Speaker 1: I'm Daniel James and you're listening to seven AM. Recently,
Speaker 1: the founder of Spotify, Daniel Eck, announced his stepping back
Speaker 1: from running the company. He leaves us one of the
Speaker 1: richest men in his home country of Sweden, with Forbes
Speaker 1: estimating his wealth at nine point six billion dollars. In
Speaker 1: a departure note, the staff, Xody wants to focus on
Speaker 1: creating more Europeans supercompanies, companies he's described as developing new
Speaker 1: technologies to tackle some of the biggest challenges of our time.
Speaker 1: The move comes months after x involvement in the global
Speaker 1: defense industry was revealed, facing an artist backlash, with some
Speaker 1: pulling their music from the platform. Today, we're bringing you
Speaker 1: an episode we recorded back in July which exposes x
Speaker 1: investments in AI based military technology and Spotify's embrace of
Speaker 1: AI in music, which with author and journalist Liz Paley.
Speaker 1: It's Sundai October twelve. Liz, thanks for speaking with me.
Speaker 1: Spotify is fan that Daniel Lick has just invested. I
Speaker 1: have a one billion Australian dollars into an IR military company.
Speaker 1: You've been tracking Spotify and Daniel k fiyis, so can
Speaker 1: you tell me about X history when it comes to
Speaker 1: investments like these.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so, Daniel X first invested in this company called Helsing,
Speaker 2: which is a AI military tech company, in twenty twenty one,
Speaker 2: but not only invested in it, he also co authored
Speaker 2: an op ed for Politico where he was advocating for
Speaker 2: increased investment into AI military technology. This latest tabline, I think,
Speaker 2: you know, it was really interesting to me because not
Speaker 2: only of the dollar amount that was attached to it,
Speaker 2: but you know, they also announced that he'd become the
Speaker 2: chairman of the board of this company, And Daniel Eck
Speaker 2: and Spotify have really become embedded in the defense industry.
Speaker 2: In addition to Eck. Also last year, Spotify announced that
Speaker 2: their new CFO was someone who had previously worked at SOB,
Speaker 2: which is another Swedish defense company. So you know, there's
Speaker 2: there's some deeper ties between Spotify and the military industrial complex,
Speaker 2: even beyond just Daniel Eck.
Speaker 1: Daniel k has become very rich off the back of
Speaker 1: Spotify's a brilliant name many times, Iva, can you tell
Speaker 1: me about his rise and what he first visached for
Speaker 1: the platform.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So, Daniel X's background before Spotify was in the
Speaker 2: advertising industry. In two thousand and six. He started this
Speaker 2: company with Martin Lawrenson, who also had a background in
Speaker 2: the advertising industry too, and their original idea was for
Speaker 2: a company that would pair advertising revenue with free streaming media.
Speaker 2: It wasn't even necessarily one hundred percent clear that this
Speaker 2: was solely going to be a music company.
Speaker 1: I do think that, Like, you.
Speaker 2: Know, over the years, it seems like there have been
Speaker 2: attempts to kind of rebrand the co founders of Spotify
Speaker 2: as music guys. You know, if you look back, you
Speaker 2: can find press photos of Danie lackholding and guitar. There
Speaker 2: also was an attempts to sort of shape this narrative
Speaker 2: that you know, Spotify's goal was to save the music industry.
Speaker 3: So early on, like nineteen ninety nine and naps Are
Speaker 3: changed pretty much the whole world for me. I mean,
Speaker 3: it's the internet service that changed my life the most,
Speaker 3: I would say it. But the enfortunate part was obviously
Speaker 3: they didn't pay artists. So really at that point when
Speaker 3: naps Are shut down, I started thinking about how can
Speaker 3: you make it better?
Speaker 2: And and you know, Spotify was leveling the playing fields
Speaker 2: for independent musicians or contributing to democratizing music and culture.
Speaker 3: You know, these creators are really spectacular individual people who
Speaker 3: want to connect, want to grow, and we want to
Speaker 3: create that platform for them where they can thrive.
Speaker 2: And those are kind of like buzzwords that we heard
Speaker 2: associated with a lot of tech companies and platforms in
Speaker 2: the mid twenty tens. But it was important to kind
Speaker 2: of like interrogate those those ideas a little bit and
Speaker 2: look into like, you know, okay, what's actually behind this company,
Speaker 2: who's behind it, who serves to benefit from the rise
Speaker 2: of streaming.
Speaker 1: We live in an age of streaming services. Headed Spotify
Speaker 1: become the biggest music streaming service in the world, Can
Speaker 1: you talk me through the business decisions that led to
Speaker 1: that happening.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a good question, because you know, they weren't
Speaker 2: necessarily the first. But one of the things that is
Speaker 2: unique about Spotify is a rise of the Spotify playlist.
