騙子的Spotify指南(The Cheater’s Guide to Spotify)

Welcome to The Cheater’s Guide to Spotify, a series about the schemes that rack up streams, money, and infamy on the popular streaming service.

歡迎使用The Sheater's Guide to Spotify ，這是一系列有關在流行的流媒體服務上串流，浪費金錢和誹謗的計劃的系列。

You’ve probably never heard of them, but Relaxing Music Therapy has had a pretty damn successful music career. At least, on Spotify.

Ÿou've可能從來沒有聽說過他們，但輕鬆的音樂療法已經有一個非常成功的該死的音樂生涯。 至少在Spotify上。

This “artist” has more than 500,000 monthly listeners on the platform, all thanks to One Simple Trick: optimizing their name to show up prominently in Spotify’s search results.

這位“藝術家”在平臺上每月有500,000多個聽眾，這要歸功於One Simple Trick：優化其名稱，使其在Spotify的搜尋結果中突出顯示。

Spotify is full of “artists” like this: Pro Sound Effects Library, On Hold Music, Yoga, Jazz Music Therapy for Cats, and Natural White Noise Best Nature Sounds for Sleeping, Stress Relief, Relaxation, Sound Therapy.

Spotify的是十足的“藝術家的”這樣的：

While the platform pays only in the neighborhood of a third of a penny per stream if you’re not Drake, it boasts more than a quarter-billion active users. So, if your music ranks highly for a search term, you can accumulate enough listens to steadily make hundreds, in some cases thousands, of dollars a month with minimal effort.

如果您不是Drake的朋友，該平臺每次流支付的費用僅為三分之一，但它擁有超過25億活躍使用者。 因此，如果您的音樂在搜尋詞中的排名很高，則可以積累足夠的收聽量，從而每月花費最少的精力穩定地賺取數百美元(有時甚至是數千美元)。

The key to success is to find a phony artist name that Spotify users are likely to type into search. Like Relaxing Music Therapy, some of these “artists” use names inspired by an adjective commonly used to describe music. Others name themselves after popular uses for certain kinds of music, well-known generic tunes like children’s rhymes, or entire music genres. Often, these creators optimize further by titling tracks and albums with related words and reuploading the same songs ad nauseum, which can look especially absurd when filtering to see just a single tune. Relaxing Music Therapy, for instance, has uploaded the track “Stream in the Forest With Rain” 616 times to date.

成功的關鍵是找到Spotify使用者可能會在搜尋中鍵入的偽造藝術家姓名。 像“放鬆音樂療法”一樣，其中一些“藝術家”使用的名稱是受通常用來描述音樂的形容詞啟發的。 其他人則以某些音樂的流行用法，諸如兒童押韻的眾所周知的通用音樂或整個音樂流派來命名自己。 通常，這些創作者可以通過在曲目和專輯中新增相關詞的標題並重新上傳相同的歌曲作為廣告作進一步的優化，而這些內容在進行過濾以僅檢視單曲時顯得尤為荒謬。 例如，輕鬆音樂療法迄今為止已將曲目“帶雨的森林流”上載了616次。

SEO spam and its various streambait cousins fit right in with Spotify’s own marketing strategy of being a one-stop shop for “music for any mood,” rather than, say, a hub that highlights the most talented artists. In 2017, the trade publication Music Business Worldwide revealed that Spotify’s curated playlists were filled with artists working under platform-specific pseudonyms, such as “Charles Bolt,” with no off-internet presence at all. (The company did not respond to multiple requests for comment on this article.)

SEO垃圾郵件及其各種表弟都與Spotify自己的營銷策略恰如其分，該營銷策略是一站式商店，“為任何情緒提供音樂”，而不是例如一個展示最有才華的藝術家的樞紐。 2017年，商業出版物Music Business Worldwide披露，Spotify策劃的播放列表中充斥著使用特定於平臺的假名(例如“ Charles Bolt”)工作的藝術家，根本沒有網際網路的存在。 (該公司未迴應對本文的多次評論請求。)

George Howard, an associate professor of music business and management at Berklee College of Music and founder of strategic consulting firm GHS, is well aware of the Spotify SEO strategy. “Spotify… has managed, through a whole series of UX [decisions], to make the vast majority of their listeners decouple the creator of the music from the product of that creation,” Howard told OneZero. “What entrepreneurs have done is go, ‘Okay, we’ll SEO it. We’ll think in terms in terms of the user and how he or she is searching for music.’”

