Within a new book that has been released, “Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist,” written by Liz Pelly, it has been suggested that Spotify has been promoting “ghost artists” to avoid having to pay royalties to real artists. In the book, Pelly has written, “They are effective in working to grow the percentage of total streams of music that is cheaper for the platform.” Other employees for Spotify have stated to the author that they had wished that they spoke out more about what was happening, as an employee stated to Futurism, “Some of us really didn't feel good about what was happening.” They also stated to Liz Pelly about the process of how they would replace real artists with “ghost artists,” “We didn't like that it was these two guys that normally write pop songs replacing swaths of artists across the board.” Since the book was published, Spotify did not comment on whether the allegations were true or false; however, the company did deny that they create in-house music, and back in 2017, when the claims came out to begin with, the company stated, “categorically untrue, full stop.” Although since then they have not commented on the matter. What else could be happening behind closed doors that we do not know about, and will the “real artists” gain the royalties that they deserve?.
