Fake Spotify Artists aka Nicol Reid

Hi guys. I was enjoying a piano album apparently by a Nicol Reid called Live in Paris. I really like the vibe. So I wanted to learn about this artist.

He has zero other releases and there is zero info on the internet. Which brought me to the issue of fake artists on Spotify. These are records that Spotify has made and they use fake artist names so they own the content.

It is really sad that this album is ghost written. The real artist gets $100/ hour and done.
The music business is really in a sad place in 2022.

 

Spotify denies it’s playlisting fake artists. So why are all these fake artists on its playlists? - Music Business Worldwide

 

I don't know anything about this artist [or Spotify for that matter], but the album is available for streaming on Amazon.

https://www.amazon.com/Live-Paris-Nicol-Ried/dp/B079ZCHF55

So it's not just a Spotify thing.

 

I didn't realize this practice was going on. Just one more reason to despise Spotify. They pay legitimate artists next to nothing (but gave $20 million to Joe Rogan, and continue to raise their prices).

Switched to Tidal after the big Neil Young (and others) fiasco, and haven't looked back.

 

Is anybody surprised by this? The streaming industry is and has always been a scourge upon the notion of legitimate artistic expression, and the sound quality is utter trash too. Stay far away from these grubby companies, folks! That's always been my advice.

 

dont do streaming. avoid it.

 

If I like the music enough to listen to it I don't give a rip about whether it's an invented name. Neither would I care about the financial deal they make to produce the music.

 

Is there really money to be made on an artist that no one's heard of? Seems like such a niche thing to be pointless. But what do I know....

 

I left Spotify as well and moved over to Apple Music. Not that one is less evil than the other, but I couldn't justify supporting racism and the rest of the isms that Joe Rogan brings. Similar reason why I left Sirius---they thought it was a good idea to give Steven Bannon a platform. Um, no thanks.

 

There has always been a market for muzak. These 'fake artists' are no different, to me. Only now some use the phenomenon to unleash their bile on streaming services instead of looking at the music industry in general (as dunkoid also pointed out earlier).

 

Yeah, cos no one has ever made a fake CD.

 

Recent music has a great history of fake artists: 60s exploitation releases, 70s tax scam/Tiger Lily records, the psych/krautrock scams of the 90s, etc.,

 

There is literally a decades-long tradition, especially in easy listening music, of studio musicians writing and recording material under contract that is released under assumed names. (Did anyone think in the 1960s that Capitol Records' Hollyridge Strings were an actual group? They were whoever was in the studio for that session!) This is simply the 21st century version of that tradition.

The library music composers of the '50s-'80s released hundreds of albums under either assumed names or no names at all. YouTube Music has an entire smorgasbord of new written to order library music on its site.

 

It almost seems as though as long as there's been a recording industry there has been corruption. That can't be the case though right? Please tell me I'm wrong.

 

From the article linked in post #2:

• “What we can be sure of is that this strategy is designed to lower the share of music on playlists from legitimate labels – major and indie – that are investing substantial resources to develop quality artists and music, so that Spotify can lower its content costs and lessen the influence of the labels.”

Which is the biggest crime here, IMO.

 

Correct. Although the topic in question is not corruption.

 

Well you've spelt his/her name wrong. It's Nicol Ried. Maybe do another Google search.

 

Spotify have been doing this for years, no matter if this is such a case.
But eventually they will probably shift focus entirely to podcasts they own, like Rogan, rather than music owned by other parties.

Remember, Spotify don't care about music, never did, they are venture capitalists.

 

Like someone else mentioned, I immediately thought "muzak". I stream tidal and have noticed artists I've never heard of being on my most listened to artists and getting that Tidal boost. Something weird going on there I think. Can't the artists start a streaming co op?

 

The HollyridgeStrings were however the work of one main arranger/conductor, and had a fairly consistent sound. Of course it wasn’t the same string players in every LP.

 

Muzak, Inc., itself had a functionality for business productivity

Without Muzak, possibly no grunge:
Muzak, Inc. -- Originators of "Elevator Music" - HistoryLink.org

 

While the music industry has its fair share of bad eggs, it is simply ridiculous to compare the industry of old with what we have now. While music executives like Mitch Miller and Morris Levy existed back in the day, you had your John Hammonds and Ahmet Erteguns, true artistic visionaries, to counterbalance them. I'd like to see Hammond or Ertegun making it big in the streaming industry of today, where money is all that matters and sound quality suffers for bandwidth concerns!

 

Never knew about Mitch Miller being mob connected, and not paying artists, hmm...

 

What is the bottom-line purpose of this?
Is it to pad their total number of artists??

 

OMG! Even more diabolical than I had imagined.