Spotify, the military industrial complex, and the future of art

Although it results in the explosion of “artists and industrial defenders” and one (so far quite limited) Boycott of the platformSpotify CEO Daniel Ek announced that Helsing, a defense company Helsing, has invested € 600 million ($ 1.07 billion) in AI military technology – being president in this process – he saw very little reflection on a creepy but obvious concept.

This is the man who is allowed to dominate how music is consumed, accessed and created, and consequently how music looks.

For a US journalist who has written about Spotify since 2016, it has been the most amazing revelation about the annex for the last… ugly coin war technology.

“So Daniel invested in Helsing for the first time in Annex 2021, and you know, he never interested in music for someone like an additional,” he said. Crirase.

“And this only reminds me of how deep he invests in the military-industry complex. The investment company not only invests in Helsing, but also Spotify explained last year that the new CFOs are Christian Luiga from the Swedish defense industry.

Or as he said additional In that case: “The most important thing that people can see from Christian is that they make a suit and tie every day, and as it is understood from the culture of Spotify, now sits in T -shirts. So we love to reveal this difference in culture.” Very cool!

Not everyone who cares about the broad situation of popular music, but one General Straighting A sense of Straight – One of the main species, especially in the last decade, and many of them know Spotify’s atomized listening experience and algorithmic cycles of familiar and unquestionable music (not to mention the exploitative treatment of artists). Pelly’s Book Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the costs of the perfect playlist listEarlier this year, released, reliable and sometimes angry sensitivity of this situation, explains material processes.

The first point to be done: Spotify clarified, Early as early as the 2015 annual report“We do not sell music”. The company sells ads and subscriptions, and music is a cost they do to limit only everything they can. This is clear once, everything else sits in place.

Everything that Spotify does is aimed at keeping users on the platform, so a large amount of work Spotify’s playing.

“When the flow services were started, they were more like search bars. You had to know what artist or album you hoped to listen to as you hoped to listen to, Pel Pelly said.

Spotify’s market research, which expanded to the US market and seeks a way to capture mass audiences beyond “music enthusiasts ,, set an interesting gap in the market.

“[Users] I just wanted to be able to get the playlist or a theme or a mood, and let it hit the game, Pelly Pelly said. So they started to optimize the product for this. “

From there, it was a short step to the “Streambait” playlists of the indisputable music that could work in the background all day – the personalized playlists are an endless music stream that you already love, based on previous listening. And then, inevitably, neo-muzak mood regulation, focus optimization or sleeping aid lists.

As Pelly said, the music sold as a “more than an art form” is also a palliative – a painkiller that depends on healthy life and awareness. With Spotify’s enormous power, entering these playlists has become increasingly more important for any artist who wanted to do so and revealed the “SpotifyCore” genre. Even if you could not say your name, you heard it; This is a wide, warm sound, quietly exposed and meticulously bitter dessert, a clue of the 80s, a pop-folk clue, the environment on Bukharwave is unlimited.

More recently, the ego massage element of Spotify’s personalization has reached the summit with the arrival of a DJ that has turned your favorite parts and has a more surreal cool personalized (and produced by AI).

“This marketing flow and a really big part of the marketing Spotify, especially not selling music to you, but the idea of selling your own music pleasure back to you.” He said. “In some respects, like the re -packaging of classic marketing tactics. You know, most of the marketing products are about convincing a consumer if you use this product, you can express yourself and become an individual.”

But this health rhetoric is not just a shallow, boring onanism. As Pelly reinters over and over again, they all have a stunning effect on the music itself, all of which are çık Breaking the music from the context ”and irrevocable. AI DJ does not talk about where this music comes from or who does; He’s talking about you. Three other examples Mood music:

1. A pop songwriter Pelly tells Pelly that people are now writing “Spotifycore” songs. “At this point, only young people, a product of it. This is just their favorite music.”
2. A young artist says that Pelly’s placement in a specific Spotify playlist, helping him to “find my voice” and define his peers, and to reflect Pelly on “data -driven playlists” that helps an artist to make such connections.
3. A jazz musician was hired as one of the many “ghost artists çalışan who played filling music to fill Spotify’s playlists cheaply. “We knock out like 15 in one or two hours,” he said. The authority is said to keep things as “Milquetoast as much as possible. “Obviously, if we were really playing, we would have improvised and discovered…”

These examples created by Deading Loop Spotify cannot even reach the terrible and long chronic financial exploitation or the ultimately siphon of artists’ gains in the army. However, in this long-term injustice-Basit labor exploitation-Pelly finds “power and possibility için for both creators and consumers. As he wrote:

“It may seem terrible to realize that what makes culture less interesting for listeners is what makes it less sustainable for artists”, but “The opposite is true – it is true that working collectively to improve the material conditions for musicians is also beneficial for all of us who likes to listen to music.”

“Send to people on local community radio, who can buy your music directly from you, put it in a tape, put it in Bandcamp, Bandcamp or Flow Service.” Crirase. “There are tons of options to participate in music culture outside the flow.”

Liz Pelly presented by the Wheeler Center in Melbourne on Thursday, August 28th and now or never.