The great Spotify swindle, with Liz Pelly

30:42There was some really good reporting on this by some Swedish journalists at DN, the daily newspaper in Stockholm, who sort of pieced together some documentation from the collection agency in Sweden. And they were able to kind of like start pulling back the curtain on this a bit and provide some hard data about how obvious it was that there were instances where on these official Spotify playlists, there would be like hundreds of artist names that could be attributed back to like a really small handful of songwriters that were affiliated with this really small collection of stock music companies, including famously Epidemic Sound, which is based in Stockholm, and Firefly Entertainment, which is based in Sweden as well.

31:31Which is so funny because so much of the rhetoric around a platform like Spotify is like, oh, it's getting rid of the gatekeepers. But you really trace this web of, you know, no, a lot of this had to do with kind of like who Spotify had like these direct, you know, relationships with. Yeah, totally. And I think that like there's been like a lot of questions around the ghost artist stuff like that I think are valid questions sort of like, well, if people were listening to this music in the background anyway, like, you know, is this really like a threat to the music world at large? I think that part of what is so interesting about this story is exactly what it reveals and how it helps debunk some of these myths that Spotify and other streaming services and kind of more broadly the music industry have been doubling down on since the early days of the platform era.

32:29If you like what you're hearing on this episode, there's a place where you can join the conversation. It's called Cujoplex, and it's a private online hangout zone on Discord We're smart, cool weirdos just like you. You know, people who like talking about the evolving state of independent culture can congregate, share links, and talk about the news of the day. We've had some great conversations lately about creative economies, media theory, AI, politics, the future of journalism, and even the records and TV shows we've been obsessing over this year. Some of our chats have even inspired episode ideas.

33:04You can get access to Cujoplex along with our monthly bonus episodes by signing up for a paid subscription over at our Substack. That's theculturejournalist.substack.com. With that in mind, who is the ideal Spotify artist in Spotify's eyes, would you say? And who is the ideal Spotify listener? Yeah, no, that's a really interesting question, too, because although there's clearly these programs that have been developed specifically to privilege this type of background music, like, yeah, I don't necessarily know if I think that like the anonymous, like ghost artist, ambient musician is necessarily Spotify's ideal artist.

33:48When I think of like their ideal artist, I think of someone who is going to like be more willing to participate in their Spotify for artists marketplace or someone who is like more willing to like buy into all their like so-called promotional opportunities. there's a point in the book where I talk about this musician called goth babe and maybe it's like picking on this musician too much or something but he did kind of like make himself the the face of marquee so maybe it's fair I'm not sure but you know I think the reason why I describe this person as like an ideal or kind of like maybe like Daniel X model artist is because I think that you know we've heard so many times over the years like Daniel X talk about how the musicians that make it in the streaming era like aren't going to be the same kinds of musicians who used to like you know just put out an album every three years and think that's going to be enough like it has to be someone who's putting out like a constant stream of music continuous engagement with their audience like an emphasis on storytelling pull yourself up by the bootstraps yeah like i kind of feel like their model artist would be one who's like a self-releasing like influencer essentially you know i definitely feel like spotify's model artist would be someone who releases music and podcasts who like has like a social media personality fans awaiting their next release with bated breath yeah yeah totally is it a real artist even oh the person that i talk about in the book no no no no no i mean like like the concept of like spotify's ideal artist like is it even like a real artist or is it someone that they made or commission oh yeah yeah totally Like the AIDJ.

35:26Yeah. I mean, there's definitely like a quote at some point in the book from OPN where, you know, we're kind of talking about like Daniel X idea of the model Spotify artists and this idea of continuous engagement. And he says, you know, at that point, you're basically just a Spotify employee and that's fine. But, you know, like, let's talk about what it actually is. You know, I think he says in the quote, like, it's not the same as just being in a band or something. But I definitely feel like if you take all of the things that Daniel Ek himself has like outlined, one talking about the type of musician who can make it in the streaming era, like if you take all of those things to their logical conclusion, you basically would get a Spotify employee.

36:11But then the other kind of art, like it seemed like they do like another kind of artist, which is just like a cheap artist, an artist that comes cheap to them. Like you can read the history of your book as sort of tracing this trajectory from what you described as this sort of like syndicate like playlist kind of model, like who rises to the top to like either these sort of stock music, ghost artist type performers or, you know, indie artists willing to take the payola deal where they accept a lower royalty rate in exchange for being boosted. And now like probably more and more like you can see this like AI is the ultimate like cheap artist or something.

