Perfect Fit Content
Spotify "controversy" and offseason women's hoops coverage
Good solstice to you. I woke up to a light dusting of snow across the city, and I’m now watching it rise fall in fluffy hunks as the wind blows it from the Big Two trees outside my window (oak and honey locust — this is my private and unclever nickname for them, which you now know). These trees are 6ish stories tall, roughly the height of my building and our neighbors’, and rap against the glass under high winds like they want to come in.
This week, Harpers published an essay by music journalist Liz Pelly detailing Spotify’s so-called Perfect Fit Content Program — and as our generation’s preeminent Spotify hater,1 I feel compelled to speak! But this problem, if you want to call it that, has been around for many years, as Pelly makes clear: it’s not new but now she has the details hammered out.
The gist of it is that Spotify has flooded its popular “mood-based” playlists with music made by “ghost artists,” i.e. songs made by a handful of people in a factory system and published under a long list of differing titles and artist names (meaning one song could show up on several playlists but listed with a different title and artist name each time). Spotify owns 100% of the rights to this music and doesn’t owe payouts on any of it, unlike the music of a “real” artist, for which they don’t own the IP and are required to pay (very small) royalties on. Spotify titled this factory system the Perfect Fit Content program.
The actual crime seems to not exactly be the existence of the PFC (as the program is commonly referred to) itself, but the way that Spotify methodically removes real artists from key playlists and stacks them with songs made within its own system once the “real” music had already made the playlist popular:
The music writer David Turner had used analytics data to illustrate how Spotify’s “Ambient Chill” playlist had largely been wiped of well-known artists like Brian Eno, Bibio, and Jon Hopkins, whose music was replaced by tracks from Epidemic Sound, a Swedish company that offers a subscription-based library of production music—the kind of stock material often used in the background of advertisements, TV programs, and assorted video content.
… “By 2023, several hundred playlists were being monitored by the team responsible for PFC. Over 150 of these, including “Ambient Relaxation,” “Deep Focus,” “100% Lounge,” “Bossa Nova Dinner,” “Cocktail Jazz,” “Deep Sleep,” “Morning Stretch,” and “Detox,” were nearly entirely made up of PFC.”
The piece goes on to detail the doings of “Epidemic Sound” (are you serious with that name??), one of the major PFC factories.
The most interesting part of the Harpers article was the testimony of the actual faceless musicians that were contracted by Epidemic Sound and others to make this music:
He had signed a one-year contract to make anonymous tracks for a production company that would distribute them on Spotify. He called it his “Spotify playlist gig,” a commitment he also called “brain-numbing” and “pretty much completely joyless.” And while he didn’t quite understand the details of his employer’s relationship with Spotify, he knew that many of his tracks had landed on playlists with millions of followers. “I just record stuff and submit it, and I’m not really sure what happens from there,” he told me. …
“Honestly, for most of this stuff, I just write out charts while lying on my back on the couch,” he explained. “And then once we have a critical mass, they organize a session and we play them. And it’s usually just like, one take, one take, one take, one take. You knock out like fifteen in an hour or two.” …
The most common feedback: play simpler. “That’s definitely the thing: nothing that could be even remotely challenging or offensive, really,” the musician told me. “The goal, for sure, is to be as milquetoast as possible.”
“There are so many things in music that you treat as grunt work,” he said. “This kind of felt like the same category as wedding gigs or corporate gigs. It’s made very explicit on Spotify that these are background playlists, so it didn’t necessarily strike me as any different from that. . . . You’re just a piece of the furniture.”
I would not imagine that these revelations would actually surprise the average Spotify listener, nor am I under the impression that they would motivate that average listener to migrate off of the platform. This seems almost manufactured to enrage a relatively small circle of working musicians and those adjacent, and I do recognize that the PFC actually solves a problem that many of us have: how do we adequately soundtrack our lives? It can actually be maddening to choose music to play during, say, a chill dinner party, and basically nothing could be more efficiently satisfying than to smash the play button on a playlist titled “Chill Dinner Party.” As someone who likes music that I recognize as fundamentally embarrassing and often unpopular, this really does seem to solve a problem that I frequently have.
Except —
I was actually at a chill dinner party the other night and my friends who were hosting had the gall to put on real music. Eventually a classic 70s John Lennon song came on, one that I had completely forgotten about to the point that I didn’t even remember that it was him, triggering a long-latent (but nice) childhood memory. Regardless of what I now really think about the quality of the song, I was able to greet it like a photo of a deceased and beloved pet. I downloaded it and have been listening to it since.
