Hi, I'm Daniel James, and you're listening at seven am. Spotify has transformed the way the world listens to music. But as it's grown, the company behind it and it's founder, Daniel Eck, have been reshaping more than just the music industry. Eck has become a key figure in the global defense industry, investing hundreds of millions into artificial intelligence based military technology. While Spotify itself has a brace to AI, it weighs
many artists say undermine their work today. Author and journalist Liz Paley on how Spotify has pursued for power and profit, is changing music, and what listeners can do to take back control. It's Friday, July eleven. Liz, thanks for speaking with me. Is fan that Daniel Lick has just invested. I have a one billion Australian dollars into an ird military company. You've been tracking Spotify and Daniel Lick fiez, So can you tell me about X history when it comes to investments like these?
Yeah.
So, Daniel Ck first invested in this company called Helsing, which is a AI military tech company, in twenty twenty one, but not only invested in it, he also co authored an op ed for Politico, where he was advocating for
increased investment into AI military technology. This latest tabline, I think, you know, it was really interesting to me because not only of the dollar amount that was attached to it, but you know, they also announced that he'd become the chairman of the board of this company, and Daniel Eck and Spotify have really become like embedded in the defense industry. In addition to Ck, also last year Spotify announced that their new CFO with someone who had previously worked at SOB,
which is another Swedish defense company. So you know, there's there's some deeper ties between Spotify and the military industrial complex, even beyond just Daniel Ck.
Daniel k has become very rich off the back of Spotify. He's a Brillian name many times, Eva, can you tell me about his rise and what he first envisached for the platform.
Yeah, So, Daniel X's background before Spotify was in the advertising industry. In two thousand and six, he started this company with Martin Lawrenson, who also had a background in the advertising industry too, and their original idea was for a company that would pair advertising revenue with free streaming media. It wasn't even necessarily one hundred percent clear that this
was solely going to be a music company. I do think that, Like, you know, over the years, it seems like there have been attempts to kind of rebrand the co founders of.
Spotify as music guys.
You know, if you look back, you can find press photos of Daniel lackholding and guitar. There also was an attempt to sort of shape this narrative that you know, Spotify's goal was to save the music industry.
So early on, like nineteen ninety nine and naps are changed pretty much the whole world for me. I mean, it's the internet service that changed my life the most. I would say it's but the enfortunate part was obviously they didn't pay artists. So really at that point when naps are shut down, I started thinking about how can you make it better?
And and you know, Spotify was leveling the playing field for independent musicians or contributing to democratizing music and culture.
You know, these creators are really spectacular individual people who want to connect, want to grow, and we want to create that platform for them where they can thrive.
And those are kind of like buzzwords that we heard associated for like a lot of tech companies and platforms in the mid twenty ten But it was important to kind of like interrogate those those ideas a little bit and look into, like, you know, okay, what's actually behind this company, who's behind it, who serves to benefit from the rise of streaming.
We live in an age of streaming services. Headed Spotify become the biggest music streaming service in the world, Can you talk me through the business decisions that led to that happening.
Yeah, it's a good question, because you know, they weren't necessarily the first. But one of the things that is unique about Spotify is a rise of the Spotify playlist as a cultural phenomenon and the strategic thinking that informed the prioritization of a playlist as a way of growing
their subscriber base. Twenty sixteen to twenty nineteen was this sort of time where the Spotify playlist playlists made by in house editors, had this really kind of unique cultural ate over how people discovered music, and just in the music industry, was considered like a really important part of the promotion process for a new record, for example. So artists were being convinced that these editorial playlists were going to be an important part of how they connected with
and sort of gained new fans in some ways. Around twenty fifteen twenty sixteen, you started to see headlines in the music business press claiming that Spotify was filling its playlists with music by artists who didn't exist, with fake artists in order to pay out fewer royalties. You know,
the public had been calling me as fake artists. There actually was an internal term at Spotify perfect fit content, which is this phrase that they used to describe music commissions to fit certain moods and playlists with improved margins. So it's clearly a cost saving initiative in order to kind of squeeze value in some ways out of listeners,
but also musicians. There are so many different ways in which processes of algorithmic recommendation and automated decision making have shaped not just the sound of music, not just the type of music, not just the reality of generative AI music on these platforms, but shapes the way people think about meaning in music and the way music is contextualized
and recommended. Spotify and other streaming services allow generative AI content onto their platforms, and the generative a question, you know only continues to be more urgent, and it says a lot I think about the reality that you know, not just Daniel Ck, but a lot of people who end up in positions of power in the music industry like aren't super.
Interested in music.
They're interested in growing their wealth. So yeah, definitely not music, guys.
After the break, it's your new favorite middle of the road old country band. Even real.
List.
We know Spotify uses AI to keep you listening on their platform, so what do we know about their plans for using Generative II further.
Yeah, so it's hard to like speculate about what they might do when it comes to generative AM music on the platform. But you know, what we do know is that there's like tens of thousands of Generative AI tracks being uploaded to streaming services every day, and there's been this, you know, story of this viral generative AI band called the Velvet Sundown.