Speaker 2: It's a cultural phenomenon and the strategic thinking that informed
Speaker 2: the prioritization of a playlist as a way of growing
Speaker 2: their subscriber base. Twenty sixteen to twenty nineteen was this
Speaker 2: sort of time where the Spotify playlist playlists made by
Speaker 2: in house editors, had this really kind of unique cultural
Speaker 2: wait over how people discovered music, and just in the
Speaker 2: music industry was considered like a really important part of
Speaker 2: the promotion process for a new record, for example. So
Speaker 2: artists were being convinced that these editorial playlists were going
Speaker 2: to be an important part of how they connected with
Speaker 2: and sort of gained new fans in some ways. Around
Speaker 2: twenty fifteen twenty sixteen, you started to see headlines in
Speaker 2: the music business press claiming that Spotify was filling its
Speaker 2: playlists with music by artists who didn't exist, with fake
Speaker 2: artists in order to pay out fewer royalties. You know,
Speaker 2: the public had been calling me as fake artists. There
Speaker 2: actually was an internal term at Spotify perfect fit content,
Speaker 2: which is this phrase that they used to describe music
Speaker 2: commissions to fit certain moods and playlists with improved margins.
Speaker 2: So it's clearly it costs saving initiative in order to
Speaker 2: kind of squeeze value in some ways out of listeners
Speaker 2: but also musicians. There are so many different ways in
Speaker 2: which processes of algorithmic recommendation and automated decision making have
Speaker 2: shaped not just the sound of music, not just the
Speaker 2: type of music, not just the reality of generative AI
Speaker 2: music on these platforms, but shapes the way people think
Speaker 2: about meaning in music and the way music is contextualized
Speaker 2: and recommended. Spotify and other streaming services allow generative AI
Speaker 2: content onto their platforms, and the generative AI question, you know,
Speaker 2: only continues to be more urgent, and it says a
Speaker 2: lot I think about the reality that you know, not
Speaker 2: just Daniel Eck, but a lot of people who end
Speaker 2: up in positions of power in the music industry, like
Speaker 2: aren't super interested in music. They're interested in growing their wealth.
Speaker 2: So yeah, definitely not music, guys, after.
Speaker 1: The break, your favorite middle of the road old country
Speaker 1: band and even real least we know Spotify uses AI
Speaker 1: to keep you listening on their platform, So what do
Speaker 1: we know about their plans for using generative II further?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it's hard to like speculate about what they
Speaker 2: might do when it comes to generative AM music on
Speaker 2: the platform. But you know, what we do know is
Speaker 2: that there's like tens of thousands of generative AI tracks
Speaker 2: being uploaded to streaming services every day, and there's been this,
Speaker 2: you know, story of this viral generative AI band called
Speaker 2: the Velvet Sundown.
Speaker 4: If you've been on Spotify recently, you might have seen
Speaker 4: a band called The Velvet Sundown on your feed now.
Speaker 4: At first glance, it seems like any other indie rock group,
Speaker 4: but none of their members actually exist. The Velvet Sundown
Speaker 4: has now amassed almost one million monthly listeners, with songs
Speaker 4: including Dust on the Wind and End the Pain among
Speaker 4: their top hits. Take a listen those.
Speaker 2: Us from you know. One of the big threats of
Speaker 2: generative AI material is the way in which it could
Speaker 2: potentially undercut the creative labor of artists and users should
Speaker 2: be able to make informed decisions about what they're listening to.
Speaker 2: And you could say, well, you know, people should listen
Speaker 2: more closely or do their own research. But I think
Speaker 2: that if the technology is there to label this material,
Speaker 2: it should be it should be labeled because there are
Speaker 2: so many different concerns that people in the artist community
Speaker 2: have about generative AI, about their music as being users,
Speaker 2: training data, how it will be credited, how they'll be compensated,
Speaker 2: how compensation might be driven down by the existence of
Speaker 2: generative AI music on these streaming platforms.
Speaker 5: More than a thousand musicians are releasing a silent album
Speaker 5: to campaign against the British government's plans to change copyright
Speaker 5: laws which could allow tech funds to train artificial intelligence
Speaker 5: models using real performers.
Speaker 4: Voices.
Speaker 5: Artists including Annie Lennox, Kate Bush, and Andrew Lloyd Webber
Speaker 5: back the campaign. They say the changes would reverse.
Speaker 2: The right now. What we're seeing is a lot of
Speaker 2: the discourse that has sort of played out around generative
Speaker 2: AI music has been around deep figs.
Speaker 6: At first, it's quite convincing. Creator Ghostwriter nine seven seven
Speaker 6: claims the song is AI generated, artificial or not. It
Speaker 6: quickly generated real numbers over six hundred thousand streams on
Speaker 6: Spotify before Drake's label had it pulled.
