The Great Flattening: How Spotify’s Algorithmic Pastiche Machines are Devaluing Music
The Cost of Creating Content: Daniel Ek, Shakespeare, and the Price of Zero
Daniel Ek, the founder and CEO of Spotify, recently posted a tweet that struck a nerve with musicians:
Today, with the cost of creating content being close to zero, people can share an incredible amount of content. This has sparked my curiosity about the concept of long shelf life versus short shelf life. While much of what we see and hear quickly becomes obsolete, there are timeless ideas or even pieces of music that can remain relevant for decades or even centuries.
For example, we’re witnessing a resurgence of Stoicism, with many of Marcus Aurelius’s insights still resonating thousands of years later. This makes me wonder: what are the most unintuitive, yet enduring ideas that aren’t frequently discussed today but might have a long shelf life? Also, what are we creating now that will still be valued and discussed hundreds or thousands of years from today?
I would argue that almost everyone (musicians at least) stopped reading after the second comma. There is clumsy, and then there is being a billionaire who made those billions by being a middleman between music makers and everyone else.
I’ll translate what other musicians read in this sentence:
The tens of thousands of hours, the tens of thousands of dollars, the years and years of plugging away at honing your craft and working diligently to uncover your unique voice and technique; the missed family events while you toured, trying to get anyone to come out and hear your music; the failed relationships due to your need to prioritize your craft; the financial strains; the mental and bodily strains — all in service of writing, producing, and performing your music to share with the world and hopefully inspire others — is utterly worthless.
Now, you can argue, as most non-musicians I saw did, that those getting upset over this are just misinterpreting Ek’s point. What he was trying to say was ‘blah, blah, blah…as a shareholder of Spotify since…’
That being said, I want to explore the tweet beyond that second comma and illustrate that what Ek argues for is the dismantling of the modern music ecosystem and his very role in its existence.
“The Isle Is Full of Noises”: Shakespeare’s Insights into Music, Technology, and Commodification
On a recent weekend family trip to Bisbee, AZ, we stopped at a vintage craft shop. There, I came across the complete works of Shakespeare and decided to purchase the collection, as I had been wanting to delve into them. Little did I know that this 400-year-old play would offer such striking insights into the current state of the modern music ecosystem and the impact of technology on art and music.
While reading “The Tempest” this morning, I stumbled upon a passage in Act III, Scene 2 that not only immediately made me think of Daniel Ek’s tweet but also foreshadows the rise of the modern music industry and the digital age. In this scene, Caliban remarks:
“Be not afeard. The isle is full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and sometimes voices
That, if I then had waked after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again; and then, in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open, and show riches
Ready to drop upon me, that when I waked
I cried to dream again.”
Stephano’s response is particularly poignant:
“This will prove a brave kingdom to me, where I shall have my music for nothing.”
This exchange, with its emphasis on the allure of a mesmerizing wealth of music, feels strikingly relevant to our current digital landscape. The island’s enchanting sounds, which Caliban describes as a source of delight and an invitation to deep reflection, are seen by Stephano as an opportunity for appropriation and commodification — a “brave kingdom” where he shall have his music “for nothing.” Similarly, the ubiquity of music in our modern age — often available at practically no cost to the listener — is a double-edged sword, a blessing and a curse.
But what exactly do I mean by a blessing and a curse? On one hand, the ‘blessing’ acknowledges the incredible convenience and ‘democratization’ of music access. With digital streaming platforms, listeners now have access to almost the entire compendium of recorded music, and for just a few dollars a month, they can enjoy tunes from all over the world with a simple click or through a algorithmically driven playlist. This has opened up opportunities for artists to reach new audiences that were previously inaccessible without the backing of a major label. And then the incredibly low cost of these digital streaming services has made music more accessible to people who might not have had the means to purchase physical albums or attend concerts regularly. One CD bought in 1992 in inflation adjusted dollars would cost more than $30 today.
However, the ‘curse’ pertains to the devaluation and commodification of music that comes with this easy access. When music is so readily available and often perceived as ‘free’ (or at least very low cost), it can lead to a diminished appreciation for the labor and resources that go into creating a singular piece of music. This democratization through commodification has made it challenging, if not impossible, for the vast majority of artists to sustain their careers and earn a fair wage for their work. As the perceived value of music decreases in the minds of consumers, the artistic labor behind each track becomes increasingly invisible.
Then there is the sheer abundance of music in the digital age and the prevalence of depersonalized, algorithmically driven playlists which leads to a superficial engagement with music. Listeners mindlessly consume and discard tracks without fully appreciating the artistry and emotional depth behind them. The moment something that may challenge their existing taste profile appears in their playlist, it is skipped without a second thought. After all, with platforms like Spotify adding 100,000 new tracks every single day, there is always a bottomless pit of new music to consume. This ecosystem ultimately pushes music from the foreground of our lives to the background, transforming it from a deeply personal and meaningful art form into just another form of disposable content.
