this post was submitted on 03 Jul 2025
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Fuck AI
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I wonder if they played with the algorithm to get their own music played more?
Spotify became profitable for a full year for the first time in Q4 2024. I think it's no coincidence. That plus jacking their prices by 25%, and implementing barriers for payout that affect smaller artists (<1k monthly listeners) under the guise of "weeding out AI spam", they know exactly what they're doing.
This band is all over playlists including Spotify's own, and tons of movie soundtrack playlists for some reason (even older movies like Garden State). Lots of these playlists are by Spotify users Lost Records and KULTPOP! which seem to be nobodies who happen to be successful playlist curators. Sus.
Right now The Velvet Sundown has 750k monthly listeners. It's questionable how many of those are real listeners and how many are just bots meant to boost the appearance of their popularity. Spotify has not given a reason to trust that they wouldn't boost an AI band to help their bottom line.
Spotify will kill music for profit. No surprise there.
Very dodgy indeed, it sounds like there's a lot of strings being pulled to promote their slop.