracks. But every time songs like “I’m Every Woman” or “Clouds” are streamed (including when it’s from some compilation), it’s not just added to Chaka’s tally but to his as well. That seems like some bullshit. Anyone know what this is about? Is it related to the equal billing producers now get for remixes they make for tracks by other artists (which is fair), and did this guy jump retroactively on this opportunity or something?

(I guess I could have started a "Studio hands that are NOW on Spotify" thread, but decided against it)

Only just noticed Peter Gabriel's catalogue is finally up in UK.
https://www.udiscovermusic.com/news/peter-gabriel-solo-catalogue-spotify/

xp

To partly answer my own question, I strongly suspect it’s connected to the remixing aspect. I now see that Hahn also has an artist tag with Hall & Oates’ “She’s Gone”, this time along with Arif Mardin, Chris Bond and Jimmy Douglass, and lo and behold, (on Discogs) these four are all credited as “re-mix engineers”, presumably for the song’s re-issue in 1976, because they are not tagged in the original 1973 album version.

I guess the question is now: do these “remixers” actively have to request this kind of equal billing with Spotify (which would get them a cut of the performing artist’s steaming money, right?), does the record label take care of this, or are these tags automatically generated through Spotify’s data systems?

(btw, the same thing might be happening on Apple Music and other streaming services, but I’m not familiar with those)

Either way, this seems an unintended (I would hope) and undesirable (in my opinion) side effect of giving remixers their due. I mean, remixing tracks during the recording process of an album or tweaking an existing recording for rerelease is a totally different beast from remixing in the modern sense, where an existing recording is reconstructed by an outside source.

What makes the Chaka Khan example extra jarring, is that none of the people who made the actual remixes for her 1989 Life Is A Dance Remix Project album are credited on Spotify, but Lew Hahn is.

Sorry for carrying on like this, but this is an absolute travesty:

Chaka (1978):
https://open.spotify.com/album/2lvaLIoEg3hwL2dybu6zTC?si=jSHjbmOnR86Qf9NA_CAPPg

Naughty (1980):
https://open.spotify.com/album/0LPZFn25Bxg4zIT47SYVNC?si=8lROL0xZRwy-gof-juD-og

Life Is A Dance (The Remix Project) (1989):
https://open.spotify.com/album/696qPuTacarWTyvMwofbXp?si=damSKTVPShW8AKG7ip4abA

Yes, I suspect you're exactly right, and that this is a result of shifting meanings for the role "remixing" over time, leading to Hahn being treated as if he were Felix Jaehn. I'm not actually sure whether this is in the class of things we (Spotify) can fix, or if the label has to correct the metadata and resubmit, but I've reported it to the team that is responsible for both kinds of fixes. Thanks for the report!

Interesting! I've been wondering about Lew Hahn ever since the time I discovered "Clouds" (disco poll iirc?) and started playing it 10 times a day.

Thanks for looking into this, Glenn. Hope it will lead to something. Could I ask you for an update if something interesting should come up?

Seandalai’s comment suggests that these tags have been sitting there for at least a year. I thought it would be more recent than that. I hope it doesn’t mean the label is okay with. Hard to believe otherwise that it would go unchallenged that some random engineer is receiving half of streaming money for a classic like “I’m Every Woman” (which is at 22 million plays, even now).

*okay with it*
*half of the streaming money*

I keep getting new Goldie tracks in my Release Radar but it's some atrocious hard house producer with the same alias somehow.

Oh, the apportioning of actual royalty money is a totally separate topic from which artists get displayed on a track in the UI.

We (Spotify) pay the rights-holders by track according to streaming, and the rights-holders pay the tracks' artists according to whatever their contracts with the artists say. I would guess that Lew Hahn was paid a flat rate for those Chaka Khan sessions decades ago, and is not getting ongoing royalties from these streams any more than he got ongoing royalties from record sales before now, but that's a pure guess based on no specific information. The record-label could be giving all these streaming royalties to Lou Ferrigno for all you or I or Spotify knows.

(I reported the random non-Goldie "Goldie", too.)

TY!

Shout out to this thread's perma-revival making it to the Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/may/29/online-forums-musical-culture-messageboards-social-media-music-essay

I feel a sense of personal failure that nashwan got the "last updated by" on this thread in the screen-capture.

Thanks for clearing up the royalty issue, Glenn, I assumed the tagging played a part in that. Would still like to see poor old Lew’s tags disappear though. Those are not collaborative albums! “Rufus featuring Chaka Khan”, yes, sure; “Chaka Khan x Lew Hahn”, no thank you.