36:49Right. Yeah. It's kind of interesting, you know, even like when just thinking about music that does well in the streaming era, I feel like there's always this like two sides of the same coin, which is that on one side, even in like the mid to late 2010s, when people were first starting to think about like what type of music does well in the streaming era. It was often like, you know, like chill vibes music, like the streambait Spotify core, like background kind of music. Maybe even you could put like lo-fi hip hop beats to study and relax to into the same category. And then on the other hand, there's this other type of music that does really well in the streaming era that is tied to attention in a different way.

37:30it and that it's like music that sort of exists to hook the listener whether through storytelling through an artist that like is as invested in their personality on social media as they are in their art who maybe like is really popular on tiktok or you know even in the song structures like you know there's this idea of like songs being written in a way that keeps people engaged from the first 30 seconds. So it's like there's certain things that have been incentivized by the platform era that are sort of like ways in which music has been pushed to kind of like grab your attention and then certain ways in which it has been pushed to kind of just be unnoticeable in some ways because that also leads to streams.

38:16Yeah, you talk about it's like music that people are least likely to skip over. Yeah. Like the least ineffensive music. Yeah, so it's like I feel like it's interesting. it like manifests both in like the songs themselves and then also like the types of artists who do well. And then what about the listener, which I want to just like let you answer the way that you want to answer. But I also want to sort of tie that into this one chapter of the book where you discuss how platforms like Spotify are gearing towards what you describe as the datification of not just music, but fandom. So talk a little bit about what that means, especially in terms of the ideal Spotify listener.

38:53One thing that I thought was really interesting was how you highlighted in that chapter, like kind of how fandom has become its own means of cheap or free data processing labor that these companies are exploiting or that companies like Spotify are exploiting. Yeah. No, I'm glad that you thought that chapter was interesting because that's kind of like one of my favorite chapters in the book. Yeah. I was like, it's kind of huge, honestly, Liz. When I think of like the ideal listener, I think like for a long time, like going back to of a previous decade, even like when Spotify would talk about the ideal listener, be somebody who streams from basically like when they wake up until they go to sleep and you have like your morning playlist, you have the podcast you listen to on your commute to work, you have, you know, the music you listen to while you're trying to focus at work.

39:37Maybe there's like another short podcast you listen to during lunch and then you have your gym playlist after work, your dinner playlist during dinner, and then you have like a winds down soundscape that you listen to at night. You know, I really do think that like, it seems at least in the way that they position themselves to advertisers, that that seems to be kind of like their vision of the ideal Spotify listener. I'd say that today, the ideal Spotify listener to the company is probably someone who listens to a lot of podcasts and a lot of audio books, probably someone who listens to a lot of the deep focus playlists.

40:12Like, you know, anything that costs the platform fewer royalties. And then I think also today, the ideal Spotify listener probably also is someone who listens to like Daylist or AIDJ because those are sort of like newer products that kind of like hook in listeners in ways that put a lot of control into the platform's hands over what you're hearing. But it's a really interesting question because something that comes up a lot is like, you know, obviously there's all of these ways in which Spotify positions itself, like its strategy changes year to year. There's always like some sort of new products that they're pushing, whether it's like Daylist or AIDJ or the investment in podcasts and audiobooks.

41:00And to some extent, I think that like they always surely are hoping that their users will gravitate towards these products that they're making big bets on. but there's kind of this other thing that plays out especially with more like independent music fans where people are like well Spotify wants me to like listen to Daily Mix and AITJ but I don't listen to these things like I just make my own playlists so like it's fine but there's also like you know in order for this whole model to function and in order for like the whole scheme to keep existing. There also need to be people on these platforms making their own playlists too, because the playlists that people make on streaming services comprise the training data upon which all of the algorithmic recommendations are made.

41:54Like without a lot of data from users, it would be a lot harder to make algorithmic recommendations or AI driven recommendations. You know, if you listen to someone like Gustav Soderstrom, who is the head of product, co-president of Spotify, Daniel Ek gets a lot of the attention as sort of like the mastermind behind this platform. And, you know, he is the co-owner and definitely like one of the two people who has gotten the richest off of the exploitation of music at the hands of the streaming model. But there are some other like people who are pretty high up at the company who do a lot of public appearances, like evangelizing and explaining the high level priorities.

