8Sided Blog

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Blocked on Spotify: The Public Has Spoken

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via Thurrott:

With an upcoming update, Spotify will let you block music from any artist you don’t like throughout the app. This means it will block music from that artist on your personal library, playlists, automatically curated playlists, charts, radios, and everything else. In fact, you won’t be able to manually play music from an artist you’ve blocked even if you wanted to — and you’d have to unblock an artist before you can play a certain track from them.

I’ve seen this being sold as a way to no longer hear artists that annoyingly keep popping up in algorithmic playlists — the feature is touted as “much-requested” and I think that’s originally why it was requested — but it’s obvious this is Spotify’s way of dealing with deplorable artists on the platform. It’s a passing of the buck, if you will, after Spotify’s disastrous attempt at self-censorship.

I can’t say I blame Spotify for putting this decision in an individual user’s hands. At least they’re responding and doing something. Knowing Spotify, I’m sure there’s some data-gathering at play, too. It would be in the platform’s best interest to learn of artists that are being blocked en masse by its users. Then Spotify would be able to quietly downplay those artists in playlists and features. The public has spoken.

Update: Another take, Spotify’s New Mute Feature Is a Patronizing Misstep

The Digital Dispute Over Mechanical Royalty

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Lots of confused, angry, and wide-eyed rumblings due to Spotify’s latest legal pronouncement. The Hollywood Reporter explains:

What {Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons member Bob} Gaudio’s lawsuit alleges — as did the prior class action — is Spotify is violating the reproduction rights of publishers and songwriters. Those making a mechanical reproduction of a musical composition can obtain a compulsory license and bypass having to negotiate terms with publishers. However, those doing so have to follow certain protocol like sending out notices and making payments. The lawsuit claims that Spotify hasn’t done an adequate job of doing this.

In the past, Spotify has pointed to the difficulty of locating the co-authors of each of the tens of millions of copyrighted musical works it streams. It fought the class action mainly on jurisdictional grounds as well as challenging whether the lawsuits were ripe for class treatment. But Spotify seems prepared to go another step and set off a legal firestorm by now challenging what rights are truly implicated by streaming.

“Plaintiffs allege that Spotify ‘reproduce[s]’ and ‘distribute[s]’ Plaintiffs’ works, thereby facilely checking the boxes to plead an infringement of the reproduction and distribution rights,” states a Spotify motion for a more definitive statement from the plaintiffs. “But Plaintiffs leave Spotify guessing as to what activity Plaintiffs actually believe entails ‘reproduction’ or ‘distribution.’ The only activity of Spotify’s that Plaintiffs identify as infringing is its ‘streaming’ of sound recordings embodying Plaintiffs’ copyrighted musical compositions.”


Spotify is implying that digital streaming doesn’t entail reproduction; thus the service never owed mechanical royalties in the first place. If you’re confused (and that’s understandable), Complete Music Update gives a solid explainer:

In music, and especially music publishing, a distinction is commonly made between the reproduction and distribution controls – often referred to as the ‘mechanical rights’ – and the performance, communication and making available controls – commonly referred to as the ‘performing rights’.

When you press a CD you exploit the mechanical rights but not the performing rights. When you play a song on the radio you exploit the performing rights but not the mechanical rights. But what about digital?

Copyright law doesn’t usually state which controls the digital transfer of a song or recording exploits, though generally the music industry has treated a digital delivery as both a reproduction and a communication (or a reproduction and a making available) at the same time. A download only exploited the mechanical rights, while a personalised radio service like Pandora or iHeartRadio only exploited the performing rights. However, with on-demand streaming of the Spotify variety, it has generally been accepted that both the mechanical and performing rights are being exploited.


(The full CMU explainer is worth a read.)

I admit, applying mechanical royalty to digital streaming seems a stretch at first. But what’s important to remember is mechanical royalty is not meant to be tied to purchase or the consumer acquiring the duplicated composition. For example, if a label manufactures 1000 CDs then mechanical royalty must be paid for all 1000 copies, even if only 50 sell.

Technically, streaming does require a download, though that download is immediately deleted from the device’s RAM. So, even though the listener isn’t purchasing or acquiring the song, there is a duplication taking place.

This does get tricky when one examines the separation of radio-style services (such as Pandora’s traditional streaming ‘stations’ and iHeartRadio) and on-demand streamers (Spotify, Apple Music). I don’t know the technical specifics, but doesn’t a Pandora ‘station’ download the file to a device’s RAM as well? Almost every other country in the world seems to think so, as the US is an outlier in excluding digital radio-style services from mechanical royalty payment.