And this double movement that we just described, Ek keys in on in his Tweet:
This has sparked my curiosity about the concept of long shelf life versus short shelf life. While much of what we see and hear quickly becomes obsolete, there are timeless ideas or even pieces of music that can remain relevant for decades or even centuries.
This a delicious comment and rather ironic coming from an individual who has made his mark on the world by building a company which thrives through the process of transmuting musical engagement from a deeply personal, meaningful experience to a commodified, disposable one. Spotify has transformed a relationship with music that was once born of friction, scarcity, tactile connection, and communal engagement — a process inherently pregnant with risk — into one in which music consumption is now stripped of all risk. Delivered by an anonymous algorithm, music can be frictionlessly consumed in the background while you multitask and center your attention on more pressing matters. This transmutation has fundamentally altered the way we engage with and value music, prioritizing convenience and quantity over depth and meaning.
But why does so much music — or content, as Ek might call it — quickly become obsolete, failing to attain the timeless status of great art or ideas that he laments are lacking in our modern age? The answer lies in the very algorithms that propel his media empire. These algorithms are designed to keep users engaged with the platform, ensuring that music remains a background experience rather than a foreground focus.
Spotify’s anonymous, algorithmically driven playlists, curated to maximize time-spent-on-site and satisfy Wall Street’s demands, intentionally filter out any music that might provoke a truly profound emotional response from the listener. Such music carries the risk of jolting users out of their comfortable state of mindless consumption, potentially leading them to skip tracks or even shut off the platform altogether. Instead, these playlists offer an endless stream of non-challenging, emotionally flat content that can be passively consumed without disrupting the user’s activity or state of mind. No wonder we can’t seem to understand each other these days. Our cultural artifacts are made for the algorithms, and therefor made to please rather than challenge.
Historically, works of art and ideas have often been met with severe negative reactions upon their initial reception. The 1913 premiere of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, for example, famously resulted in a riot, as audiences were shocked and outraged by the ballet’s radical innovations in music, choreography, and theme. Could you imagine this happening today? Ahh, we may have hit upon something here.
In our modern reality-system, where the primary focus is on commodifying attention to fuel the global circulation of capital, art only ever reaches an audience if it can first fit into the algorithms built by the titans of Silicon Valley. In this system, the value of a cultural artifact is determined not by its ability to provoke, challenge, or inspire, but by its capacity to capture and hold our passive attention. The algorithms that shape our engagement with music, art, and ideas prioritize time-spent on platform. Anything that may disrupt the system is de facto a nullity.
The Struggle for Meaning in the Digital Age
Ek is a central figure in the flattening of our relationship with music, art, and each other. He is a billionaire because he molded his company through intensification of the logics of capital circulation. Only by stripping music of its significant, social form, and raising an army of algorithmically anonymous pastiche machines, designed explicitly to maintain a steady flow of unexcitable engagement. This approach has led to a landscape where the ephemeral non-challenging nature of content is prioritized over musical works that could foster deep, lasting connections and insights. In doing so, Ek and his ilk have commodified not just music, but the very essences of our engagement with it through these pastiche machines, ensuring that what remains is a safe, hollow echo of what music once represented: a communal, risk-laden journey into the depths of human experience and emotion, to further intensify the capital circulation carousel.
It’s ironic, then, that Ek closes his tweet with a reflection on the nature of enduring ideas and the longevity of cultural value:
For example, we’re witnessing a resurgence of Stoicism, with many of Marcus Aurelius’s insights still resonating thousands of years later. This makes me wonder: what are the most unintuitive, yet enduring ideas that aren’t frequently discussed today but might have a long shelf life? Also, what are we creating now that will still be valued and discussed hundreds or thousands of years from today?
I will skip over the Stoicism part. I made a critique of Stoicism, or rather explained why, in our current time of hyper-commodification — the Great Flattening of our ontology — why stoicism is on the rise (hint: because it is remarkably able to justify our dehumanized reality-system, while at the same time justifying inaction over revolutionary action especially through art and new ‘ideas’); but this idea of what are the most unintuitive yet unenduring ideas that aren’t frequently discussed today, and what will be valued thousands of year from now?
I’ll take the second part first — What will be valuable thousands of years from now? Who cares because we will all be dead.
What will be valuable to people thousands of years from now, are the ideas and works of art which seek to authentically express through significant forms our relationship to the world, and each other. Significant works of art that do not seek to get on a Spotify playlist, but instead strive to create a virtual space in which each and every one of us can have a meaningful exchange. This virtual space is an idea I wrote about in this article:
The Startled Space: Susanne Langer, Rilke, and the Resistance to Modernity’s Flattening
And that first part — what are unintuitive and enduring ideas which are not talked about? Have you heard of Shakespeare? Ah, of course, you say, everyone knows Shakespeare. But have you actually read Shakespeare? Immersed yourself within the labyrinth of spaces and threads he opens, weaves.