42:38Anyway, one of those people is Gustav Soderstrom. And if you listen to him talk currently about Spotify and the company's strategy, something that in more recent months and years he's been saying is that like for Spotify, currently the AI is the product is like what he says. And basically what he means is that the interface, like the front page, like when you open the app, like, you know, what you see, which is, you know, in his explanation, totally driven by AI, but it's really just like a series of different algorithmic recommendation products to them like that is like their most valuable product.

43:13So that requires both people who will use those products in order for them to be successful and also like people who will be providing data upon which those products can function. And part of that involves people continuing to make their own playlists on Spotify or people engaging with stuff like AI playlists and entering chatbot type prompts into their new playlist creation tools, which to me just seem like new ways of extracting data from people. it's so funny because there's like so many different products and i always like wondered kind of like why i never like spotify never really took with me like i never really got into it and it's because like none of the options are just like people who are like interested in looking up an album by an artist or something it's actually harder to find the albums now when you like they'll be like these are the two most popular ones and here's a bunch of other shit about them that you didn't ask for.

44:11It's all people who like need stuff recommended to them. There's no sense of agency. It's definitely it's become an increasingly clear type specific type of person. Or maybe there is agency if you're making a playlist, but that's like agency that is like good for their bottom line. It's definitely like one of those moments where I don't mean to be like judgmental of people who like use these products, but thinking of like who's the ideal Spotify listener. It definitely seems that like when Spotify thinks of like its typical user, it's like somebody who does not want to think about what they're going to listen to.

44:44Like somewhere out there, it seems like the streaming services believe that there's this listener for whom making decisions about what to listen to is like excruciating to help them. Like you must like provide the perfect recommendation at the moment they open the app. And it's so interesting because I'm like, does that listener exist? Like, I mean, they know. Or are they kind of cultivating that listener into existence, which is part of my next question. Right. No, exactly, though. You know, like that. I think that's a great question. Before we get to that, though, I had just another follow up about this ideal listener question.

45:22I just want to read this quote from that same chapter we've been talking about, the chapter about data mining in the book. You say the new paradigms of being a fan online, the niche vibes, the meme playlists, the infinite descriptors, started feeling more attuned to this broader project of data processing and corporate exploitation than, say, musical understanding and appreciation. So everything we were just talking about. How do you see all of this impacting what it means to be a fan today? What are the ways that this shapes how we interact or don't interact with music that we might not even be aware of?

45:56Yeah, it's a really good question. I think that there was definitely like a moment while I was working on that chapter where I just like kept thinking about all of these like startups that I had observed over the years, these like music metadata startups. And I think that for a long time, and maybe this was like it taking a while for me to like understand like algorithms or something, but I just didn't totally like understand like why there were so many startups that were dedicated to music metadata and like sorting music according to these like really specific taxonomies. But it had become like obvious that this was sort of big business for people who are starting streaming services or people who are like buying up big catalogs of music.

46:41And it's interesting because at the same time, there's so much of this happening on the Internet already. And, you know, so many ways in which like being a fan has come to involve like making playlists and, you know. Categorizing aesthetics. Yes, exactly. I love the part of your book about aesthetics wiki. Yeah, it's so interesting. And I think I also was like, you know, there's a point around that part of the book where I quote Robin James, who talks about how the phenomenon around vibes is people like prepackaging themselves as a data subject. And then I just like that, like really blew my mind the first time I heard her talk about it in those terms.

47:26And it just seemed like, yeah, it's like people are prepackaging themselves. And then they're also doing this work of packaging the music that they like and creating training data for AI systems to understand niche aesthetics in a way that like it can be like sort of hard to understand at first, I think. like why all this matters. It's super next level and heady and like hard to, we have to have her on the podcast to talk about her book and this idea. But I think of how like if you're a user of Twitter or now X, you sort of intuitively start writing things that you know will be sort of picked up by the algorithm or something and you see other people doing it.

48:12And I think it seemed that her argument was like fans who are interested in these different aesthetics, like, you know, you talk about cottagecore in liminal spaces or whatever. If they're interested in these aesthetics, they sort of participate in categorizing data and information on the internet according to those aesthetics so that it's legible. They kind of make their interests or the scenes they want to align themselves with legible to the internet, right? Yeah. And it's like so interesting how you can use one of these terms and search it on Spotify and kind of like pull at so many different ideas about like how Spotify conceptualizes genre and the users and learn things about maybe what Spotify thinks users might be searching for, you know, where certain things pop up in the interface kind of like tells you about what they think of a certain type of listener.

