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How to Make Money from Spotify by Streaming Silence

theguardian.com

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Re: How to Make Money from Spotify by Streaming Silence

#51

Post by sp332 »

chimeracoder wrote: post #22

As a huge fan of John Cage, I feel obligated to point out that this is not "scamming" - it is a true performance of a musical work[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4%E2%80%B233%E2%80%B3 John Lennon and Yoko Ono also did "Two Minutes of Silence"[1], which was later covered by Soundgarden as "One Minute of Silence" on the album Ultramega OK (they didn't like Yoko Ono's minute, so they only covered Lennon's[2].) As Deb…

I'm much more impressed with Cage's version than Vulfpeck's. The whole point of Cage's is that it's not actually silent, but Vulfpeck's are.

Re: How to Make Money from Spotify by Streaming Silence

#52

Post by alttab »

aroch wrote: post #45
wtracy wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really, the scam is not the silent tracks--the scam is encouraging your fans to repeatedly play the tracks when they're not actually listening.

Simple fix: "The low level noise caused by my speakers being powered but not making noise helps my sleep similar to a white noise machine."

Simpler Fix: Change the Spotify Terms of Service.

Re: How to Make Money from Spotify by Streaming Silence

#53

Post by alttab »

kanzure wrote: post #21
zacinbusiness wrote: post #9

I wonder how viable this would be for someone who wants to actually scam Spotify? For example, I'm assuming that with only minimal investment one could produce and submit a series of silent audio tracks. Then one could produce a field of virtualized instances of Spotify and a fleet of bots to "listen" to those tracks. But how expensive would all of that be? And at what scale would the operation be necessary to produc…

And each of the bots require a separate Spotify subscription?

Im sure the bot can cover his $10 a month bill.

Re: How to Make Money from Spotify by Streaming Silence

#54

Post by [deleted] »

edkennedy wrote: post #16
zacinbusiness wrote: post #9

I wonder how viable this would be for someone who wants to actually scam Spotify? For example, I'm assuming that with only minimal investment one could produce and submit a series of silent audio tracks. Then one could produce a field of virtualized instances of Spotify and a fleet of bots to "listen" to those tracks. But how expensive would all of that be? And at what scale would the operation be necessary to produc…

It's really wonderful to see capitalism fueling innovation like this. You would also need to include the cost of processing power + server time/aws vm's required. This assumes also that you won't get caught - extra work will probably be required in making your bots seem like "natural users" so they can't be detected.

[deleted]

Re: How to Make Money from Spotify by Streaming Silence

#55

Post by dTal »

aestra wrote: post #47

What's the point of silent tracks? The same effect can be accomplished by just turning the volume down all the way. They could encourage people to play their real tracks without volume or with speakers unplugged without making it so obvious they are trying to game the system.

I imagine it saves bandwidth.

Re: How to Make Money from Spotify by Streaming Silence

#58

Post by curun1r »

chimeracoder wrote: post #22

As a huge fan of John Cage, I feel obligated to point out that this is not "scamming" - it is a true performance of a musical work[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4%E2%80%B233%E2%80%B3 John Lennon and Yoko Ono also did "Two Minutes of Silence"[1], which was later covered by Soundgarden as "One Minute of Silence" on the album Ultramega OK (they didn't like Yoko Ono's minute, so they only covered Lennon's[2].) As Deb…

There's also the math-themed band from the movie "Proof" that had a silent song they called "i" (their imaginary number).

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0377107/quotes?item=qt0392968

Re: How to Make Money from Spotify by Streaming Silence

#59

Post by murki »

DanBC wrote: post #44

This makes my product harder. I am recording a lot of "record player noise" (stylus on vinyl; run-out grooves and clicks; run-in grooves; clunking arms and needle drops; etc. People download (or rip) their music as high quality lossless flac. They then mix my recorded record noise in, with other processing ("bad 80s digital amp"; "good 90s hifi amp"; "valve amp" etc) to get the vinyl experience with modern computing…

Yeah, the "instagram" of audio. A lot of producers do this kind of post-production (example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5eJOhUeWPY)

Re: How to Make Money from Spotify by Streaming Silence

#60

Post by qbrass »

giarc wrote: post #25
jaynos wrote: post #14

Silent tracks seem unnecessary. Why not play an actual album, but with the sound turned off?

I think the silent tracks contribute to the novelty of the idea. This is about promotion and I wonder if this article would have been written if it was just about a band asking their fans to stream their album.

Make an album where every track is only a couple of seconds of music, but you can play the tracks randomly to generate an infinitely long ever-changing song.

You get the hype, the tracks are short, so you get more plays/hour and you can pass it off as an artistic endeavor.

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