The Pop Corporation

There’s a difference between hearing a song that’s new to you and new music. Unless you’re actively seeking out new stuff like a massive nerd (hi there!) and tailoring the algorithm to give you the new good stuff, Spotify is generally quite bad when it comes to promoting new music from smaller acts with little to no budget.

That’s a criticism of course, but also, somewhat understandable – Spotify are a business and need to make money, so familiar big tunes which are tried and tested are always likely to yield the best financial results for them. That’s why they’ll err on the side of Taylor Swift, Fleetwood Mac, The Beatles, Drake etc etc etc. They’re the same as the big record labels in that respect, and vinyl distributors will make sure they’ve got copies of Dark Side of the Moon good to go, because someone somewhere is invariably going to want to buy it, regardless of whether it’s the best British prog LP or not.

One of the reasons that smaller bands fall through the cracks is because it’s nigh on impossible to get on a Spotify editorial playlist unless you fulfil a number of vague criteria from Spotify themselves. If you’re using a free distribution model, then you can’t get an official release date and without that, Spotify won’t even consider your imminent release for one of their spotlight playlists. If you do, and you don’t have any clout, they’ll ignore your small band, even if listeners are crying out for some new power pop, drum ‘n’ bass, or whatever music you’re making.

Now, Spotify have laid off loads of staff, and with that, made their talent pool more shallow, as it looks increasingly to marquee acts to turn over profit, and negate the risk of smaller bands who can make no such guarantees. The listener has to work harder to listen to a band who might become the next Stevie Nicks or Taylor Swift – even though surely, people who love ’70s and ’80s Fleetwood Mac records would love a new group they can watch live for a fraction of the price, and hear some new ideas rather than pulling ‘Dreams’ apart for the millionth time.

Think of your New Releases playlists that Spotify serve up. The rewards for the listener are there, but small compared to the bands you skip past because you’re wondering why on earth someone would offer such a band to you, before you remember that afternoon you idly flicked through a playlist of bands you hated to see if you still hated them, and the algorithm assumed that in 2024, you wanted to listen to whatever Fountains of Wayne are up to now.

The platform recognises that users want help with discovering new acts, launching AI DJ services and whatnot, which are novel enough, but not grabbing anyone by the lapels. Again, the suggestions seem to fail on the side of well established acts and bands that seem to have a big ad spend behind them. It’s not really how people listen to music and, if we’re being brutally honest, it’s exactly how commercial radio works and you’d hope that streaming would offer something fresh and new from a genre that many have grown tired of.

Of course, you can search for niche playlists made by users, but Spotify is terrible at promoting these in favour of their own editorial decisions. On a platform where a stream is a stream, you’d hope that, if you’re looking for a playlist of Argentinian ’70s progressive music, instead of getting someone from Buenos Aires who knows their cebollas, you’ll get some vague ‘World Music’ playlist that’ll have Khruangbin on it (no shade).

If you’ve been hammering LPs by The Carpenters, instead of getting new acts that maybe match the vibe, Spotify will push Mellow 70s Pop, with Carpenters songs you’ve already listened to, and a bunch of bands that would be on a regional 70s gold radio station. It’s tired. And it’s nothing to do with this being impossible to do, because we’ve seen music broken on apps like TikTok. The Last Dinner Party and Shangri Las found much more success on there, than they ever did via Spotify, and now Spotify mops up with the releases of LPs after other apps did the groundwork.

And strangely, the very thing that Spotify was supposed to replace – internet radio, online mixes – are filling the void and DJs are curating sets and promoting music new and old, for those who are willing to have ground broken in their ears.

With subscription fatigue reaching crisis point with young people, you can imagine that platforms like Mixcloud are only going to become more popular, provided Mixcloud can survive without a proper income of it’s own.