49:05Yeah, it's fascinating. Yeah, it feels like being a fan now in this ecosystem anyway that we're talking about is really like just about like vibe association or like aligning yourself with certain vibes i actually found the robin james quote that you mentioned from your book i had it pulled up here actually she actually said something similar on our pod about a year ago when we had her on the quote that you pulled she says we've learned how to interact with algorithms so that they perceive us in ways that we want to be perceived you're pre-packaging yourself as a data subject wild yeah no it's so interesting and it was interesting too like going to the spotify stages show that i described at the beginning of that chapter and trying to like talk to kids outside about why they liked the artists that they were there to see and person after person just wanted to like talk about this specific like niche genre or aesthetic that the artists were part of online And it was like very interesting to see it manifest in the real world.

50:07Wow. Yeah, definitely. So a major turning point for Spotify that you discuss in a chapter of the book is the push towards, quote, lean back listening, where music consumption is more passive. That's like we've been talking about something in the background that's been chosen for you. And what was really interesting to me was to learn from this chapter that Spotify figured this out after commissioning a study. I think it was in the mid-2010s. And the study found that, quote, active listening made up a much smaller part of the user experience than they had thought, like people seeking out albums to listen to.

50:41And that folks were largely using the app for background listening. So, you know, they obviously subsequently optimized for that experience. In doing so, did Spotify, do you think Spotify just opened the floodgates for a proclivity that was maybe always there? Or is the general public now just getting conditioned to consume this way because of the convenience of this experience that Spotify has designed? Chicken or egg? Yeah, no, it's a really good question. I mean, something that I tried to do in the book is outline various different threads in the history of listening to mood music and ambient music and background music to kind of show that not only has listening to music in a leanback way kind of always existed.

51:32And obviously anyone who grew up with commercial radio also knows that some sort of version of the lean back listener has always existed. But to also show how connecting with music in this mood based lean back way has long been part of how tech innovators, so to speak, have sold people on new types of listening technologies. There's kind of like this history from Edison to Daniel Ek of people using mood music as a way to sell users, sell customers on new types of music technology. so the question uh i think that you're you're right in that like it's both a dynamic that has always existed but i do think that there are like notably ways that spotify has both exploited that tendency and then also championed it through both like the interface and also just like the obsession with a frictionless experience um the sort of obsession with this idea of the listener who needs to get the perfect recommendation with one click, like the moment they open the app.

52:40You know, there are definitely strategic decisions that have been made to champion the leanback listener, the functional playlist listener, the mood music listener that I think have like exacerbated the tendency. And that's something that I feel like Spotify in particular making it such a big part of their strategy in the years after they launched in the United States. has kind of, in some ways, sort of like reinforced this idea of this particular mode of listening. And then if artists and labels know that this is kind of what gets incentivized, they might also start like adapting their music into that vibe a little bit.

53:19Which actually brings us to the next question, which is, you know, you've written about how Spotify became obsessed with creating this incredibly complicated taxonomy of microgenres, both based on listener data and musical data. And some of them didn't even have, they were kind of made up and had no real analogs and real world scenes. They were almost like data clusters. What impact did this practice of categorization and the hyping up of certain sounds based on Spotify's kind of priorities, maybe what is most profitable to Spotify, have on actual IRL music scenes? Do you feel like there's been this sort of like hollowing out as a result?

54:03That's a good question. I mean, the music scene that I focused on writing about in the book was hyperpop just because, I mean, I feel like what happened with hyperpop was like as much about the way Spotify kind of narratively inserted itself as well as like the media narrative that emerged around it as well. And it was really interesting, like tracking down and speaking with some people in that scene about the impacts that it had on like people really distancing themselves from the label and I think that that kind of makes sense and just sort of tracks with what happens generally when like the media tries to like impose a narrative onto a group of artists who don't identify with the way that they're being described or shaped and how it can kind of like lead to like a hollowing out.