I have a zillion examples of this happening over the course of my lifetime — going somewhere where they’re playing music, tuning out from whatever’s going on for a sec and realizing that I really like it, and asking what it is, following up, and listening from there. This is one the ways I’ve discovered music that I like the best: a friend put it on while we were doing something else. In fact, if when I was a child my parents had played playlists of factory music titled “Chill Dinner Party” at their dinner parties instead of Steely Dan and Paul Simon, I would undoubtably be a radically different person now (probably a much better person, but that’s for another discussion).
I’m reminded of sitting out on the stoop in West Philly for hours and just listening to what neighbors were playing out of their cars or at their barbecues or on the radio. One night when Sophie and I were having a really hard time parking anywhere remotely close to Queen of Sheba (lol) we put on a random radio station and they were playing “I Call Your Name” by Switch. If we had Spotify and a “Parking the Car in Winter” factory playlist, my life would be markedly worse. (Although maybe this joint would be on there too, what do I know?)
Would Switch hit as hard if we found it on a random algorithmically generated playlist instead of on the radio in West Philly? We drove around the block a bunch of times so we could hear the whole song, hooting and hollering at every surprising turn it takes. We couldn’t get it back when it ended.
Look, I could go on forever. I have hundreds of examples of songs and records that are meaningful to me not just because of how they sound, but where I first heard them and who played them for me. These songs and those memories are precious jewels that stud my otherwise very mundane, quotidian life.
Back to our intrepid jazz musician:
In the end, he recorded only a handful of tracks for the company, released under different aliases, and made a couple thousand dollars. The money seemed pretty good at first, since each track took only a few hours. But as a couple of the tracks took off on Spotify, one garnering millions upon millions of streams, he started to see how unfair the deal was in the long term: the tracks were generating far more revenue for Spotify and the ghost label than he would ever see, because he owned no part of the master and none of the publishing rights. “I’m selling my intellectual property for essentially peanuts,” he said.
He quickly succumbed to the feeling that something was wrong with the arrangement. “I’m aware that the master recording is generating much more than I’m getting. Maybe that’s just business, but it’s so related to being able to get that amount of plays. Whoever can actually get you generating that amount of plays, they hold the power,” the musician told me.
Not everyone cares about music as much as I do, and they don’t need to. The “Chill Dinner Party” playlists serve them, and I can appreciate that. The actual problem with the PFC arrangement is above — it’s labor and IP exploitation. It’s virtually financially impossible to be a working musician today for a host of reasons (although streaming platforms present many of them). What if you’re talented enough to goose-step through the “make this as boring as possible” missives and actually create a banger through this program? The lifetime $2K you were paid for it doesn’t even cover rent for this month, and they’re going to stop calling you for more as soon as they have the metrics to prove that AI can create something that performs just a little worse or basically as well as your shit.
Do we value music? Is musicians’ labor valuable? If you want to get really real with me, I think that music is the most direct conduit that we have to God, and if you’re able to sing or play an instrument? Even more direct. But it’s pointless to bring that up in a discussion of Spotify. What’s the market value of humanity’s most precious connection to God? The question belies the answer.
And I’m getting so deep into the Spotify program to dismantle music taste2 not only because I care about music, but because it’s emblematic of the way that the people now fully in charge of this country would like to disintegrate the production of culture in every artistic sector, and are well underway in doing so. Its existence is basically dangerous for them. This is me at my most paranoid and obnoxious, but Joe McCarthy is currently writhing in his grave in abject jealousy WISHING he had the Spotify Perfect Fit Content program at his disposal during his reign of terror. No, don’t ask me to elaborate.
The Long Offseason: Some women’s hoops updates
Look whose Golden State draft prediction was correct (mine). The Liberty’s own beloved Kayla Thornton is now a Valkyrie, as of December 6th. I’m fucking sad! KT was a huge piece of the championship team, and while she had a bit of a slump in the finals, her defensive work was never less than stellar. As Sophie said, she is a true dog on a team that sometimes ran DogLite™. I hope she gets to start for Golden State and her career explodes there. She seems like such a genuine and hilarious person, the DAWG on defense, but I might have to get a jersey…
Speaking of Golden State, I listened to a bunch of interviews with their head coach, Natalie Nakase, this month detailing their decision making around the draft. I particularly enjoyed this very personal one for the Ringer Women’s Basketball Podcast. I’m impressed by anyone that is my height (5’2”) and hooped at a high level in college (!) — KT will be in good company with the dog mentality.
While the draft is over, I don’t think that GSV are done building their roster — I expect them to draw at least one high profile free agent, if not two, to round it out and make them actual contenders. No part of Nakase’s comments make it seem like she’s down to tank the first couple years and bank up on high draft picks. She wants to win now, as unlikely as that seems, and the owner of the Golden State franchises, Joe Lacob, has demanded a championship within five years.