If the issue of mechanical royalty and streaming goes to court, it will be watched very carefully as the precedent set either way would be monumental.

Spotify has already paid out tens of millions in settlements over unpaid mechanicals which is likely to be seen as an admission of guilt, hurting the chances of the ‘we should be exempt’ argument. So the money is on the status quo. Regardless, songwriters have a right to be concerned. The line taken by Spotify’s lawyers reveals that the company believes writers should be paid even less than they presently are.

My Every Day Album Discovery Routine

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I was recently asked, “what are you listening to these days?” I explained that I listen to a lot, and it’s because every day I aim to listen to an album I’ve never heard before

A couple of years ago I was writing a ‘best of’ list and came up short for my top ten favorite albums of that year. I realized I didn’t listen to a lot of new music and that made me feel stale. Of all people, especially in my line of work, I should be on top of what’s new. And one of my most enjoyed pastimes is discovering new music.

I made a pact to listen to an album a day, and one I had not heard before. It doesn’t have to be a ‘new’ album, just new to me. Bonus points if I’m not familiar with the album artist, too. I keep track of my progress by posting the day’s album on my Twitter feed. I’ll often add short commentary and post a link to an informative review or article about the work.

Digital streaming powers this process. Spotify is my personal choice, and the freedom I have to check out and discover new albums is exhilarating. It’s also addictive. And I know your next question: how do I find a new album a day?

I get my money’s worth out of my Spotify subscription fee as I’m using the service almost non-stop. Because of this, Spotify knows my taste well, and its suggestions are usually spot-on. My Discover Weekly playlist is fascinating every time it refreshes. You know the algorithm is doing its job when a song I loved a decade ago but haven’t thought of since pops up. And the Discover tab under Browse yields terrific album choices regularly.

However, I like getting outside of my comfort zone. Spotify’s choices reflect my taste as the algorithm sees it, and that’s cool. But I sometimes want to get outside of my perceived taste and find entirely new (to me) artists and sounds.

So, I pluck titles from the review pages of a few music websites. The ones I regularly visit:

  • The Quietus – I love that the music The Quietus reviews is all over the place. I never know what I’m going to hear.
  • Resident Advisor – Almost always in the electronic spectrum, RA’s album reviews are diverse and filled with treasures, and aren’t as dance floor focused as you might think.
  • Pitchfork – I know I’m not supposed to go here, but this is where I find what’s new in the broader sense. Relatively mainstream albums rub shoulders with underground gems, and I’m willing to sample it all.

I do have a few rules. I grab an album from the bottom of whichever review list I visit. The ones at the top might not be out yet, thus not available for digital streaming. I’ll give any album a chance for two or three songs. If an album doesn’t float my boat, I’m not going to listen to the whole thing. I move on and select a new album when a selection doesn’t satisfy or pique my interest. When I find an album that I’m into enough to finish, I’ll read the review to learn more about it. I’ll also do a quick search for the artist and album to see if there’s anything else I can glean. Then I’ll post it on my pages.

Know that when I post an album on Twitter, it’s mainly for my benefit. I’m keeping a running tab on what I’ve been checking out, and I like to look back to see what made a lasting impression on me. I’ll listen to those again someday, but only after I’ve digested something new. If you, the casual onlooker, consider my postings as recommendations and listen along then I’m flattered.

That’s the process. An album a day. I’ve missed days – in fact, I’ve missed a lot of days lately – as life and travel get in the way. But this has proven to be an enriching practice that I’d like to make into a daily routine. If you also love discovering music, then I’d recommend giving this schtick a try.

Side note: Here I am on Spotify. I don’t make my listening private, so you are welcome to see what I’m checking out in real time. I’m also proud of the playlists I put together and would love for you to give them a go.

Cranking the Wheel

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“Spotify playlists, and Spotify charts, and Spotify plays, have become the number one tool that labels and artists and managers are using in order to break artists and measure success,” said industry analyst Mark Mulligan, speaking to Wired earlier this year. “If you get things working on Spotify, that’s going to crank the wheel.” Anyone who’s opened Spotify and found themselves clicking on their Daily Mix playlist, or fired up the app’s Discovery Weekly playlist already knows this. The app, and the impact of its playlist placements, are now an almost unspoken reality of the industry’s digital growth.

