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Pay to get playlisted? The accusations against Spotify’s Discovery Mode

Discovery Mode gets artists noticed in exchange for a 30% royalty reduction. A new book suggests that the platform is squeezing musicians and misleading listeners

Notably, there have been no signs that Spotify plans to publicly label which songs are enrolled: a lack of disclosure that has caused many music advocacy groups to liken Discovery Mode to the radio payola of the 1950s, which was eventually outlawed by the US Federal Trade Commission. In June 2021, the United States House Judiciary Committee sent a letter to Spotify co-founder Daniel Ek, warning that the feature could establish a “race to the bottom” where artists feel required to accept lower royalties in order to be heard. Shortly after the Artist Rights Alliance op-ed was published, a staff member shared it in a Slack channel called “ethics-club”, where a group of Spotify employees would debate ethical issues of the streaming business.

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