#FAKEARTISTS?:  The Daily Gabe Special Investigations Unit picked up on the story yesterday about Spotify playing songs by fake artists.  While I usually don’t spend time on rumors and innuendos, this one seems to have too much detail in it to be dismissed.  So here’s what’s being alleged.  On some of Spotify’s more ambient playlist stations artists are being played millions of times who don’t seem to exist outside of Spotify.  Take the example of the artist known as “Enno Aare”, who has 17M plays on Spotify without any independent identity outside of their platform.  So why would Spotify manufacture an artist?  To save money, of course.  Because if they play a pseudo-song from a made up artist they don’t have to pay the normal royalties cost.  Spotify is vehemently denying this claim.  You can imagine the credibility buster it would be with listeners if this were proven to be true.  As it stands Spotify is in the uncomfortable position of having to prove artists they’re playing are real living people to skeptical labels who represent the actual artists.  Guessing we haven’t heard the last of this story.

TOP DIGITAL STATS:  You can tell AdWeek is just getting out of their Fourth of July doldrums with this week’s edition of the Top Digital Marketing Stats.  None of the points is too compelling except for that first one.  As you may be aware, Amazon Prime Day is happening today.  Actually it started at 6:00p last night and runs through midnight tonight, thus creating a 30 hour sales day.  I’d expect a slew of stats from this year’s event by tomorrow morning – yes, we’ll cover this diligently.  In the meantime, enjoy some meh stats from the past week.

UNDERSTANDING WHERE YOU CAME FROM HELPS YOU SEE WHERE YOU’RE GOING:  Today’s last article is more of a longer form weekend read, so maybe save it for when you have some extra time.  In 2015 makeuseof.com compiled a comprehensive chronology of the history of music consumption.  If you’re a student of music, like me, it’s a fascinating journey from the most primitive phonographs, to the dawn of Radio, to Apple’s download revolution, to the sea change of streaming.  For me there are two striking takeaways in this article.  First, the music itself is the thing.  Over the last 150 years there have been countless iterations of how music is distributed.  But the artists and the songs themselves remain the constant common denominator regardless of the distribution platform.  Secondly, it’s amazing to see how quickly things are still changing.  This article was written in 2015, but that seems like a lifetime ago.  Since then streaming has supplanted CDs and downloads as the top music consumption platform, and several of the streamers mentioned in the article are out of business as the bleeding edge of our industry begins to consolidate.  It’s a fascinating journey that’s worth the read if you work in the music industry.

Have a great Tuesday guys!