54:59There are other, there's other research that has been done on like other genres that is interesting, like in the genre taxonomy. I know I met someone in a conference who did research on like the genre bubble grunge and like the way it like was embraced and like not embraced by different musicians who got labeled with it. And I think to me, the impact of the microgenre taxonomization is as much about like the impact that it has on musicians as it is about the impact that it has on listeners. Because at a certain point, it really does become like an issue of misinformation, I think, and media degradation.

55:39You know, like if a bunch of artists are arbitrarily being grouped together through an algorithmic process and given a label that is meaningless to almost all of those artists. And then at the end of the year and wrapped, a bunch of fans are being told this quote unquote genre is your favorite genre of music. The way in which that shapes people's understanding of music and connection with music, I think is kind of sad. I think that there's a role that writing about, obviously, like as a music journalist, I think there's like so much value in people doing like scene reports or like writing about like burgeoning communities and sounds and trying to connect dots and explain trends.

56:27But in some ways, the microgenre taxonomy just kind of felt like it exists. It just feels like it exists just to create word clouds for people to click on.

56:54so if most musicians aren't making money and as we've seen even spotify itself is having trouble generating meaningful revenue do you see the spotify model continuing to stand the test of time. Like, what do you think the recorded music market will look like in 10 or 15 years? What will streaming's role in that be? That's a really interesting question. I mean, something that I like personally am sort of like not really in the business of is like future casting. So like, I can't personally tell you what I think that the music industry will look like in 10 or 15 years. But I could tell you like what I think would be interesting to see, which is, you know, in my book, the last chapter before the conclusion is called The New Music Labor Movement.

57:37And it's about all of the different musician organizing and solidarity groups that have popped up in recent years, both like in response to streaming, but just a general sense of like economic insecurity that musicians and people in general sort of, I think. Unprecedentedly, I'd say too. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, totally. I think that it would be really positive for those groups to continue to be strengthened, both in terms of public support and artist involvement. And in the book, I kind of outline, you know, in addition to talking about some of the history of some of these groups, I specifically like tell a story of UMass Living Wage for Musicians Act and try to sort of detail pretty like intricately how this like group of scrappy, like fed up musicians went from just like meeting on Zoom during the pandemic to vent to helping write a federal bill.

58:43to introduce a new royalty, which I think is kind of like interesting and instructive story just about like the power of grassroots organizing or just sort of like showing how grassroots organizing on that level happens. And then I also talk a bit about two things, which is like on one hand, different ideas for how the streaming marketplace might be regulated specifically in the United States and different like suggestions for policy interventions that might feel meaningful and then also point to some sort of cooperative alternatives that musicians are building from the ground up and then also spend a bit of time at the end talking about like different ways that music is publicly funded around the world and what it might look like for there to be more public funding of both public library music streaming programs and then just like to fund artists directly through you know like basic income type structures and that's a little bit of the constellation that I outlined at the end of the book that I think are the sort of things that would be all part of this process of or could be part of you know thinking about how we revalue music.

1:00:05I was wondering if you see any signs that like independent musicians or like musicians that are not served by the model, for example, it's like people who are not on major labels. If there are any signs that in the next few years we may see more and more of them just kind of leaving the platform. We've seen like people leave other platforms like are we locked in forever and we just have to help put pressure on policy? Or is it possible that some musicians might just like be like, oh, we're divesting of this? Yeah. No, it's really interesting because like in my book, I think I come like just short of being like, delete your accounts, because I've always kind of, it's my belief that like any sort of boycott should come from an organized mass movement of artists calling for it.

1:00:56So it doesn't really feel appropriate, like as an individual to sort of like make that suggestion like it seems like it needs to come out of collective organizing so you know I think that it would be interesting if like you know some sort of organized body of musicians at some point we've seen things sort of like it like something that always sticks out to me is at the end of 2019 when this group of musicians sort of like pre-Yuma had this campaign called No Music for Ice. It was an organized boycott of Amazon, where this pretty large group of independent musicians, a lot of people who went on to be involved in Yuma, specifically put out a collective statement saying that they were all taking their music off of Amazon Music and refusing to participate in Amazon-affiliated music festivals and events until Amazon agreed to cancel its contracts with ICE.

1:01:56And they also were specifically calling on other musicians to join their boycott at a time when a lot of independent musicians and people kind of in the indie rock world had, you know, announced that they were doing this Amazon funded music festival in Las Vegas. So, you know, there are like examples in somewhat recent memory of and I would consider that to be, you know, obviously they didn't like get the whole independent music world to take their music off Amazon. But it was like, I think it made an impact at the time. So that was an interesting example. Yeah, I remember that actually. It did.

