In any event, the new situation is even more deceptive. By featuring the same song under so many different names, the platform prevents us from knowing how many streams it is getting. If that weren’t the case, this one song might get noticed as a huge viral hit—which could be embarrassing, given the bizarre circumstances surrounding it.

A model in which the imperative is simply to keep listeners around, whether they’re paying attention or not, distorts our very understanding of music’s purpose. This treatment of music as nothing but background sounds—as interchangeable tracks of generic, vibe-tagged playlist fodder—is at the heart of how music has been devalued in the streaming era. It is in the financial interest of streaming services to discourage a critical audio culture among users, to continue eroding connections between artists and listeners, so as to more easily slip discounted stock music through the cracks, improving their profit margins in the process. It’s not hard to imagine a future in which the continued fraying of these connections erodes the role of the artist altogether, laying the groundwork for users to accept music made using generative-AI software.

Paste a link to a Spotify playlist (for ex. "Your Top Songs 2020"), and we’ll check what you can purchase directly from them on Bandcamp.