伯克利音樂學院音樂業務與管理副教授，戰略諮詢公司GHS的創始人喬治·霍華德(George Howard)非常瞭解Spotify SEO策略。 霍華德告訴OneZero： “ Spotify通過一系列的UX(決策)管理，使他們的絕大多數聽眾都將音樂的創造者與創造的產品脫鉤。” “企業家所做的就是去，'好吧，我們將對其進行搜尋。 我們將根據使用者以及使用者搜尋音樂的方式來考慮。””

SubmitMusic founder Jason Cerf is one of these shrewd uploaders. His company buys musical recordings from individual producers and artists across genres and then “positions them to be monetized,” a process that includes working with clients to pick streaming-friendly artist names, track names, and album art. He isn’t quite putting out songs under blatantly eyebrow-raising aliases like Halloween Party Scary Sounds and Fx, but a similarly tactical approach is important to the bottom line of SubmitMusic’s catalog, which Cerf estimates to be around 10,000 songs.

SubmitMusic創始人Jason Cerf是這些精明的上傳者之一。 他的公司從各個流派的製作人和藝術家那裡購買唱片，然後“將它們定位為獲利”，該過程包括與客戶一起挑選流媒體友好的藝術家姓名，曲目名稱和專輯封面。 他倒不撲滅歌曲像下公然眉募集別名萬聖節可怕的聲音和FX ，但同樣的戰術方法是SubmitMusic的目錄的底線，這瑟夫估計是大約10,000首歌曲重要。

“We have a creative team who develop at scale metadata strategies,” Cerf told OneZero. “We have brainstorming sessions where we come up with artist names that will probably be recognized as ‘on brand’ or possibly, you could say, generic.”

“我們誰大規模的元資料策略制定創意團隊，”瑟夫告訴OneZero。 “我們進行了集思廣益的會議，提出了藝術家的名字，這些名字可能會被認為是'品牌上的'，或者可能是通用的。”

How this strategy manifests itself depends on the content. “If you name [yourself] ‘Joe Smith,’ and you put out a classical music album, it’s not going to resonate with a digital consumer. If you put out classical music under the name ‘Classique Elegante,’ that is an on-brand piece of data that is put up in front and center… and is likely going to harbor more digital activity, or clicks.”

這個策略如何表現出來取決於內容。 “如果您(自己)命名為“喬·史密斯(Joe Smith)”，並且發行了古典音樂專輯，那將不會引起數字消費者的共鳴。 如果您以“ Classique Elegante”的名稱釋出古典音樂，那是放在前部和中間的品牌資料片段，並且可能會包含更多的數字活動或點選。”

Gaming SEO is particularly effective if the goal is simply to monetize some preexisting catalog of music, without any aim to actually build a following, throw a concert, or push a genre forward. Even if a user ends up becoming a fan of the music after inadvertently discovering it, there’s often no way to find the musician outside of the Spotify platform, as the artists’ name itself and accompanying metadata are just SEO word salad.

如果SEO的目標只是為了通過某種形式的現有音樂進行貨幣化，而又沒有旨在真正建立追隨者，舉辦音樂會或推動音樂流派前進的目標，則SEO尤其有效。 即使使用者最終在無意間發現了音樂迷之後，通常也無法在Spotify平臺之外找到音樂家，因為藝術家的名字本身和附帶的元資料只是SEO字眼。

Cerf says he does not go so far as to name artists in ways that are misleading. While there’s no codified rule from Spotify against SEO bait, he says he’s heard from contacts at digital distributors that Spotify generally discourages the practice. Though distributors on Spotify’s preferred list, which the company recommends directly, are more likely to follow these suggestions, it’s clear others aren’t, to a significant degree.

瑟夫說，他只不過以誤導他人的方式來命名藝術家。 儘管Spotify並沒有針對SEO誘餌制定規則，但他表示，從數字發行商的聯絡人那裡得知，Spotify通常會阻止這種做法。 儘管該公司直接推薦的Spotify首選列表中的發行商更有可能遵循這些建議，但顯然其他人在很大程度上並沒有這樣做。

Ask Google to play “relaxing music,” or plug “meditation” into Spotify’s search bar, and you’ll find heaps of artist accounts with names like Binaural Beats Sleep, Nature Sounds Nature Music, and Air Conditioner Sound that mass-upload ambient drones, looped chord progressions, or straight-up white noise. Spotify’s user base apparently has a lot of trouble sleeping, and that significant audience interest makes it a worthwhile hustle for a prospective SEO spammer. It also doesn’t hurt that generic New Age sonic compositions are relatively easy to make (or rip) compared to other types of music.