1:02:37It'll be interesting to see if anything similar happens with other services. It's kind of interesting that it hasn't, but it's also not easy to put something like that together and it's hard out there. So, yeah. I'm also curious whether you think that for things to change, whether the public and maybe even musicians and people in the music industry need to sort of like try to rewire their understanding of music and its value. Like reading your book, I was just struck by the stuff about the like meritocracy and stuff, but I was struck by the extent to which the rhetoric of companies like this, they have like infiltrated our entire sense of, you know, how music should be presented, how much it is worth, how much it should be paid, even if we disagree with it.

1:03:25Like, I feel like we've kind of gotten to the point where a lot of people take it as a given, just this idea that all the music in the world needs to be freely available to stream. And if you say, like my partner actually wrote an essay that was like kind of similar about how like writing should have never been free, for example, writing on the internet. And like people have knee jerk reactions to those ideas or people sort of persist in this idea that like, oh, well, you know, these companies aren't great, but you know, they did make it more democratic and more meritocratic. And we don't want to return to the era of stuffy human gatekeepers where it was all based on like who you knew and stuff like that.

1:04:01Is this book part of an effort to sort of like help people dismantle some of that thinking? It's really interesting because I do think of myself as someone who really values universal access to music. And I think that's why the library model is so interesting to me because I do feel like there's kind of a middle ground where libraries make things freely available, but there is some friction involved. I think that one of the things with streaming is like everything is so available, like in such a frictionless way. And I almost think that like part of the issue with it is less about like how much music is available to the public, but like almost the convenience culture of it.

1:04:46I also mean like this idea that all music should be available for the price of like less than one LP per month. That's how we access it. Obviously with the library, there's like a different kind of funding model going on. That's what I mean. Yeah, no, no, I think it's like a good question. And I do think that when you start breaking it down, it's like the idea that you could have access to, quote unquote, all of the music in the world for$10 a month. I think it's not hard for most people to see that, like, that's not the value of what you're getting. Like, it's worth more than that. But totally.

1:05:21But I think, yeah, is there a need for people to understand, though? Like, I feel like there are some people who just like, I don't want to have to pay for writing. I don't want to have to pay for records or whatever. And they just don't think of it that way anymore. And obviously there are like bigger solutions we can work towards down the line. But I feel like we need to undo some of the some of the propaganda, like the Web 2 propaganda that has been instilled in us. Yeah, totally. These models are the only thing that is democratic. this is what it was all leading towards you know yeah i mean like it just seems so like obvious that it's important to pay for music you know and that's not to say that like people shouldn't have access to music if they like can't afford it's complicated you know because it's like you want artists to get paid there's a quote really early on in the book from jenny to me who's like i have a complicated feeling about copyright because i don't want all the music in the world locked up but I also want people to get paid.

1:06:15And she's reflecting on like the, you know, pre-streaming conversations around copyright. But like in a certain sense, the reason why researching the pre-streaming conversations happening around copyright was so interesting to me is because it sort of feels like for people in independent music, like those conversations never really ended. Like we're still trying to figure out the exact same problems, which is that like, Like, you know, if you're somebody who wants music to be freely accessible and doesn't want someone to like not have access to music just because they can't afford it. But you also have a strong sense of like labor and the value of artists labor.

1:06:57It is complicated. To me, it's just sort of like I kind of like in my, you know, I personally feel like people who can afford to pay for music should. You know, like if you're someone for whom music is important to you and an extra$10 to$20 a month going into like your budget for buying music like doesn't make a huge impact on your living expenses, then like you should pay for some music. Like music comes out every Friday, like buy a record every Friday. It's like$7 to buy a record. You know, on Bandcamp or digitally or wherever you are, like a lot of people make their albums available for around$7.

