The music industry is engineering artist popularity – listeners are right to be angry

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Numerous tactics, including payola-like deals on Spotify, are promoting artists people haven’t chosen to hear – but the industry refuses to discuss it

Every other week, a post goes viral on X asking why Chappell Roan’s Good Luck, Babe!, or Sabrina Carpenter’s Espresso, or Billie Eilish’s Birds of a Feather, are constantly being put into a user’s autoplay queue by the streaming service’s algorithm, regardless of what they were listening to previously.

Pop has always presented listeners with the illusion of choice – no matter whether you listen to Roan, Eilish or Carpenter, your $0.003 lines the coffers ofGroup – but it’s certainly got worse in recent years, as artists and their teams have worked out new ways of gaming charts and algorithms.

that allows artists to forgo a portion of their royalties in order to receive a boost in algorithm-led zones of the app such as the autoplay queue, radio, and mixes. It’s not strictly payola, but certainly feels to users like its 21st-century equivalent. So there is good reason for fans to be concerned about whether their mechanisms for listening to music are being tampered with. The industry, too, hasn’t educated listeners about the possibility they may be subject to new-school payola. Speaking to label reps, publicists and artists – all of whom were wary of going on the record – I know that many in the industry feel discovery mode sets a dangerous precedent when it comes to tech’s incursions on music.

 

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