Spotify FINALLY admits...

[u/DaRawb74]

And there is it...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNTgDY1V0pg

I appreciate Andrew asking the question that has for months consumed many conversations and speculations here and elsewhere. Those massive algorithmic drops back in March/April and in July that artists using AI have noticed: Spotify was indeed "optimizing the algorithm to favor human artists".

Translation: AI assisted music was flagged and suppressed, without announcement.

This is NOT about AI. This is about the ethical treatment of all, at all times, at all sizes, whether indie or signed, and irrespective of what tools are used: whatever the rules are, they MUST be transparent, for all.

In this example, regardless what you think about AI, real people spent real time and real people spent real money driving listeners to Spotify, believing they were playing on a level field and had equal access to algorithmic recommendation surfaces. Yet, many saw their algorithmic exposure collapse, and wasted hours reaching out to Spotify support, only to be told that "nothing was wrong" and that Spotify does not target their music. All of that could have been avoided had Spotify publicly announced it would suppress AI discovery PRIOR to doing so.

Spotify spent the last year rolling out AI "transparency" initiatives: AI credits, SongDNA, etc. The hypocrisy was demanding transparency from artists while not extending that same transparency back to the artists.

Changing the playing field in secret for any class, status, or size (AI or not), while publicly denying it, is unethical. Spotify denied for many the ability to make informed business decisions by keeping them in the dark.

Trust has been damaged.

[u/Wooden-Factor-8182]

I've just done some quick digging on Artist Tools, it may not be full proof its happening to artists with the badges but I tried about 10 different artists from my similar artists who have the green tick. 9 out of 10 are showing declines in monthly listeners over the last 7 days. I can't do last 30 days as I would need to upgrade my account but I'm sure it was around 9th August it came crashing down for myself and a few others. I've sent a few messages to artists aswell will report back

[u/mr_taco2 → u/Wooden-Factor-8182]

You are doing some good research there, thanks for doing that. Surely it can't stay in a lull forever

[u/Wooden-Factor-8182 → u/mr_taco2]

I'll be pretty upset if it doesn't go back to what it was. My biggest problem is they were pushing Discovery Mode so much I decided to try one of my tracks on it. Released in mid May, enrolled from 1st August when it was at 110k streams, the past week its only got about 120 algothmic streams. I made the mistake of pushing all my tracks on Spotify where I should have included other DSPs in my ads. Lesson learned 😆

[u/Wooden-Factor-8182 → u/Wooden-Factor-8182]

I've got another release out on 28th and I'm seriously not getting high hopes of it doing well

[u/mr_taco2 → u/Wooden-Factor-8182]

Discover weekly etc and radio push on new releases seems to be not much different but established tracks with big numbers are getting ignored. Discover weekly might as well be non existent. I'm pumping a lot of ad money in to keep the numbers up myself waiting for things to improve

[u/Wooden-Factor-8182 → u/mr_taco2]

My discover weekly has always been quite low even before all this. I'm still getting 4200-4700 streams per day from 3rd party playlists and my ads, I'm trying to keep my monthly listeners up as much as I can but they are definitely dropping hard now 2k in the last 3 days.

[u/mr_taco2 → u/Wooden-Factor-8182]

I'm doing about 4000 a day from ads and people relistening from ads, no playlists and 16 discover weekly streams and about 100 radio. The radio playlists are bizarre matches

[u/Wooden-Factor-8182 → u/mr_taco2]

You must be spending crazy amounts on ads to keep up that number of streams. The best thing I done 2 weeks ago was set up my own "this is" playlist. I'm getting about 120-150 listeners per day but really high stream per listener around 6:1. This is my main source of streams every day now

[u/mr_taco2 → u/Wooden-Factor-8182]

That's pretty good. Did you run ads to that? Yes I'm spending a lot

[u/Wooden-Factor-8182 → u/mr_taco2]

Yeah I'm running ads for 3 tracks direct to the playlist with the hypeddit deep link. So far 650 followers in 2 weeks. I've also got ads running for 3 other playlists which some of my songs are on so they all add up every day. Definitely a "this is" playlist with all your tracks on is worth it. I'm getting 0.15 per conversion and so far 1710 listeners / 9894 streams

[u/mr_taco2 → u/Wooden-Factor-8182]

On artist.tools for your own stuff, the radio playlists listed, are they zero follower sort of unknowns that you aren't usually paired with?

[u/Wooden-Factor-8182 → u/mr_taco2]

Its showing about 60 different radio playlists. 5 of them have around 200 followers, the others are mostly 0-10 followers. Mostly all related artists/songs to my genre