In “The Tempest,” the character of Caliban represents the colonized, whose rich, natural world is exploited and Flattened by Prospero’s colonizing force. Caliban’s speech about the island’s ‘noises, sounds, and sweet airs’ contrasts with the utilitarian perspective of his oppressors, emphasizing the loss of a deeper, resonant connection to the world — a connection that modern algorithms and market-driven content threaten to erase. Caliban’s world, filled with aural beauty and wonder, becomes a metaphor for the richness of human experience that is lost when everything is stripped of that which cannot be quantified and reduced to a mere standing reserve of objects to be transmuted into commodities. Prospero’s control over the island and its inhabitants symbolizes the overarching control that algorithmic systems exert over our consumption of art and music today.
We can look at ‘Hamlet’ where the play’s protagonist, Prince Hamlet, engages in existential reflections and embarks on a quest for meaning that challenges the reduction of life to mere appearances and superficial judgments. Hamlet’s struggle against the deceptive facades and machinations of Elsinore’s court serves as a powerful metaphor for the modern struggle we are faced with against the superficiality fostered by Ek’s very own algorithmic army, which prioritizes engagement metrics over potentially risky deep meaningful engagement with music.
Throughout the play, Hamlet struggles with the discrepancy between appearance and reality, constantly questioning the authenticity of those around him and the true nature of his own existence. He is disgusted by the superficiality and hypocrisy of the court, where people wear masks to conceal their true intentions and emotions. This mirrors the way in which modern algorithms and social media platforms encourage users to present curated versions of themselves, often prioritizing the appearance of happiness and success over genuine self-expression and connection — the tragic nature of our human condition is ugly in the eyes of the algorithmic pastiche machines, as opposed to beautiful in the eyes of artists and former societies.
Strategies for Rejecting Algorithmic Control
This reflection on Daniel Ek’s tweet brings me to a call to action — if we wish to break free from the chains of the modern condition and breathe life back into our flattening ontology, we must fundamentally change our disposition towards music production, distribution, and enjoyment. No longer should music and our culture be held hostage by Spotify’s army of algorithmic pastiche machines. Music and all art should serve one purpose: to deepen our relationship with each other and the world. We must rediscover the joy of sharing music through the recommendations of our friends — the former experts we relied on — sitting together and listening to an entire record, fully immersed in the moment, together. We must seek out the raw, visceral experience of live music in sweaty, dank clubs, vast soccer arenas and in the backyards of our friends and neighbors summer BBQ parties. We must open our homes to musicians, creating intimate spaces where we can connect with art that has the potential to be valued for thousands of years to come. We must build our own army of music lovers and creators, developing our own guerrilla tactics against this army of algorithmic pastiche machines. We must resist this Flattening and we must rediscover the inner expert in all of us.
As Ek admitted before that second comma, the value of our time and our authentic resonance with the world and our community is immaterial — it costs close to zero. But his words serve as a reminder that if we want to re-inflate our ontology and realign our value structure — our reality-system — to recognize the true worth of creating content, we must reject the systems of control imposed on us by Ek and his army. From this moment forward, we must refuse to experience great works of art through platforms like Spotify. Instead, we must reclaim the island that was stolen from us and rebuild a kingdom where we share the priceless creations of musicians and reject the ontology of Daniel Ek and his ilk, who believe they can have ‘our’ music for nothing.
Shakespeare, writing over 400 years ago, prophetically understood the logics unleashed in the new reality-system of instrumentalized reason and insatiable appropriation. Ek would do well to put down Marcus Aurelius and pick up a book or play from someone who preached resistance rather than acceptance of the status quo. He might glean some insight into the rich, multivariegated forms of human expression that defy the notion that we are powerless against forces beyond our control. For we are the architects of our world, and we will not submit to the commodification of our very essence — our real, lived, temporally and contextually bounded lives, in all their tragic and beautiful mess. It is through the very real labor of producing our art that we seek to maintain that resonant wire — between Being and Earth, Being and Other, and Being and the Unknown — further revealing the deeper understandings of how to realize a world that values the priceless contributions of each and every soul in itself.
‘Be not afeard. The isle is full of noises, sounds, and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not.’ Let us fill our world with the sweet airs that truly delight, that evoke wonder, awe, and terror — expressions beyond the capacity of language. We must not submit to the empty flat promptings of algorithmic playlists designed to enrich those who seek to keep us consuming and accepting of an unchangeable world. Caliban is this unintuitive voice that we have silenced and continue to annihilate in our age of the Great Flattening. We must reassert our right to a world of beauty, wonder, and authentic connection, and reclaim the world that Ek et al. see as zero.