But, like paper maps or ice caps, this dazzling experience is dying a sad, slow death. Opportunities for exposure to new music are dwindling, and so are the chances of these musical eureka moments. The culprit: a simple green circle with three black lines. Despite giving us an entire world of tracks at our fingertips, Spotify is drawing our musical chalk circles tighter and tighter around us.
This is partly because its payment model encourages songwriters to be more samey. The percentage of profits that reach the artists are notoriously little: you knew this. Low earnings mean artists fight to get the most streams and will do whatever it takes to up their monthly listeners, including make their songs beige. Spotify realised over ten years ago that the people that play music the longest are “lean-back” consumers – people that want inobtrusive, non-specific background music all day long. Hence the ubiquity of ambient playlists with names like ‘chill-vibes’ and ‘mellow morning’. For artists, the message is clear: bland equals streams equals money. So bland it is.
Sometimes this bland music isn’t even created by artists anymore, unless you think a deep neural network fuelled by water-guzzling cooling towers is an artist. Perfect Fit Content, or PFC, is stock tracks on official Spotify playlists made by companies specialising in background music. Go to ‘see artist’ and you’ll find suspiciously generic images and no artist biographies or links to websites. Though Spotify denies it, there are strong suspicions that these “ghost artists” are AI-generated.
Even when the songs we hear are human-made, they’re suggested to us by an algorithm. This keeps our musical horizons very narrow, because they are designed to suggest songs very similar to what we like already. A self-perpetuating cycle, since the more you listen to the recommendations, the more the choices get reinforced. This is a model that taps into the basic human temptation for convenience and comfort. It’s so easy to listen to the type of music you already know.
All wrapped up in this tendency is Spotify Wrapped; being in the top minute percent of listeners to one artist or song is something to boast about on Instagram and prove your nicheness. In order to get this status you of course have to listen to a lot of the same songs.
At the bottom of it all is Spotify’s model of maximising streams. It’s not just unjust for musicians, and it’s not just homogenising our listening habits; it is reducing our opportunities for creativity and self-expression. Innovations rarely come from comfort zones. Worst of all, neither do musical eureka moments.