How “ghost music” becomes a problem on Spotify

Spotify has a problem. Or rather several problems.

These have a very normal name, like Amandine Moulin. According to her biography, she is an artist who will appear in a playlist titled “Peaceful Piano” in late 2022. A playlist designed to help you “slow down, breathe and relax”. It is one of the most successful playlists on Spotify and already has around seven million likes.

According to Spotify, the artist Moulin is from Paris. The classically trained pianist therefore decided in 2019 to start writing songs herself. Apparently successful. Her most successful song, “La Vie”, has over 13 million streams.

The problem: Amandine Moulin doesn’t exist like that. Behind the musician is actually a man connected to numerous other fake artists. Doesn’t sound like a big deal at first. But a closer look reveals the critical point: Artists who produce music at a high cost are disadvantaged by so-called ghost music.

ghost music: Many musicians on Spotify often don’t even exist

A team of reporters from BR got to the bottom of the matter and discovered: A Swedish man is behind many musicians who supposedly have dazzling biographies – but just don’t exist. As Bayerischer Rundfunk (BR) discovered, there are even more than 100 names associated with the Swede. This is evident from the database of the American music collective (ASCAP), comparable to the German GEMA.

The biographies of the ghost musicians misrepresent the listener. For example, Linus Larsson, a technology journalist at the Swedish daily newspaper “Dagens Nyheter”, says that these musicians are “fake artists”. They convey false information with dazzling sounding stories: that they come from other countries, such as Italy or Iceland. Instead, a group of Swedish producers is behind it.

And apparently the numbers they produce are getting bigger and bigger. As a review for the ARD documentary series “Dirty Little Secrets” showed, at the end of last year more than 60 percent of the songs on the “Peaceful Piano” playlist, with its roughly 300 titles, came from so-called ghost musicians. According to research, the artists each have affiliations with smaller labels, such as “Firefly Entertainment”. It comes from Sweden, just like Spotify.

Private connections between Spotify and ghost musicians

According to the report, there are striking connections that can certainly be labeled as questionable. The BR quotes Linus Larsson from “Dagens Nyheter” who claims that Firefly Entertainment has “a personal relationship with a former Spotify executive, who also developed the whole concept of playlists”.

There are even pictures of the two men on social media showing them traveling together.

According to research from BR, the ghost music thing is a win-win situation for both the artists and the streaming service. The creators of ghost music therefore receive less distribution per track, but in return are placed more often in extensive playlists.

Spotify’s “Head of Music”, Conny Zhang, who is responsible for the German-speaking area, has something to refute the accusation. She tells BR, “You can’t buy into any playlist from us. Playlists are curated completely independently. I can definitely stress that.” Despite: There are many playlists curated by Spotify with ghost songs. Press inquiries to “Firefly Entertainment” and the aforementioned man in Sweden were unsuccessful.

Spotify’s streaming revenue distribution is questionable

There is no evidence of the type of connection between Spotify and the small labels. But one thing is clear: ghost musicians are a problem. Than: They are streamed millions of times and release new tracks in record time. These are usually simple chord progressions that often take no longer than two and a half minutes.

The high amounts that ghost musicians have in their pockets are missing elsewhere. For example, with musicians who produce high-quality tracks.

The reason for this is the payment system currently prevalent on Spotify. Under the “pro rata model”, the money flows into a large aggregate pool, which is distributed among all artists depending on the share of the streams. The money does not go directly to the artists that are heard.

That is why the German government commissioned a streaming study in 2022 that deals with distribution problems. The goal: a fairer distribution of streaming revenue. However, the first results should not be available until the end of the year.

The British House of Commons has already moved on. It already had such an investigation carried out in 2021. With a clear result: streaming needs a complete restart.

Sources