If the supermarket slowly adds more fat to their products, people will probably continue eating without noticing. But calling that an active decision is quite a reach.
Similarly, this isn't an active choice of users. And the harm isn't that they are listening to filler, it's that during their random listening, they aren't coming across any new good music. They are prevented from widening their horizons.
They aren't actively choosing this. Spotify deceives them into thinking this is music chosen because it is likely the users will like this music.
> If the supermarket slowly adds more fat to their products, people will probably continue eating without noticing. But calling that an active decision is quite a reach.
What I buy in the supermarket is very much an active decision. I pay a premium on the bottles of milk because the ones I pick taste better than the supermarket branded ones. I do buy some things that are supermarket branded when I perceive the quality to be similar (or sometimes even better).
This might be different from consumers that due to budget limitations have to buy the cheapest things available, which is why food regulations are very important.
> And the harm isn't that they are listening to filler, it's that during their random listening, they aren't coming across any new good music. They are prevented from widening their horizons.
I presume that people that are actively listening to filler are not appreciating music in their cozy living room while sipping on a glass of fine whiskey.
They just want background noise while they drive, work, study. Something to make their hours more tolerable, or to improve their focus. Apparently the issue is that generic slop from Spotify serves that purpose just as well.
> They aren't actively choosing this.
If the music was bad for them, they would stop listening to it. They don't.
> I presume that people that are actively listening to filler are not appreciating music in their cozy living room while sipping on a glass of fine whiskey.
That feels like a false dichotomy. Certainly for myself I can put on a generated playlist hoping to find new stuff I like, whilst still putting on the music as background. As filler.
If spotify has been serving me slop, then they have likely reduced the amount of new music I have added to my collection of things I like. That harms me, and it harms real artists whose music I might like.
In other words, I don't always actively choose the music I listen to. But serving me slop when I don't harms me.
If you are listening to bullshit playlists Spotify generated, you are the problem. You are actively consuming turds, and now you are complaining that eating feces is bad for your health.
Instead of blaming the company that provided the turds, you should perhaps reconsider your habit of eating feces.
The language may have been harsh, but the message is not.
Why do you willingly give a company such as Spotify power over what music you listen to? There are better ways to discover new music if that's what you are after.
Try finding communities of people with similar tastes, sometimes they share their own curated playlists.
I don't not care about music, but I don't want to put in effort. I can live my life without music, but I prefer having good music in my life.
Spotify suits my needs perfectly. Even if they do this fake music, it still works well enough. I doubt my half apathy is uncommon. The assumption of prevalence of this attitude is why this change by spotify is so damaging. It will harm my experience a little, and harms artists quite a bit.
Exactly- It seems pretentious to say it’s “filler” or not real music if people are happily listening to it, on a platform that provides any music you ask for.
Maybe my stance is derived from the fact that I consider many of what is extremely successful in anything to be shit anyway. Music, movies, vídeogames, you name it.
People are fine consuming shit, they always were. Why would I be surprised that they are fine consuming shit music that Spotify add to slop playlists with the purpose of increasing their own profits? This is just a logical consequence of how things always were.
If they do, what is the issue?