Spotify has ghosts.
Reports of them appeared in 2016.
Then, in 2017, music writer David Turner used analytics to find that 16 tracks by established electronic artists like Brian Eno and Jon Hopkins had been removed from Spotify’s ‘Ambient Chill’ playlist.
They’d been swapped with music from unknown artists with zero physical or digital footprint outside Spotify. Of the 52 tracks in total on the playlist, 34 were produced by Epidemic Sound, the company behind these ghosts.
In 2022, Dagens Nyheter, a Swedish newspaper, reported that there were more than five hundred ghost artists on the platform with millions of streams. Twenty real, unnamed songwriters were behind these artists, working for the same production company.
Liz Pelly later discovered that Spotify had partnerships with these production companies to make music, and an internal team tasked with seeding these tracks across playlists.
The internal Spotify programme had a name: Perfect Fit Content (PFC).
By 2023, the PFC team were responsible for curating over 150 playlists.
Spotify’s own research found that many users weren’t on the platform to listen to specific artists; they just wanted background noise.
Why pay top royalties for music users didn’t come for?
Pelly interviewed a musician who makes noise for one of these production companies.
He gets paid a few hundred dollars per track and is encouraged to make as many as he wants. Once he’s done, it's all published under different aliases.
He owns no part of the intellectual property.
When a track receives millions of streams, the real money is made by Spotify and the production company through savings and royalties.
Spotify aren’t gambling on acts in the hope of landing a hit.
They control the market; the reported 788 million monthly active users. The music needs no heart, soul, or novel arrangement. It simply needs to be good enough to fill the background.
A great opportunity for a struggling musician to make money today.
But for many others, an unthinkable trade.
Giving away their craft, time, and name for so little.
This is not to say that credible musicians don’t use Spotify to share their material; they just don’t make music for users, feeds and playlists. They make music for themselves and their fans, current and future, some of whom use Spotify to listen to and discover new music.
All of which leads to live events, which is where the money is made.
It’s a useful marketing tool, not an essential one.
Seventeen, Andrea Bocelli and Phish are outside the top 1,500 artists by monthly listeners on Spotify. And yet, they were #17, #23, and #31, respectively, for the highest-grossing global tours of 2025.
None of this would happen if they created for people and platforms that buy noise, not music.
The noise business doesn't want your music.
And music lovers don't appreciate noise.
Create accordingly.