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New report finds Spotify is using ghost artists to reduce royalties

Photo by AS Photography via Pexels

Spotify has made news yet again. This time the streaming giant has been accused of using ghost artists to populate numerous playlists.

In a recent report by Harpers Magazine,the publication found that about 20 songwriters were behind the work of over 500 ghost artists. Liz Pelly from Harper’s shared; “around 20 songwriters were behind the work of more than 500 ‘[ghost] artists,’ and that thousands of their tracks were on Spotify and had been streamed millions of times.”

Of course, the motivation behind the use of ghost artists is purely financial. The company has employees who seed the tracks onto playlists which result in increasing the percentage of streams of music, making it cheaper for them as they don’t have to pay ‘real-life’ artists. Liz reveals; “Spotify, I discovered, not only has partnerships with a web of production companies, which, as one former employee put it, provide Spotify with ‘music we benefited from financially. But also a team of employees working to seed these tracks on playlists across the platform. In doing so, they’re effectively working to grow the percentage of total streams of music that is cheaper for the platform.”

The majority of the tracks spanned across ambient, classical and lo-fi hip hop genres. This raises numerous concerns for musicians, as Spotify continues to prove that it values profit above everything else. 

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