If you've been on Spotify recently, you might have seen a band called the Velvet Sundown on your feed. Now, at first glance, it seems like any other indie rock group, but none of their members actually exist. The Velvet Sundown has now amassed almost one million monthly listeners, with songs including Dust on the Wind and End the Pain among their top hits. Take a Listenstrom, you know, one.
Of the big threats of generative AI material is the way in which it could potentially undercut the creative labor of artists and users should be able to make informed decisions about what they're listening to. And you could say, well, you know, people should listen more closely or do their
own research. But I think that if the technology is there to label this material, it should be labeled because there are so many different concerns that people in the artist community have about generative AI, about their music as being users training data, how it will be credited, how they'll be compensated, how compensation might be driven down by the existence of generative AI music on these huming platforms.
More than a thousand musicians are releasing a silent album to campaign against the British government's plans to change copyright laws, which could allow tech funds to train artificial intelligence models using real performers' voices. Artists including Annie Lennox, Kate Bush, and Andrew Lloyd Webber back the campaign. They say the changes would rev us.
Right now what we're seeing is a lot of the discourse that has sort of played out around generative AI music has been around deep fakes.
I.
At first, it's quite convincing. Creator ghost writer nine seven seven claims the song is AI generated, artificial or not. It quickly generated real numbers over six hundred thousand streams on Spotify before Drake's label had it pulled, and that's important.
It's important that you know if someone's likeness is being used, that they have the ability to get that work removed. But in reality, like the types of artists that are going to have the legal muscle to actually be able to do anything about that are pop stars, people who
have really big legal teams behind them. There's also all sorts of ways in which generative AI undercuts the labor of indie artists and DIY artists and smaller artists who might not have the same name recognition or legal team behind them to be able to take action against situations like that.
Sorry for the myriad of reasons, many of which we've touched upon, people have deact divided this Spotify accounts honest to form their music from Spotify. But the lightest Ioli military investment was the last strual for many people. What does that tell you?
Well, you know, I think that because the economic model is the same across the board for most streaming services, I think people are going to start looking into these other things like, well, does this streaming service have ties to the military industrial complex? Does the streaming service use
generative AI music and not label it? I'm not someone who is really in the business of like putting the streaming services side by side and saying, well, this one pays a few penny fractions more than this one, so like, so you should be subscribed? Here was there? Like, I don't really like playing the role of consumer guide because the vast majority of streaming services operate under the same Proorada model that is really, I think an unfair model,
you know. I'm I think that a better way of doing streaming economics to be something called user centric, which is basically like I pay ten dollars to a streaming service, they take their thirty percent cut, the remaining money goes to the artists I stream.
And finally, is what would you say to people who are stocking the convenience of using Spotify or rather streaming services? How did I break free?
Well, if as a music fan, you are concerned with making sure that the money that you spend on music doesn't accidentally end up in the military industrial complex, doesn't accidentally end up going to a generative AI band. Your best bet would be buying music directly from from the artists, whether it's through band camp or through their website, or
through their record label, or through supporting an independent record store. Yeah, Like, the combination of buying music directly plus listening to independent community radio, for me, is kind of like a winning combination. Like, I understand that music is vast. People listen to music for different reasons, and people engage with music for different reasons.
So I don't expect every single person who really cares about music to start building an MP three library again and to buy an FM radio, even though those are the things that I would.
Totally suggest me too.
I do think though, that like that's kind of like our best bet in this moment, remembering that it's never been super convenient to be a fan of independent music, and that you know, being our participant in independent music culture like does require a little bit of friction in many ways.
It's the inconvenience that Mike's are cool. Lise thanks so much for speaking with this.
Thank you so much for having me.
Liz Pally's book is called Mood Machine, The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist. She'll be speaking in Melbourne at the Wheelers Cinda on Thursday, twenty ninth of August. Also in the news, anti Semitism in Australia has reached deeply traveling levels, according to Anthony Albanesi. The Prime Minister yesterday launched a report by Australia's Special Envoid to combat anti Semitism, Gillian Siegel, which recommended sweeping
changes across universities, the media, policing and migration. Miss Siagal's report recommends the government withhold funding from universities who failed to stamp out anti Semitism, along with encouraging public broadcasters to accurately and positively represent Jewish history and culture. It also calls on the government to screen visa applicants for antisemitism. The recommendations will now be considered by government and the
United Nations. Special raponteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories has been sanctioned by the Trump administration. Francesca Albanesi is a human rights lawyer and independent expert appointed to report to the UN on human rights issues. She has been outspoken
on allegations of war crimes in Gaza. When announcing the sanctions, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio accused Miss Alberanezi of unabashed anti Semitism and said she has expressed support for terrorism and open contempt of the United States, Israel, and the West. Seven Am was a daily show for Solstice Media. It's made by Adigus Bastow, Shane Anderson, Chris Danegate, Ruby Jones, Sarah mcvee, Travis Evans, Zoltenfet Joe and Me, Daniel James. Our theme music is by Ned Beckley and Josh Hogan
of Envelope Boudier. Thanks for listening and have a great weekend.