要求Google播放“輕鬆的音樂”，或將“冥想”插入Spotify的搜尋欄中，您會發現大量藝術家帳戶，其名稱包括Binaural Beats Sleep ， Nature Sounds Nature Music和Air Conditioner Sound ，它們可以大量上傳周圍的無人機，和絃進行迴圈或白噪聲直起。 Spotify的使用者群顯然在入睡方面遇到很多麻煩，並且巨大的受眾興趣使其成為潛在的SEO垃圾郵件傳送者的不二之選。 與其他型別的音樂相比，通用的New Age聲音作品相對容易製作(或翻錄)，這也沒有什麼壞處。

And so a seemingly unending stream of “artists” battle in an audio turf war over various niches of faintly wellness-related audio. These profiles often have dozens to hundreds of albums, each saturated with keywords. Individual pages using this method regularly rack up tens to hundreds of thousands of monthly plays. Some daisy-chain featured artists in their metadata to populate multiple pages with slightly different names, while others simply reupload the same exact tracks over and over again in repackaged albums.

因此，一場看似永無止境的“藝術家”之爭正在一場音訊草皮戰中，與各種與健康相關的音訊領域ni之以鼻。 這些個人資料通常有數十到數百張專輯，每張專輯都充滿了關鍵字。 使用此方法的各個頁面通常每月累積數萬至數十萬次播放。 一些菊花鏈在其元資料中以藝術家為特色，以用略有不同的名稱填充多個頁面，而其他人則只是在重新包裝的專輯中一遍又一遍地重新上傳相同的確切曲目。

Another tack involves bare-bones versions of popular, generic, kid-centric songs like “Happy Birthday.” In fact, the “artist” Happy Birthday alone has uploaded hundreds upon hundreds of the same dozenish versions of the tune (done in different styles, from EDM to acoustic), racking up more than 140,000 monthly listeners. Another account, Children’s Music, is up to nearly 300,000 monthly listeners by sharing misspelled classics like “Wheel on the Bus” and “If Your Happy and You Know It” over and over again.

另一種方法是將流行，通用，以孩子為中心的歌曲的準系統版本，例如“生日快樂”。 實際上，僅“藝術家”生日快樂就上傳了數百首相同的曲調版本(從EDM到聲學，以不同的風格完成)，每月聽眾超過14萬。 另一個帳戶( Children's Music )可以一次又一次地共享錯誤拼寫的經典作品，例如“車輪上的車輪”和“如果您的快樂和您知道它”，則每月有將近30萬的聽眾。

Some “artist” profiles have named themselves after entire subgenres of music, some of which might not have a dedicated genre page or clearly labeled Spotify-created playlist. “Lofi Chillhop” and “LoFi Chill” (both verified artists) seem to be competing for fans of a certain type of instrumental music that experienced a recent rebirth thanks in part to a meme, hitting more than 100,000 and 40,000 monthly listeners, respectively, by uploading beats of unknown origin. The verified artist profile “Uk Drill” took advantage of rising interest in the British hip-hop scene by simply ripping and reposting tracks from up-and-coming MCs, reaching more than 80,000 monthly listeners. And whoever is behind the account “Witch House” (a spooky mid-aughts style of electronic music) accumulated a trickle of traffic by uploading generic instrumentals and jamming the names of popular EDM songs, albums, and artists into the tracks’ metadata. Witch House’s music itself isn’t even witch house, but rather intentionally mislabeled tracks ripped off from places like obscure instrumental sampler albums.

一些“藝術家”個人資料是以整個音樂子流派命名的，其中一些可能沒有專用的流派頁面或沒有明確標記的Spotify建立的播放列表。 “ Lofi Chillhop ”和“ LoFi Chill ”(都是經過驗證的藝術家)似乎正在爭奪某種樂器音樂的粉絲，這些樂迷最近經歷了重生，這在一定程度上是由於一種模因，每月分別吸引了100,000和40,000的聽眾，通過上傳來歷不明的節拍。 經過驗證的藝術家個人資料“ Uk Drill”通過簡單地翻錄和重新發布即將到來的MC的曲目，充分利用了對英國嘻哈音樂的濃厚興趣，每月聽眾超過80,000。 誰擁有“ Witch House” (怪異的中風電子音樂風格)帳戶，誰就會上傳上來的樂器並將流行的EDM歌曲，專輯和藝術家的名字塞入曲目的元資料中，從而積累了少量的流量。 巫婆屋的音樂本身甚至都不是巫婆屋，而是故意從錯誤的樂器取樣器專輯之類的地方竊取了標籤錯誤的曲目。

There isn’t really an incentive for Spotify to clean up repetitive tracks or bizarre artist names. In a way, these prolific posters are just executing an extreme version of Spotify CEO Daniel Ek’s vision of a world where artists spend less time on their music and focus more on volume. The platform’s own goal, as Liz Pelly wrote in The Baffler in 2017, is (arguably) to “fit music snugly into an emotional regulation capsule optimized for maximum clicks.”

