this post was submitted on 24 Dec 2024
645 points (96.4% liked)
Technology
60090 readers
1982 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
It's normal if you accept it. You do not have to accept it. There's also a good chance that it's illegal in Spotify's case, if not in the US then likely in Europe.
Under what law?
Likely antitrust.
That said if you've gone down the path of reasoning that says things that aren't illegal are okay, then I don't know what to tell you.
I suppose you could argue that Spotify can abuse its position in the same way that Walmart bullies its suppliers and Microsoft freezes out competition, but it doesn't sound like that's what's happening here. Like I said, it sounds like they're just preferring cheaper sources.
But they aren't just preferring cheaper sources, they're funding production houses that crank out music cheaper than it would cost to pay a single artist, and then putting that "mass" produced music on playlists that they themselves promote, allll to avoid promoting actual artists and paying them potentially more than they're paying the production house.
It's in terribly bad faith because I myself am an artist that distributes through Spotify, not only because I can reach the widest audience, but I'm hoping on some level Spotify is promoting my new music to people outside of my own purview. But they aren't. They're flooding the market with cheap music and only promoting it.
Okay, that's shitty for sure, but I'm not sure that it amounts to illegality, at least under US law.
This is behavior is anti competitive under both US and EU and member states' law.
Issue is the regulatory capture along with strong corporate lobbying on these issues.
If you are with it, that's cool. But behavior has historical precedent and it requires the state to set boundaries on the extraction practices