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Spotify's Phony War On Bots

Benn Jordan · 362.6K views · 2024-03-17 · 18:20

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Overview

Musician Benn Jordan explains how all of his music was removed from Spotify and walks through the history of digital music distribution and fake streams. He argues that Spotify's anti-bot measures are mostly a phony war.

On Hacker News

HN cites it as a firsthand example of artists losing catalogs with no recourse and of the middlemen in music streaming.

Discussed on HN; no positive recommendation is recorded in this export · HN mentions 2024–2025

Topics

Music performance & songsTech industry & business modelsInternet culture & memes
Search by tags
spotifyfake streamsmusic distributionindependent artistsstreaming royalties

What people said

musesum · 2025-02 · Criticism

>> In 2023, the company said it pays out nearly 70% to the industry Does not stop there; there are tiers of middlemen: [VIDEO]

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keeperofdakeys · 2024-04 · Criticism

And maybe it wasn't removed by their choice. Below is a video of someone who had all their Spotify music removed with no recourse, due to a claim the were buying streams. No recourse. [VIDEO]

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non-nil · 2024-03 · Reference

Whether you think music streaming in its current form is a net good or bad for humanity, consider not supporting Spotify the company. From the very start, they're nothing but grifters. Daniel Ek has his background in ads, SEO and related stuff –basically every possible way to make a buck using this newfangled internet thing – including selling virtual clothes for virtual dolls to kids age 9-17. The teaming up with Martin Lorentzon was never about music, but simply finding an untapped market, a niche in which to apply their particular set of skills of hawking stuff online. They teamed up with the guy behind µTorrent and eventually convinced the major labels to buy into the idea (by getting a cut). The idea that they are on the side the art form, let alone artists, is pure mythogenesis to serve their brand. Recently, music hasn't been enough to feed the growth. They want to colonize podcasts, an open ecosystem, and have put billions of dollars into investments and deals locking popular podcasts onto their platforms. They now intend to do the same with audio books. Spotify has from the very start had an incestuous relationship with labels and various middlemen. It was never a fair game, they make special deals whenever it serves their purpose (driving the price down). Everyone involved is guaranteed to make a cut before the artist, and the entire ecosystem is built upon the idea that the less they pay out to the artist, the better their numbers look. Nowadays they don't even pay

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Sources

Video by Benn Jordan, played through YouTube.

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HN Library: HackerTube export (2026-10-31) and open-index/hacker-news. Upstream summaries and classifications may contain AI errors.

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