The Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter hunts down artists who cannot be found at the seams. A music company with good access to Spotify’s playlists now brings in more than 62 million annually into the business.
today’s news (DN) Take a closer look at artist Akfat, who has several million plays on Spotify. Ekfat is served as “certified” by the Energy Service.
Who is the artist behind the name is unclear. However, DN writes that there are three little-known Swedish songwriters behind Akfat’s music.
The same three songwriters are associated with 89 other artists on Spotify, which, like Ekfat, is published by Firefly Entertainment. They have offices in Karlstad and Singapore.
Firefly Entertainment’s specialty is the little-known, but otherwise entertaining, artists creating millions of plays on Spotify – using positions on the streaming service’s massive subscriber playlists.
Getting to these lists is often critical to knowing if a song gets millions of plays or just disappears into the crowd.
Connects to Spotify top
DN discovered that a man in Karlstad is behind 62 artist names published by Firefly. That gives him 7.7 million Spotify gigs per month – more than double what a great Swedish international artist like Robin has.
In 2020, Firefly has about . 62.4 million NOK in sales – more than ten times what it was three years ago. In the same year, the company paid out more than 14 million to its shareholders.
DN points to the apparent links between Firefly and a senior Spotify CEO, who left his position as global music director in charge of playlists in 2019 and later left Spotify.
The paper notes that the photos are documented privately, and that Firefly is an investor and partner in the new New York-based music company Spotify.
In a written response to DN, Firefly Director Peter Classon reported that they strongly rejected a link to a Spotify head that should affect their business.
He denies that Firefly has a direct relationship with Spotify that could influence playlists, and points to the streaming service itself to explain how songs end up in the coveted lists.
Spotify also answers the DN in writing – but not to questions about the Spotify head’s connection to Firefly or how Spotify can “confirm” a non-existent artist.
“Spotify’s editorial decisions are based on what attracts listeners to the respective playlists. Our editors are experts in different cultures and genres and take into account several factors such as data, research, trends and taste to make their decisions,” says the broadcast service.
VG considered Ekfat’s popularity over competing energy service Tidal. They do not give numbers, but they show the ranking of the most popular songs of the artists on the platform.
Ekfat’s most popular song on Tidal has only 12,000 plays on Spotify.
The song “Polar Circle”, which has a playing count of 3.5 million songs, tops the Ekfat catalog on Spotify, however, it ranked second at the bottom of the Tidal chart, with 16th on a long list of 17 songs.
On both Spotify and Tidal, only Firefly Entertainment is listed under “Credits”, where you usually get information about who has authored, produced, and performed works.
SVD: Spotify has given special tasks
DN points to a list of over 830 “fake” artist names that can be linked to Firefly, and writes that at least 495 of them appear in Spotify’s playlists. They also reported that the actual number could be much higher, because they were content to look at hundreds of playlists out of several thousand.
Furthermore, DN wrote that over 500 “fake” artist names are associated with only about 20 songwriters in total.
According to DN, 11 more artist names are listened to per month than Swedish star Håkan Hellström.
The newspaper has received one songwriter associated with Firefly speaking anonymously. He asserts that he made music for the company, but says he doesn’t know the specifics of how to handle the business — not even the fact that more than 30 of his songs have been released under one specific artist name.
wrote this week Svenska Dagbladet About an active supporter of “fake” artists: Christer Sandelin, pop star of the 80s in the bands Freestyle and Style.
He now runs Chillmi, which, according to SVD, is behind 2,500 songs by “fake” artists on Spotify. She has produced a total of 2.5 billion plays, an average of one million plays.
In the past five years, Chillmi has had between 4.8 million and 15.4 million in income.
According to the newspaper, in 2015, Sandelin was commissioned directly from Spotify to prepare music for the streaming service’s many “chillout” playlists.
It has been around for a long time
British Music business around the world Poetry already mentioned Spotify’s preference for “fake” artists in a number of articles, the first It came in 2016.
They point out that it has long been suspected in the industry that “fake” artists are used to reduce “regular” artists and their companies’ share of the income to be distributed – and that the main trick in this regard is that “fake” artists get paid less.
In 2017, the site wrote that those behind “fake” artists often get a lump sum for the content they provide. do the same Eagle. Article in the edge Asking questions about whether Spotify is really willing to take such a big risk for what is a modest amount of money in the context of streaming.
Then Spotify denied that they themselves are behind the “fake” artists in one painting-condition.
“We do not own the rights, we are not a company, all of our music is licensed from the rights holders we pay – we do not pay ourselves,” she said in a written statement from the streaming service there.
“Infuriatingly humble web fan. Writer. Alcohol geek. Passionate explorer. Evil problem solver. Incurable zombie expert.”