And so we come to this week’s news, of Spotify playing coy about what determines the song of the summer. In a blogpost published on Wednesday, the streaming service’s US team announced a – you guessed it – playlist of the tracks that they “predict” will soundtrack your BBQs, house parties and whatever other photogenic events you’ll be attending in the sunshine. “To create this year’s Songs of Summer predictions,” they wrote, “Spotify tapped the insights of its genre and trend experts, analysed its streaming data and considered factors such as a song’s performance on the charts, on key Spotify playlists and how it’s performing over time. The team also factored in buzz on social media to create a list of songs perfect for essential summer moments.”

At a glance you’d look at this and think, ‘oh cool, Spotify are predicting the future. That’s fun! They’re fun!’ But when you take a closer look, a couple of issues become clear. First, that you walk right into a chicken-and-egg situation. Do songs chart well because it’s been playlisted dominantly, and thus listened to by lots of people on Spotify? Or does it make that Spotify playlist position because it’s performing well on the charts? We don’t know about those inner workings within Spotify. But it’s bizarre for the company to both aggressively use reams of data to thrust certain songs under our noses, then act as though it doesn’t consequently set the agenda for what casual music listeners grow to like.

Spotify Settles With Songwriters

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Spotify has reached a settlement with a group of songwriters who had sued for copyright infringement, eliminating an potential complication to the public offering that the streaming service is planning later this year.

Under the agreement which will need to be approved by the court, the streaming company will set up a fund worth $43.4 million to compensate songwriters and publishers whose compositions the service used without paying mechanical royalties.

Spotify has to pay record labels to use their recordings and publishers to use the underlying compositions; it pays mechanical royalties directly to publishers and public performance royalties to performing-rights groups like ASCAP, which distribute the money to their member publishers and songwriters. Streaming services don’t need to negotiate with publishers, since they can take advantage of a “statutory license” offered by the federal government.

But they need to find the right publishers to pay — a challenge in cases where recordings have entered Spotify’s system without proper metadata. Spotify has always made a point of holding money aside for publishers it couldn’t identify, but doing so doesn’t make it compliant with copyright law.

Beyond past and future compensation, the settlement agreement outlines a process by which Spotify and the class counsel “will work collaboratively to improve the gathering and collecting of information about composition owners to help ensure those owners are paid their royalties in the future,” according to the plaintiffs’ motion.


Previously, Previously, and Previously.



Update: Complete Music Update does a great job explaining this mess:

In some countries, the music publishing sector has traditionally licensed the performing and mechanical rights separately through different entities, meaning streaming firms need to ensure that – not only do they have deals in place for both recordings and songs – those deals cover both the performing and mechanical rights of any works streamed.

In the US this has proven challenging, because while there are collecting societies that licence performing rights, there is no one-stop society that represents mechanical rights. In other countries where the two elements of the copyright are licensed separately, there is a mechanical rights society that can provide a licence to cover any songs that are not subject to direct deals between the streaming firms and the big music publishers.

On one level this shouldn’t matter because there is a compulsory licence covering mechanicals in the US, which includes a set statutory rate to be paid, so streaming services don’t need to negotiate terms and they know from the outset what the mechanical costs will be. However, the compulsory licence obliges the streaming service to alert each and every rights owner that it intends to exploit their work or – where they can’t identify the owner – it should file paperwork with the US Copyright Office instead.

Few services did this, mainly because of the big music rights data problem, whereby there is no one stop publicly accessible database to tell you who controls which song copyrights, nor which song is contained in which recording. However, by failing to adhere to the formalities of the compulsory licence, whenever a streaming service streams a song in the US which is not covered by one of its direct publisher licences, it is technically committing copyright infringement.


Update 2:

Compare Spotify to Facebook. Facebook has no licenses. None. Zero. Zilch. They know they have no licenses and they don’t seem to be in much of a hurry to solve this problem. For all of Spotify’s problems, Facebook is not Spotify. Facebook is a royalty deadbeat.

What the Spotify cases should tell Facebook is that Facebook should not expect to get a pass for their bad behavior. Facebook should expect to write a very large check for the past and a very large check for the future.

Make LUFS, Not (Loudness) War

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Ask Audio:

It appears as if Spotify have decided to join the majority of online streaming platforms and reduce their streaming target loudness from -12 LUF to -14 LUFS! By my own measurements, a solid thirty to forty minutes of the Top 50 global playlist off the free Spotify app yields an integrated value of -14 LUFS with true peaks well below -1 dbTP.



