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An odd discovery on Spotify

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Re: An odd discovery on Spotify

#271

Post by thih9 »

someweirdperson wrote: post #145
mgdlbp wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I listened to the users also and it's nearly the same comment with minor variations. Imagine finding dozens of threads where the jokes are all the same, but with very unsubstantive changes in phrasing as the site is turning into Reddit.

> I listened to the users ... No way! No one ever listens to the users. There's some obvious random word shuffling happening and that gave it away.

I listened to what gave it away and it's definitely the same obvious random word shuffling. Imagine finding users who all have been listened to, but only partially and in the same way, perhaps with slight changes.

Re: An odd discovery on Spotify

#272

Post by klabb3 »

SantiagoElf wrote: post #211

Let's not forget the reverse scam: Music Business Worldwide’s story explains how the moneymaking trick worked. “Soulful Music” had 467 songs by virtually unknown artists — which is to say, artists who may have been created for the purpose of this alleged scheme. The vast majority of songs were about 30 seconds long, which is the minimum length a song needs to be to count as a monetized play on the service. The most p…

Yes, it's very important piece of Spotify's rev share model, it has arbitrage built in(!), most people are not aware of this.

Spotify pays PER STREAM, meaning that a bot account can funnel a massively disproportionate amount of revenue compared to a human one. In fact, you can generate more revenue than your subscription costs. Artists have complained about this forever, because 24/7 playlists at the gym with Justin Bieber on repeat would "steal" from the indie enthusiasts. And they are right! If I use my account to listen to one band only, my $10 contribution should go to them (modulo taxes, margins etc).

I'm sure they have "patched" some of these holes in recent times (ie some half baked abuse detection system that scammers can circumvent easily). But the per-stream principle remains, and it's such a massive incentive fuck-up from every angle, beyond salvation. And now they have (predictably) content farms and money laundering at their necks, and they're still not patching it.

Re: An odd discovery on Spotify

#273

Post by vintermann »

hahajk wrote: post #242
vintermann wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably serious enough, since the album they describe exists. Spotify is smart enough to know that it isn't "the" Fanny Mendelssohn though - at least in the artist database. It could well be that Release Radar is dumber and is fooled by the matching name.

Or enough other people were fooled and listen to the "fake" Fanny, creating a listener correlation between the real and fake Fannys.

Release Radar by its nature will try to recommend tracks with very few plays (if any). It is supposed to solve the "bootstrap" problem in recommendation systems.

In retrospect, I think it's more likely that Fake Fanny Mendlelssohn did NOT inform Spotify that they were a different person, and Spotify only split it out after a lot of Felix/Fanny fans clicked "I did NOT like this" when the track was put in their Release Radar.

Re: An odd discovery on Spotify

#274

Post by 411111111111111 »

ehnto wrote: post #222
Kiro wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment ignores 99% of genres.

I don't think it does, if you are alluding to electronic music that's also just as much about the human aspect of it. Lets be real, at the commercial end of the spectrum electronic music is trivial to make, but no one wants to hear "Song seed 2aslk3j25lh" they want to hear what their "Music Hero" has made. Another aspect is DJing, DJs don't even pretend to have made the music yet people will come out just to hear a s…

Let's be realistic here. Hatsune Miku was created before 2010. While I dislike the genre, they've completely sold out all tickets to these festivals where "she" "performed".

You're really not thinking it through if you think any genre isn't going to fundamentally change once the industry starts to push virtual artists. They can be perfect and relatable to teenagers. You really don't need physical people to pull off a good festival, a well orchestrated 3d avatar is likely even better because they can be bigger and seen from the back

Re: An odd discovery on Spotify

#275

Post by pelario »

PurpleRamen wrote: post #229
midasz wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a father of a young child, Spotify's algo's are completely useless to me. If their ML is so smart it should be able to determine that Row row row your boat doesn't mix well with Anthrax. Wish I'd be able to toggle 'don't recommend kids music' somewhere.

Seems to be an unsolved problem to train the algorithms for recognizing different situations. One recommendation for all roles the user has. Though, thinking about, it's probably unsolvable as long as the interfaces remain simple and focused on satisfying only the one user, not the different roles, which would complicated the interfaces.

Spotify is missing user profiles, in the Netflix fashion.

Re: An odd discovery on Spotify

#276

Post by pachico »

usednet wrote: post #28

People have been noticing this a lot recently but what nobody seems to know is that this is a form of money laundering/“scamming.” I know because I used to be active on crime forums and talked to some of the people who engineered this scheme. People will set up fake Spotify artist accounts with stolen identities and bank accounts, pay a musician for songs that pass as music, and then bot millions of streams on them.…

Doesn't that imply to have millions of Spotify accounts to be used by the bots? Is that still profitable?

Re: An odd discovery on Spotify

#277

Post by dharmit »

This sounds quite familiar to what Yuval Noah Harari mentioned in his book "21 Lessons for the 21st Century" where he talks about how smart devices attached to our bodies and AI would be able to generate and play music based on what the sensors detect our feelings are.

Re: An odd discovery on Spotify

#278

Post by lupire »

pachico wrote: post #276
usednet wrote: post #28

People have been noticing this a lot recently but what nobody seems to know is that this is a form of money laundering/“scamming.” I know because I used to be active on crime forums and talked to some of the people who engineered this scheme. People will set up fake Spotify artist accounts with stolen identities and bank accounts, pay a musician for songs that pass as music, and then bot millions of streams on them.…

Doesn't that imply to have millions of Spotify accounts to be used by the bots? Is that still profitable?

Money laundering is profitable because the money put in is devalued dirty money, more like a raw material input.

Re: An odd discovery on Spotify

#279

Post by ABraidotti »

This reminded me-- years ago, I ran into an old high school friend and asked him what he had been up to. He had gotten into graphic design and wound up partnering with a couple of guys who had a recording studio. They had a niche product and needed cover art -- and lots of it. He explained to me that they would release albums of fart noises on iTunes -- like many, many albums -- and the tracks would get a ton of plays, and people would purchase the albums. The partners made enough to pay him a good salary for just illustrating fart album cover art.

Re: An odd discovery on Spotify

#280

Post by dominotw »

pelario wrote: post #275
PurpleRamen wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems to be an unsolved problem to train the algorithms for recognizing different situations. One recommendation for all roles the user has. Though, thinking about, it's probably unsolvable as long as the interfaces remain simple and focused on satisfying only the one user, not the different roles, which would complicated the interfaces.

Spotify is missing user profiles, in the Netflix fashion.

spotify is usually on people's personal device like a phone not on communal device at home like a TV.
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