Speaker 2: And that's important. It's important that you know if someone's
Speaker 2: likeness is being used, that they have the ability to
Speaker 2: get that work removed. But in reality, like the types
Speaker 2: of artists that are going to have the legal muscle
Speaker 2: to actually be able to do anything about that are
Speaker 2: pop stars, people who have really big legal teams behind them.
Speaker 2: There's also all sorts of ways in which generative AI
Speaker 2: undercuts the labor of indie artists and DIY artists and
Speaker 2: smaller artists who might not have the same name recognition
Speaker 2: or legal team behind them to be able to take
Speaker 2: action against situations like that.
Speaker 1: Sorry for the myriad of reasons, many of which we've
Speaker 1: touched upon. People have deactivided this Spotify accounts honest to
Speaker 1: remove their music from Spotify, but the lightest Ioli military
Speaker 1: investment was the last straw for many people. What does
Speaker 1: that tell you?
Speaker 2: Well, you know, I think that because the economic model
Speaker 2: is the same across the board for most streaming services,
Speaker 2: I think people are going to start looking into these
Speaker 2: other things like, well, does this streaming service have ties
Speaker 2: to the military industrial complex? Does the streaming service use
Speaker 2: generative AI music and not label it. I'm not someone
Speaker 2: who is really in the business of like putting the
Speaker 2: streaming services side by side and saying, well, this one
Speaker 2: pays a few penny fractions more than this one, so like,
Speaker 2: so you should be subscribing here was there? Like, I
Speaker 2: don't really like playing the role of consumer guys, because
Speaker 2: the vast majority of streaming services operate under the same
Speaker 2: proada model that is really I think an unfair model.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: I think that a better way of doing streaming economics
Speaker 2: would be something called user centric, which is basically like
Speaker 2: I pay ten dollars to a streaming service, they take
Speaker 2: their thirty percent cut the remaining money goes to the
Speaker 2: artists I stream.
Speaker 1: And finally is what would you say to people who
Speaker 1: are stocking the convenience of using Spotify or rather streaming services?
Speaker 1: How did I break free?
Speaker 2: Well, if as a music fan, you are concerned with
Speaker 2: making sure that the money that you spend on music
Speaker 2: doesn't accidentally end up in the military industrial complex, doesn't
Speaker 2: accidentally end up going to a generative AI band, your
Speaker 2: best bet would be buying music directly from from the artists,
Speaker 2: whether it's through band camp or through their website, or
Speaker 2: through their record label, or through supporting an independent record store.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Like, the combination of buying music directly plus listening to
Speaker 2: independent community radio, for me is kind of like a
Speaker 2: winning combination. Like, I understand that music is vast. People
Speaker 2: listen to music for different reasons, and people engage with
Speaker 2: music for different reasons. So I don't expect every single
Speaker 2: person who really cares about music to start building an
Speaker 2: MP three library again and to buy an FM radio,
Speaker 2: even though those are the things that I would totally.
Speaker 1: Suggest me too.
Speaker 2: I do think though, that like that's kind of like
Speaker 2: our best bet in this moment, remembering that, uh, it's
Speaker 2: never been super convenient to be a fan of independent music,
Speaker 2: and that you know, being our participant in independent music
Speaker 2: culture like does require a little bit of friction.
Speaker 1: In many ways, it's the inconvenience that Mike's are cool. Lise,
Speaker 1: thanks so much for speaking with us.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1: Liz Pelly's book is called Mood Machine, The Rise of
Speaker 1: Spotif and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist. Thanks for
Speaker 1: listening to this episode. At seven am tomorrow, I'm speaking
Speaker 1: with Walkley Award winning journalist Monshafter about a decade's old
Speaker 1: study that showed transgender children could be counseled out of
Speaker 1: wanting to transition.
Speaker 7: Back then, the children were described as gender disordered and
Speaker 7: it was basically suggesting that psychotherapy could be used to
Speaker 7: treat this behavior. These kids were hospitalized because they were
Speaker 7: displaying what the report describes as cross gender behavior, and
Speaker 7: it's clear that the intention was to stop that. And
Speaker 7: we now know that such practices are very dangerous, they
Speaker 7: don't work, and they cause long term psychological harm.
Speaker 1: That study is still being used as an argument to
Speaker 1: stop children getting gender affirming care. Have spoken to one
Speaker 1: of the children studied to find out how their life unfolded,
Speaker 1: and that conversation reveals a lot about the fault of
Speaker 1: science underpinning our current debate on transgender healthcare. It's a
Speaker 1: fascinating episode and it will be out tomorrow. See you then,