Spotify has long been the outlier in terms of online loudness, streaming a full +4 LU (1 LU = 1dB) above AES recommended streaming practices of -16 LUFS/-1dBTP and causing no end of confusion in the last days of the loudness war. So this move brings Spotify into the same Loudness ballpark as TIDAL who are normalising to no louder than -14 LUFS, YouTube who seem to be normalising high view count videos to -14 LUFS, and 2 LU higher than iTunes and iTunes radio with “Sound Check” loudness normalising to -16 LUFS.



As of now, most online streaming services are matching the perceived loudness of tracks to each other to a unified target level. So regardless of how much you worked on squeezing a few extra dB out of your hyper-compressed “master”, if an online streaming service measures your track as higher than -14 LUFS (integrated) YOUR MUSIC WILL GET TURNED DOWN!



Unfortunately for us electronic music makers we still have to deal with SoundCloud and Bandcamp, and neither service even seems to be aware of the loudness issues facing their content. SoundCloud and Bandcamp are a free-for-all at the moment with incredibly loud music being uploaded every day, and it sucks that dance and electronic music is the last bastion of the loudness war. Soundcloud was never built on its reputation for quality audio, but a target loudness value of -14 LUFS/ -1 dBTP is highly recommended regardless of your “competition’s levels”.



A Poke in the Ear (With a Sharp Stick):

So, you could care less about The LUFS Standard and will just mix and master your track or project so loud that it will blow out your listeners eardrums on the first listen. Fine, go for it. It’s your music.



Just remember that if you ever want your tunes to be on one of the major Music Streaming Services or on The Tube Of Yous they are going to turn the level down for you. If it hits the Broadcast Airwaves it’s going to be turned down even more.



Would you rather have control over what it sounds like when it gets turned down, or do you trust the Providers and Networks to do that for you? LUFS ain’t going away kids – it’s a Standard and a Broadcasting Law in the US and Europe. Start adhering to it now and you’re futureproofed, but if you do make headway in the Industry you’ll have to invest time and money to remaster your older works.


My audio nerd friends are pretty excited about Spotify’s decision. I’m thinking it’s in preparation for the launch of a high fidelity audio plan. It still probably doesn’t excuse the bad pun in this post’s title.

Blockchain and the Rights Management Renaissance

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Mediachain Labs blog, one year ago:

The problem is simply that no central database exists to keep track of information about music. Specifically, there are two types of information about a piece of music that are critically important: who made it and who owns the rights to it. Right now, this information is fiendishly difficult to track down, to the great detriment of artists, music services and consumers alike.



If we want to enable maximum value flow and creation, we’ve got to solve the data problem first. Given that context, we should view a blockchain solution as a simple metaphor for shared, networked, media metadata.



Platforms like Spotify and Soundcloud have an incentive to find a reliable, long-term solution to the fractured data problem in order to avoid future lawsuits. Spotify seems to be leading the charge, having recently committed to “fix the global problem of bad publishing data once and for all”. They also have the scale and technical resources to ensure the availability and operation of the network.



Mediachain Labs is leading the open source development of Mediachain, a decentralized data network that aims to make it simple for organizations, creators, and developers to share and reuse information about creative works. As a shared metadata network for music, Mediachain offers a uniform interface to data contributed by multiple participants with no central authority. Because Mediachain is open source and decentralized, all participants remain in control of their data and there is no central point of failure.



TechCrunch, today:

Spotify has acquired the Brooklyn-based blockchain startup Mediachain Labs, whose team will join the company’s office in New York where they will work on developing better technology for connecting artists and other rights holders with the tracks hosted on Spotify’s service.



This is an area where Spotify can use some help, as it turns out. Last year, Spotify settled a licensing dispute with the National Music Publishers Association (NMPA) in the U.S. over unpaid royalties. Spotify had claimed that it didn’t pay out the royalties because it simply didn’t have the necessary data to help it figure out whose claims were legitimate, or even how to locate the parties. It said it lacked an authoritative database that covered all existing music rights. This opens it up to litigation, which is obviously not the ideal way of managing these payments.



With Mediachain, Spotify potentially has a solution on its hands – but instead of building out a centralized database with music rights information, it looks like it will build a decentralized one. Mediachain says it will turn over the technology it had already built to the open source community as it moves to Spotify.



There’s this announcement – and the dotBlockchain Music Project’s recent alliance with SOCAN, Songtrust, CD Baby, and FUGA – and ASCAP, SACEM, and PRS for Music collaborating on a blockchain-powered “shared decentralized database of music work metadata with real-time update and tracking capabilities” … could we be on the cusp of a rights management renaissance?