Did you see that Caitlin Clark is Time Magazine’s Athlete of the Year? The accompanying piece is fun if not revelatory, although he did actually get her to comment on the various controversies surrounding her play this past season — mostly on the buildup of the race-based rivalry between her and Angel Reese, that even the WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert said reminded her of Magic Johnson vs Larry Bird (although it was difficult to hear her while her head was completely up her ass).
Clark sounds like she’s truly mounted the crag of media training, and spoke compellingly and firmly on her own white privilege, which has done just enough to fully enrage her white supremacist “fans,” while remaining basically as congenial and milquetoast as possible for the rest of us.
I’m mostly awed by CC’s ability to discipline herself into not caring about what people are posting about her, saying about her in discourse, etc. She claims she simply doesn’t read the comments or look at social media, nor does she read journalistic pieces about herself. She shrugs pretty much everything off nonchalantly, and I think this is a huge and under-told story of what it takes to be a GOAT and what makes her special. It’s easy to say “don’t read the comments” but actually restraining yourself from binging on a raging online discourse all about you? Harder than the logo threes.
Anyway, the photos are better than the piece itself, and feature CC in menswear :) She looks gorgeous, and much more relaxed than in the other femme-forward getups that her stylist has pried her into this year. (Although I have to say, I do have a large place in my heart for her all-white satin Prada miniskirt suit thing that she wore to draft night, but it was 100% clear that she was uncomfy.)
Jewell Loyd requested a trade — I haven’t commented on the drammmmma that has ensconced the Seattle Storm this offseason, but let it be known that… there’s been some. In November, the team hired a firm to investigate allegations of bullying by coaches, team members, and staff. Rumors were flying, speculating who was the bully and who was being bullied, without much in conclusion. The team found no evidence of bullying as such and concluded its search a few weeks ago, at which point Jewell immediately requested to be traded out of Seattle, making one aspect of this drama clear: she’s been the unhappy one all along.
It’s been plain to see that Loyd has been in a season-long shooting slump and under-performed in the Olympics. Her mom is also apparently a loose cannon on social media and takes to Twitter the second Jewell is benched or fouled, blowing up every perceived slight. In retrospect, and especially if we ever find out more about this conflict, we’re all wondering if her slump is an expression of her unhappiness and discomfort with Seattle’s locker room dynamic and internal dramatics.
Regardless, I feel worried for her. It’s not clear who, if anyone, will want to take her on, given that she still draws a tall salary even though she put up terrible stats this year. Some have speculated the Sky might — and Loyd is from Chicago — and I’d like to see that. But it’s also clear that she doesn’t want a leadership role on any team (again, she’s very reserved), which she might be forced into on the youth-heavy Sky.
Unrivaled: Just three (3) weeks before the inaugural season is set to kick off, some shakeups in the team rosters, which have yet to be fully finalized — there are still a couple slots open. I saw that Bridget Carelton, the much lauded small forward for the Minnesota Lynx, quit her EuroLeauge team without much notice… I expect her to be announced for Unrivaled imminently. Even if they don’t fill all of the slots, I can’t wait to watch my best friends, the top women’s professional basketball players, back at it again.
I have never used a music streaming platform as a primary way to listen to music. I have instead maintained a “hard copy” of my digital music library using iTunes (now Apple Music) since… 2003 (I buy music on Bandcamp and download it from various torrent sites). I have lost the library twice — once in high school, once in college. I did a lot of work to recreate certain playlists and portions of the library when I lost it in college, and it’s been complete since, let’s say, 2011. I initially refused to use Spotify or other streaming platforms because it was impossible or far too labor intensive to migrate my precious playlists over, and I didn’t want to live without them. I was also concerned that I would only be able to “download” so much music from the service and I would be without certain albums or songs when stuck underground on the subway or driving/without wifi in a rural area. I feel like I’ve since been vindicated in my choice many times over, but I didn’t ideologically have anything against streaming initially.
It’s worth noting that I’m a professional archivist working towards getting a certification as a digital archivist, and this kind of library-building and file-keeping appeals to me on a deeply dumb nerdy level. Maintaining a music library is basically a hobby at this point, and I don’t expect other people to be excited by it, the way I wouldn’t try to get random friends into knitting their own sweaters or making their own pickles.
I think it’s worth saying that it’s obvious that the PMC music and “real” music can coexist on Spotify, but if you happen to want to try to discover music via these playlists and other platform-promoted tools, Spotify is making it harder and harder to get to.