1:07:40And it's kind of sometimes like feels so obvious. It's literally like a latte, you know? Yeah, yeah, totally. It's like the price of like an oat milk cappuccino. You know, like it's like if you're the sort of person for whom buying a record every Friday for$7 is like inconsequential to you, then like, you know, you should pay for music. but if you're someone for whom that is expensive then like you should be able to act so I don't know it makes so much sense and it's like obviously it like feels weird sometimes to be like you know putting things on individual consumers actions right yeah it always feels a little weird but there needs to be some kind of combination or that's like in the meantime what can help if you care about sustaining your favorite artists and musical cultures yeah I mean I think our sense or like cultural sense of the term like democratic has gotten like really distorted i'd say like to say like by big tech really like you were saying was like it's a really delicate balance but remembering that like democratic is means like a two-way street it's got to be like democratic for the artists as well or the people creating like any of the art at hand or the things that people love to consume not just for the consumer even the fact that like we use the word consumer around this stuff i think is like indicative of kind of the problem right yeah totally in some ways i do sort of feel like the bigger conversation that's being gestured towards.

1:09:01And the reason why I think the question of like the personal responsibility of paying for music can feel so like shallow and unsatisfying is because really like the problems with streaming are like also problems of the like hyper commodification of music. And like if what we're trying to think about is like how do you support the arts in a way that directly supports artists and in some ways like decommodifies music then like just continuing to talk about the importance of like buying records feels so like shallow in some ways. Exactly. Yeah. Really like what we should be thinking about is like, how do you, you know, publicly fund the arts in a meaningful way that supports like artists' lives and livelihoods and not just like each individual products that they're able to make?

1:09:50You know, like towards the end, there's a part of the book where I talk with Jenny Haval about like different types of access to public funding that she has had in Norway. And she talks about how like some of the public funding is really specifically tied to like specific projects and like how you have to like provide receipts. And like in some ways, it's like Dill kind of like tied to what you're able to produce and that there's these other types of public funding that are just sort of like grants that you get as a human and they just pay for you to exist as an artist, like kind of more in like the basic income model.

1:10:24and how, yeah, I think there's a quote from her where she talks about like, it kind of feels like it creates value at a deeper level when the model of public funding is just saying like you are an artist and you're contributing something valuable as a citizen. And like, we are going to like, you know, fund you for X amount of time to do whatever you want. Basically, like whether you're like producing work or collaborating with someone else or going on tour or doing research for a future project. And I think that's like part of the reason why pulling all these threads like, you know, led in the direction of the basic income conversation by the end of it.

1:11:01I talk at the end about how during the pandemic, Ireland tried out like a basic income program for artists and how it wasn't perfect because it was kind of like a random lottery and there were a ton of people who applied for it that didn't get it, but they piloted it. And there are like all these interviews with artists who received the funding. I think it might have been$1 ,300 a month. But, you know, people talk about it as life changing. And it's really like not like in the grand scheme of things, like that much money. But for most artists and people in independent music world, I do think it's like life changing.

1:11:36Yeah, it's easy to forget that this is actually kind of quite an American phenomenon. Because like Canada has a lot of like public arts funding, but it's just like that, like bands can get grants to go on tour and stuff like that. It's like most other countries have stuff like that. And it's our conception. It's a really deeply culturally and societally rooted thing here in the U.S. I think that like the arts has never been considered as like worthy of existing just to exist, you know? Yeah. Like in some ways, you know, in some of the interviews I've been doing, I've been talking about how like this is a book that's like not just about like the goal isn't just like making people think about like, okay, instead of using the streaming app, I'm going to use the streaming app or like, how do I become an ethical streaming consumer?

1:12:19The goal is kind of to try to make people think differently about the importance of contracting corporate power in music and culture and thinking about what it means that we currently entrust corporations to basically like be responsible for our collective music culture in a way that has a lot of consequences. And like, you know, it's like, what would it look like if like, we didn't leave the health of music culture to corporations and there actually was some sort of like, public funding or understanding of music as a public good. And, you know, if that could be something that a reader reflects on after reading this book, I would say that that is like a success.

1:13:04That's a that's a meaningful takeaway way to me. Amen. So I guess to sort of, you know, broaden that a little bit to our own work as writers and journalists, what have been the challenges of staying on these stories as long as you have in terms of, you know, the nature of the stories themselves and just music journalism and the media climate and trying to maintain a beat throughout all that? Yeah. So I would say definitely like the biggest challenge is that I mean part of the reason why the book exists at all is because I have never had like a full-time writing job I've never been like full-time on staff somewhere while pursuing this research on these stories I'm a full-time freelancer I have a job at a college but I'm an adjunct so it's like you know balancing freelance writer life and adjunct life.

