Create Music Group, they buy your favorite artists catalogs and then use the money to underpay artists to churn out slop songs that Create Music Group then owns and distribute/licenses Yay! :)
Again. Spotify doesn't pay musicians directly. Spotify pays distirbutors and rights holders.
Literally in the very article everyone links to but is incapable of reading there's even this text:
--- start quote ---
Epidemic’s selling point is that the music is royalty-free for its own subscribers, but it does collect royalties from streaming services; these it splits with artists fifty-fifty.
The major labels own a good chunk of Spotify directly. Used to be even more. As long as they get their cut they'll jump on any opportunity to screw over their artists (yes I know "unsourced statement" blah blah, sit down lawyers. I won't explain the reasons for my low opinion of these companies right now.)
The allegation is that Spotify pays out to entities which are ultimately owned by themselves, or that they get kickbacks in other ways like ad purchases (probably illegal, but hard to prove if you're at all clever about it).
I remember I found a track a few years ago, by the artist Mayhem. No, not the metal band. The background music artist Mayhem. Which only ever released two tracks. One of which, "Solitude Hymns", happened to get featured in one of Spotify's playlists, and managed to rack up more plays than any track by the more famous metal band at the time.
> As long as they get their cut they'll jump on any opportunity to screw over their artists (yes I know "unsourced statement" blah blah,
It's not really unsourced. It's just very rarely talked about. I think you may get an article once every 10 years questioning the actual rights holders and distributors.
I mean, you get people in these discussions on HN that don't even know that Spotify (and other streaming services) don't even have direct contracts with artists and everything is going through intermediaries.
> I remember I found a track a few years ago, by the artist Mayhem. No, not the metal band. The background music artist Mayhem. Which only ever released two tracks. One of which, "Solitude Hymns", happened to get featured in one of Spotify's playlists, and managed to rack up more plays than any track by the more famous metal band at the time.
Thank you! You're the only one who could point out a weird track.
41K monthly listeners for the band. The track got 20 million plays because it was featured.
That's where the gray zone begins: was this band with two songs picked because it is cheaper to include (for whatever reason) or was it just lucky (like some other bands that got big through streaming like Glass Animals).
When this was in the music industry news a few years ago, a lot more tracks were mentioned, I don't remember if this one was one of the ones they listed or one I found myself. I did find many myself though, at the time it wasn't hard at all. I just remember this one because it was memorable, their name being the same as a far more Wikipedia-notable band.
What is hard though, is finding out which aggregator/intermediary/record company collected the payments for mayfly Mayhem's plays. I have not succeeded at that, if you find a way to get that information out of Spotify, do tell me. It's probably actually easier to find out who made the music. MBW managed to find out that at least some of these tracks were made by well-connected Swedish producers, as I recall.
While not 100% exactly what you're looking for, Huberman Labs episode on MDMA is pretty close. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slUCmZJDXrk
The "don't lose the magic" supplementation is addressed but it is speculation based on anecdotal evidence and conjecture.
I'm surprised at the investment in an area that's likely to undergo major environmental challenges but it will be fascinating to see how this turns out.
Superficially it looks like an American version of Neom.
Having worked on Neom, I can tell you that Neom is fractally insane. The approval process for headline projects at Neom is: have idea; produce cyberpunk-themed renders; show to Crown Prince; receive approval. (MBS loves cyberpunk.) There was one day where the target population for the city just doubled with no real feasibility analysis.
California Forever (awful name) seems to just be fairly normal planned city so far.
Neom is way more futuristic and pie in the sky than this project. If for no other reason the planed 170 kilometres long 200 meter wide linear city in Neom is straight up cyberpunk material while this one is… just a city? A liveable one, which makes it look special.
Superficially it looks like a California version of Lake Nona to me.
I bought my S76 laptop via my work's "choose your own workstation" program. It's a great way to support continued development of the software I use PLUS when you buy via S76 you get lifetime support for the device. The support is not something I've made use of often, but it certainly paid off the one time I needed it. Basically, it depends on your idea of "value" - do you value money (buy cheaper hardware) or time (buy S76 with support)?
Yea, I had to pay for the battery, but when my battery died they shipped one out immediately with free shipping for the cost of the battery (no markup from the "aliexpress special" I found later; and I bet theirs is more reliable than that one). Also, when I had password issues with FDE due to my own failure, after the warranty ran out, they emailed back and forth for days until we fixed the issue.
another automated scam trolling service called lenny - https://www.reddit.com/r/itslenny/
Listening to some of these makes me laugh so hard my eyes start to water. The script eventually loops and some scammers don't catch on despite being implausibly being interrupted by a flock of ducks.
