Tag: Spotify

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Spotify isn’t the (only) bad guy here…

Spotify logo

I’ve got a few bones to pick with Spotify, but “fake artists” isn’t one of them. Since I’ve been critical of Spotify’s business model of late, I figured I should be fair and give a counter-point to the “Fake Artists Problem Is Much Worse Than You Realize” post making the rounds.

The Gist of the complaint: Fake artists

The basic complaint is this: Spotify apparently pays for “fake” artists to create tracks for its service that it can seed into playlists. Why? Because these “fake artists” presumably work for hire, so Spotify doesn’t have to pay out royalties.

Sounds kinda sleazy, right?

I would agree, except for one thing: Users don’t seem to care.

A lot of Spotify users seem to use the service for background music or aren’t very picky about what they listen to. They’re not trying to listen to Ella Fitzgerald or Soundgarden or XTC and getting served up “fake” artists.

They’re asking Siri or Alexa to “play some jazz” or just searching for a playlist and taking what’s served up.

If you’re a subscriber and you ask Spotify to play XTC’s Skylarking, then you get Skylarking. (Assuming, of course, that Spotify has it in their catalog.)

Spotify is just taking advantage of the fact that a lot of its user base isn’t very discerning about music. Or its “fake artists” are cranking out some decent music, or both.

Blame the users

I care a lot about supporting artists and seeing to it they can make more art. If you love Aimee Mann’s music, or Eliza Rickman’s, or Robyn Hitchcock’s, etc., then it’s in your best interest to figure out how to slide them some money for their work.

But… a lot of people just aren’t that picky about music. I don’t understand it myself, but there are actually humans aren’t fanatic about music. Or maybe they really just love any kind of music and it doesn’t matter to them if it’s Miles Davis or Bob’s Royalty Free Band churning out a music-like substance in a basement for $50 an hour.

If that music-like substance is good enough for users, if they’re not too discerning and are happy to slap on a Spotify generated playlist that is seeded with royalty free music, it’s hard for me to be too upset with Spotify.

That’s not to say Spotify is on the side of angels. When users specifically choose music on the service, Spotify should be paying better royalties. (And labels should be paying up, too.)

If “fake artists” bother you

If the “fake artists” situation really sticks in your craw, then… curate your own playlists on Spotify. Or stop using the service if it really galls you, but what Spotify has done here is take advantage of the fact that lots of users simply don’t care.

Spotify isn’t obligated to set its system to offer the most expensive stuff by default. It’s there if you search for it and (as far as I know) Spotify isn’t playing any dirty tricks like the old compilation CDs that had popular songs… as played by some studio band to sound like the songs but weren’t the ones you heard on radio. I’m sure lots of GenXers can relate to that one.

There’s a lot of royalty free music produced for use in radio spots, television and movie production, DJ sets, sampling… and on and on.

If you ran an all-you-can-eat restaurant, you’d probably advertise something spendy to bring people in – and then try to get them to fill up on breadsticks and salad to keep costs down. If they don’t eat that and ask for the spendy stuff, you serve it. But trying to keep costs down is reasonable as long as you’re not telling the customer they’re getting one thing and actually giving them another. So if you’re advertising crab puffs made with real crab, and serve Krab Meat(TM) “made from real ocean creatures,” that’s not cool.

When Spotify starts serving up “Miles Davvis” studio band when users search for “Miles Davis,” that’s a legit bone to pick. The “fake artists” thing, not so much.

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Digital crate digging: Searching Spotify by label, genre, year and more

Spotify logoSpotify is a great tool for music discovery, but some of the exploration tools aren’t obvious. If you want to search for something by song title or artist, that sort of thing, no problem. But there are other ways I like to explore new music, like by music label or genre. You can do that too!

The Spotify UI doesn’t expose things like record label, but that’s a really good way to find new music. For example, if you like classical music the Naxos label is famous for it. The Blue Note label is famous for jazz, 4AD is great for indie artists like Bettie Serveert. Point is, if there’s a genre or artist you like, branching out by checking out the other acts on the same label is a good way to find great new music.

Here’s how you do that, in the search box just use label:"blue note" or whatever label you’d like to search through.

Want to narrow the search a bit? You can add the year parameter, like year:1965, so search by label:"blue note" year:1965 and that should turn up everything that Spotify has tagged with that year and record label.

Spotify’s hidden search syntax

Once upon a time, Spotify listed its advanced search syntax on its website. However, the only place (I think) you can find it these days is via the Wayback Machine. According to the old page, Spotify supports these parameters and operators:

  • artist
  • track
  • genre
  • year
  • album
  • label
  • isrc
  • upc
  • OR, AND, NOT and + and –

Search Spotify by genre

You might have already tried searching for genres on Spotify, and searching for “jazz” will turn up some jazz, and also any albums or artists or songs with “jazz” in the name. If you want to search only by genre you can tag on the genre: search modifier and you’ll get results of artists who fit the genre.

Weirdly, Spotify doesn’t return albums using this search modifier, just artists, songs, and Spotify’s “top result” for the genre’s artist. For instance, you search for genre:jazz and you’ll get Miles Davis for top artist. Seems legit. Search for genre:rock and you get Weezer. That’s a little sus. (If anybody from Spotify is reading this, I’m available to help clean up your categorization and taxonomies for a modest fee…)

Spotify search results may vary

Note that the results may not be perfect – And I don’t just mean questionable categorization on Spotify’s part. Searching for 1965 and Blue Note yields (among others) Cornbread by Lee Morgan. According to Spotify’s album info the album is from 1964, and Discogs says it was released in 1967.

There’s also a chance that minor labels are going to have name collisions. There’s more than one TCB Records, for instance, so if you try to locate some 60s jazz from the label by Lionel Hampton And His Orchestra you end up mixing in a lot of more modern stuff (but no Lionel Hampton).

Finally, results vary depending on what Spotify has in its library. Spotify has a lot of amazing stuff, but it’s hit and miss on deeper jazz, indie labels, and that sort of thing.

My guess is that the search parameters and operators are a still-functioning but legacy feature with Spotify that’s not well tended to by its product team. It works, mostly, but it doesn’t seem to be something the company is investing in or trying to put in front of users as a power tool. Pity – because when it works, it is a fun way to sort through the catalog on the service.

However, if you’re trying to find new-to-you music and want to go outside Spotify’s recommendations and generic search features, the additional modifiers can be a great tool. And, remember, artists don’t get rich off Spotify plays – when you find music you really like, think about buying the album direct from the artist or Bandcamp or whatever source is best to give the most money to the artist.