Previously and Previously.



Update: CMU Daily once again with the definitive take:

How do you convince the music industry that you’re taking the data issues that continue to hinder the streaming business seriously? Tell em you’re going to fix it via the blockchain and ‘boom’, no one knows what you’re taking about, but boy are they impressed.

Ninja Tune’s Peter Quicke: “Spotify is our Biggest Revenue Source”

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[PIAS]’s The Independent Echo blog regularly posts wonderful and informative interviews with various record label managers. The latest features Ninja Tune‘s Peter Quicke who has been managing that label for 25 years. It’s always interesting to hear the perspective of a label that once made its bacon through vinyl and CD sales, now that we are well on our way into the streaming age. Says Quicke:

Spotify is our biggest revenue source. Would it be better if streaming never existed and we carried on selling vinyl and CD? I don’t know. In a way, the reverence for the artifact is tied up with the emotions of the music. Streaming is gradually breaking that down – people’s relationship with music is possibly becoming more incidental and less involved and emotional. But on the other hand, it makes it possible for people to listen to music all the time.



{Spotify feels} like an honest broker paying a fair royalty. But the other thing they’re doing is making the long-tail thinner and probably making the pool of music that gets listened to thinner. That’s not a good thing. It’s the tyranny of choice. People don’t know what to listen to so they listen to the Spotify playlists. From our point of view it’s fine [with a large catalogue], although we’re always learning what works and what you have to be careful of. Whether culturally it’s good long-term is an interesting debate.



It probably is harder now {to start a successful label}. But when I started doing this, for years I worked all day and all night, and it was fucking hard. Nobody wanted to review our records. There were a few fans, but nobody cared. We sold 2,000 or 3,000 at best. It’s hard whenever you start a record label. In a way it’s easier now because you don’t have to spend loads of time fretting over manufacturing. Starting a label at any time in history is just shit-tonnes of work for years.



Be sure to read the full interview HERE.

The Tale of Vulfpeck’s Silent Album

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Today I Found Out just posted a video detailing Sleepify, that fascinating crowdfunding ploy by Michigan band Vulfpeck:

An important bit that’s mentioned in passing is that Vulfpeck encouraged sleeping fans to play the silent album on repeat overnight (thus, Sleepify) to add to the playcount coffer. Though this tactic was initially creative and effective (really, hats off to ’em), I do think Spotify were justified in putting a stop to the potential trend of ‘silent album’. There would certainly be hundreds of uninspired copycat ‘silent albums’ with a sole money-making purpose if this was tolerated (Spotify’s already dealing with new ridicule for a preponderance of “karaoke versions” and the like mucking up the works).

I also think it’s unfair to compare Sleepify to John Cage’s “4’33″” as Cage’s purpose in ‘writing’ that piece wasn’t to raise funds for a tour. But, I’ll go one further and say that “4’33″” shouldn’t be on Spotify either … it only truly resonates when performed live:

Road Maps, Rainy Days, and Digital Streaming

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Spotify, Waze, and road trips, via Endgadget:

Drivers use their smartphone for both navigation and music, so why not put the two together? Waze and Spotify have announced that they’ve done just that: You can now navigate with Waze within Spotify and access Spotify playlists from Waze. After you set up a playlist, it’ll automatically play when you start your journey, while letting you “easily” change songs. At the same time, you can browse playlists (and switch from one app to the other) when your vehicle is at a full stop.



The partnership is somewhat surprising, as Waze is owned by Google, which has its own Play music-streaming service that competes with Spotify. However, Spotify’s 50 million-strong subscriber base dwarfs Google Play (and every other music service), so it could be a way for Google to prod all those users into trying the Waze platform.



Spotify, The North Face, and rain, via The Verge:

The Austin-based band White Denim has a new song out today, but you can only listen to it if it’s raining where you are. The North Face is releasing the track, called “No Nee Ta Slode Aln” as part of a partnership with Spotify. The whole thing is a gimmicky way to sell a rain jacket.



The streaming service is using geo-targeting to make the song available only in areas of the United States experiencing drops of water falling from the sky. If that’s not happening in your area, you’re out of luck. It’s currently not raining where I am, which means the song isn’t showing up on my Spotify.



Just as digital streaming has opened up endless options for defining a ‘release’ or an ‘album’, we’re now starting to see this creative freedom applied to music promotion and integration. More of this, I say.