Music Technology Policy

Liz Pelly demonstrates how Spotify perpetuates gender stereotypes.  Spotify–where A&R stands for “Algorithms and Redirects .” Why are we helping these people again?

“Spotify has actively steered its listeners away from the album as a format and toward playlists. This serves Spotify’s interests: a music culture dependent on playlists is dependent on Spotify, whereas a music culture dependent on albums is dependent on record labels. As Spotify vies to become more powerful and influential than labels, emerging as the music industry’s new center of power, one of its primary strategic focuses has been on playlists—curated by humans, algorithms, and sometimes a hybrid approach—making the process of navigating its platform more convenient and ever more personalized.

As a result, Spotify’s most popular playlists have emerged with outsize influence. After I created a new Spotify account earlier this year for this very listening experiment, when I clicked the “albums” tab on my brand-new account, Spotify responded, “Your favorite albums will appear here,” followed by, tellingly, “Go to your Browse page to find amazing playlists for every mood and moment.” A small but powerful gesture: at every turn the platform encourages playlists over albums. This, of course, raises several concerns regarding how fans relate to music and even this music’s context. Which is all to say: in the realm of Spotify, playlist placement matters. A lot.”

Read the post on The Baffler (h/t Artist Rights Watch)