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Spotify’s biggest sin? Its algorithms have pushed artists to make joyless, toothless music | John Harris
Most musicians can only make money on the platform by writing songs inoffensive enough to get on to one of its vapid playlists, says Guardian columnist John Harris
On mine, the song sits alongside such classics as the Rolling Stones’ Beast of Burden, Mazzy Star’s equally aching Fade Into You and Dreams by Fleetwood Mac, whose pathos and depth seems to have been neutralised by their new setting, summed up in the accompanying blurb: “fresh produce, reusable totes, iced coffee and all the lovely spring things”. Pelly traces the birth of this “muted, mid-tempo and melancholy” sound to around 2018: the US singer Billie Eilish seems to have unwittingly kicked things off, and the result has become inescapable, thanks to the kind of Spotify playlists whose titles include the word “chill”. With Trump in the White House and the world in chaos, the absence of a pop-cultural response is striking: might it be connected to the tyranny of what Pelly calls “sad piano ballads with weird drums”, and Spotify’s reduction of artists to near-anonymity: people hanging on for dear life, with no voice?
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