1:13:59And I've had like jobs here and there, like part-time jobs, editing various publications and stuff, but certainly never like a full-time job as a beat reporter on like the streaming beat somewhere. So it's kind of been like a puzzle over the years, like trying to figure out like how to keep doing this work. Obviously I wrote a lot of these early articles for the Baffler and I love the sensibility of the publication and working with the editorial team there but as a freelancer at a certain point it just starts feeling like it like requires more resources to follow some of the more ambitious stories I think that like there was definitely a moment where it seemed like in order to dedicate like a serious amount of time to some of this research that the options I was like playing with were like trying to apply to grad school or like trying to apply for some sort of funded research program or trying to write a book.

1:14:54And I don't have a master's degree. So like the approach of writing a book just kind of like seemed like it sort of made more sense or was more accessible. Or paid to write it instead of having to pay to write it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. But yeah, but it's hard, you know, like I actually really appreciated. Ted Gioia wrote this article about my Harper's excerpt in his newsletter where he sort of like talked about how, for example, like with the fake artist story, he was talking about how he had been like trying to follow that story for like years and how he had gone to editors at like top newspapers and tried to like pitch them on it.

1:15:42But he writes like it would have required resources and I would have needed like to have a publication like fly me to Sweden. And like, you know, all of these newspaper editors just wanted me to write like an op-ed. And I thought that that was really interesting. I just pulled it up. He writes like the music media is much better. These new revelations came from a freelancer in Harper's Not Rolling Stone, Billboard Variety, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal or the Washington Post. Why didn't they investigate this? Why don't they care? And I thought it was so funny. You know, like, and even with the first story that I wrote about this subject back in 2016, 2017, like I wrote it for Watt, which was like this website published by Cash Music.

1:16:28Shout out to Maggie Vale. She's the first person who assigned me to write about Spotify. And she's also in 16 for the Cash Music blog. And at the time, like, you know, the piece that I wrote for the Watt blog was like a 4 ,000 word investigation into like the major label influence on Spotify playlists. And at the time, like if I would have gone and pitched like any mainstream music outlet, like I'm not sure if I would have been given like the same amount of space. And I think that's true of like a bunch of the articles that I wrote for The Baffler too. Like I'm just not sure if they would have been published in music publications like for issues of budget, space.

1:17:06Maybe I'm wrong. Like maybe they would have. But over the years, it kind of seemed like it required like going outside of the music press in order to pursue some of these stories. I wonder also if like some publications are like afraid to go after Stegis Louie basically like on a deep level. Or like having to maintain like larger source relationships or there's some kind of they might be using the platform or have an account with the platform or something that makes it weird. I don't know. Or they're just too busy. Like, I don't like we don't know. Like, I'm sure there are a bunch of editors out there who would be listening to this and be like, I totally would have taken that.

1:17:42But, you know, but to make a regular ass publication run now, it's like there's just so much other shit they need to worry about. That's why we don't see more deep dives like this in general, you know, whatever the subject. where they're like very like tradie, you know? Yeah, like credits. I definitely had noticed like hearing things in their mission statement for like their new site. They talk about like how they're intending to do like more like investigative journalism in the music business because, you know, clearly it's like really needed for there to be more outlets that are doing this kind of stuff.

1:18:11It's like in their mission statement or about page or whatever. So I think there is kind of like a need to have industry investigations that like are outside of like the trade press too in more of like the general music publications that do profiles and reviews and criticism to also have some of these like stories demystifying the music business like happen in those spaces too we definitely need more of that right and like i always say the music business and music culture is always the the canary in the coal mine for like larger shit that happens to society and culture and politics and all that like always look to music first because it'll chances are it'll have predicted the thing like a decade in advance.

1:18:55So totally. And with streaming, like we see that now with how like podcasters and audio books are like now having to start like answering to like the same model and the same companies that musicians have been dealing with for like a decade plus. Like when the podcasting stuff was first starting, I feel like there was this piece that I did that was basically like the podcasting world should take the experiences of musicians seriously as they like figure out like whether or not they really want to do this. But in some ways, like musicians, yeah, like are kind of like the canaries in the coma. And I still feel like there's definitely room for improvement in like people taking the experiences of musicians seriously enough to learn from what musicians have dealt with like over the past 20 years.

1:19:44100%. Well, Liz, thank you so much for your time. This has been a great conversation. And the book is so good. Everyone who listens to this podcast, go and get the book. It's incredible. You'll love it. We promise. Thank you so much.

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