<story><title>The fake artists problem on streaming platforms</title><url>https://tedgioia.substack.com/p/the-fake-artists-problem-is-much</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>_Nat_</author><text>Sounds like they&amp;#x27;re &amp;quot;&lt;i&gt;fake&lt;/i&gt;&amp;quot; in that they&amp;#x27;re apparently fictional characters who aren&amp;#x27;t explicitly presented as such.  They&amp;#x27;re just branding-icons, like the mascots who make a brand-name cereal.  And then like with cereal, someone else actually makes it.&lt;p&gt;I guess that this might be concerning for folks who feel like they form spiritual-connections to artists, if they then learn that there wasn&amp;#x27;t really a singular artist.  Though I suspect that most folks probably don&amp;#x27;t care.&lt;p&gt;Related:&lt;p&gt;1. [&amp;quot;&lt;i&gt;Ghost singer&lt;/i&gt;&amp;quot;, Wikipedia](&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Ghost_singer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Ghost_singer&lt;/a&gt; ).&lt;p&gt;2. [&amp;quot;&lt;i&gt;Ghostwriter&lt;/i&gt;&amp;quot;, Wikipedia](&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Ghostwriter&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Ghostwriter&lt;/a&gt; ).</text></item><item><author>brundolf</author><text>What makes them &amp;quot;fake&amp;quot;? I kept waiting for the author to explain how people are taking others&amp;#x27; music and re-packaging it as their own to collect royalties, but it doesn&amp;#x27;t sound like that&amp;#x27;s what&amp;#x27;s happening.&lt;p&gt;SEO-optimized music is not &amp;quot;fake music&amp;quot;. It&amp;#x27;s an interesting phenomenon, and maybe even a bad one, but framing it this way is disingenuous and alarmist.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>rcoveson</author><text>&amp;gt; ...someone else actually makes it.&lt;p&gt;...which sort of applies to a lot of Hot 100 artists as well. A good songwriter writes it, a talented producer makes it sound good, and a well-known personality sings it (with varying accuracy) and has their name put on it as the &amp;quot;artist&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s a spectrum. At one end you&amp;#x27;ve got The Velvet Underground playing around a single mic hooked directly to a reel-to-reel, and at the other end you&amp;#x27;ve got neural-net generated lofi hip hop beats to relax&amp;#x2F;study to. If you sort artists by play count on Spotify, the top results will be all over this spectrum (but mostly in the middle, I think).</text></comment>
<story><title>The fake artists problem on streaming platforms</title><url>https://tedgioia.substack.com/p/the-fake-artists-problem-is-much</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>_Nat_</author><text>Sounds like they&amp;#x27;re &amp;quot;&lt;i&gt;fake&lt;/i&gt;&amp;quot; in that they&amp;#x27;re apparently fictional characters who aren&amp;#x27;t explicitly presented as such.  They&amp;#x27;re just branding-icons, like the mascots who make a brand-name cereal.  And then like with cereal, someone else actually makes it.&lt;p&gt;I guess that this might be concerning for folks who feel like they form spiritual-connections to artists, if they then learn that there wasn&amp;#x27;t really a singular artist.  Though I suspect that most folks probably don&amp;#x27;t care.&lt;p&gt;Related:&lt;p&gt;1. [&amp;quot;&lt;i&gt;Ghost singer&lt;/i&gt;&amp;quot;, Wikipedia](&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Ghost_singer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Ghost_singer&lt;/a&gt; ).&lt;p&gt;2. [&amp;quot;&lt;i&gt;Ghostwriter&lt;/i&gt;&amp;quot;, Wikipedia](&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Ghostwriter&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Ghostwriter&lt;/a&gt; ).</text></item><item><author>brundolf</author><text>What makes them &amp;quot;fake&amp;quot;? I kept waiting for the author to explain how people are taking others&amp;#x27; music and re-packaging it as their own to collect royalties, but it doesn&amp;#x27;t sound like that&amp;#x27;s what&amp;#x27;s happening.&lt;p&gt;SEO-optimized music is not &amp;quot;fake music&amp;quot;. It&amp;#x27;s an interesting phenomenon, and maybe even a bad one, but framing it this way is disingenuous and alarmist.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>kelseyfrog</author><text>That&amp;#x27;s a huge number of artists. Take Britney Spears&amp;#x27; Grammy winning Toxic for example. The song was written and produced by Bloodshy &amp;amp; Avant, with additional writing from Cathy Dennis and Henrik Jonback[1]. …Baby One More Time, another example of hers contains zero songs written by Spears. Is that the same kind of deception that an unknown artist makes when publishing an original song that makes it way onto a jazz playlist? It&amp;#x27;s hard to find the utility of such a distinction.&lt;p&gt;1. &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.officialcharts.com&amp;#x2F;chart-news&amp;#x2F;britney-spears-toxic-was-originally-meant-for-janet-jackson-says-songwriter-cathy-dennis__31169&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.officialcharts.com&amp;#x2F;chart-news&amp;#x2F;britney-spears-tox...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>