Spotify真的沒有動力清理重複的曲目或離奇的藝術家姓名。 從某種意義上說，這些多產的海報只是在執行Spotify執行長Daniel Ek對世界的願景，即藝術家在音樂上花費的時間更少，而對音量的關注更多。 正如Liz Pelly在2017年在《 The Baffler》上寫道，該平臺的目標(可以說)是“將音樂緊貼地放入一個情緒調節膠囊中，以實現最大點選量”。

Cerf, for instance, views what he’s doing as a useful utilitarian tool. “People want to be able to search for music not just by artist name, but also by keyword,” he said. “They want to say, ‘Oh, I’m sleeping, or I’m driving, or I’m meditating, or I have a kid and he needs to sleep, or I just need background music.’”

例如，瑟夫(Cerf)將他的工作視為一種有用的功利工具。 他說：“人們不僅希望能夠通過藝術家姓名來搜尋音樂，而且還能夠通過關鍵字來搜尋音樂。” “他們想說，'哦，我在睡覺，或者我在開車，或者我正在冥想，或者我有一個孩子，他需要睡覺，或者我只需要背景音樂。'”

Indeed, a fundamental building block of Spotify’s algorithm is to simply recognize when a listener successfully finds what they were looking for, not whether or not the music was “quality” per se. As a 2017 Vulture article points out, these artists “are providing people exactly what they want. It just so happens that what they want is ephemeral nonsense.”

確實，Spotify演算法的基本組成部分是簡單地識別出聽眾何時成功找到他們想要的東西，而不是識別音樂本身是否是“質量”。 正如2017年Vulture的一篇文章指出的那樣，這些藝術家“正在為人們提供他們想要的東西。 碰巧的是，他們想要的只是短暫的廢話。”

Still, some music in this vein is downright deceptive, either of noticeably low quality or having little to no connection to the given artist title.

儘管如此，有些音樂仍是徹頭徹尾的欺騙，要麼質量低下，要麼與給定的藝術家頭銜幾乎沒有關係。

Tools like digital music distributor and Spotify partner DistroKid’s DistroLock audio fingerprint technology and Spotify’s own blockchain startup acquisitions could in theory curb some of this spam by, say, limiting reuploads of the same tracks. But these kinds of checks aren’t yet baked into Spotify’s platform.

從理論上講，數字音樂發行商和Spotify合作伙伴DistroKid的DistroLock音訊指紋技術以及Spotify自己的區塊鏈初創公司之類的工具可以通過限制相同曲目的過載來抑制這種垃圾郵件。 但是這些檢查尚未納入Spotify的平臺。

Increased human moderation of Spotify’s library could offer another solution, but this presents a logistical problem because of the sheer scope of the platform’s catalog. (The platform says it adds tens of thousands of songs to its catalog every day.)

增加人為管理Spotify庫的能力可能會提供另一種解決方案，但是由於平臺目錄的絕對範圍，這帶來了後勤問題。 (該平臺表示每天都會向其目錄新增數萬首歌曲。)

Spotify’s editorial team functionally runs interference on certain terms people frequently game by essentially using the same strategy as the spammers, creating official pages for certain “Genres & Moods” of music, each featuring handpicked playlists within these categorizations. However, it’s unclear who on Spotify’s editorial team makes these pages, what process they use to create them, and whether their explicit purpose is to get out in front of spam. These official Spotify pages and playlists sometimes surface high in search, but they often have a lot of competition from artists named with almost every imaginable variation of a set of high-value terms. Plus, spammers themselves occasionally show up in the sanctioned playlists, often joined by plenty of the less intrusive fake artists.

Spotify的編輯團隊從本質上使用與垃圾郵件傳送者相同的策略，對人們經常使用的某些字詞進行干擾，為某些音樂的“流派和心情”建立官方頁面，每個頁面均包含精選的播放列表。 但是，尚不清楚Spotify編輯團隊中的哪些人制作這些頁面，他們使用什麼流程來建立這些頁面，以及它們的明確目的是否是為了擺脫垃圾郵件。 這些官方的Spotify頁面和播放列表有時會在搜尋中佔據較高的位置，但它們經常受到來自藝術家的競爭，這些藝術家的名字幾乎都是每組可以想到的高價值術語的變體。 另外，垃圾郵件傳送者自己有時會出現在受制裁的播放列表中，通常還包括許多不那麼打擾的假藝術家。

Howard isn’t aggrieved by people gaming the platform to get their music heard, and he highlights that people using these strategies are simply working within a broken system.

霍華德對在平臺上玩遊戲以聽見音樂的人並不感到委屈，他著重指出，使用這些策略的人們只是在一個破碎的系統中工作。

“The tech is agnostic,” he says. “You’d be stupid not to use [Spotify’s] system to your advantage, and so people are just gaming the system. I can speak for savvy operators in the publishing world who go, ‘I’ve got all this content. I’m going to optimize it for plays.’ And they’re doing the right thing!”

他說：“這項技術是不可知的。” “如果您不使用[Spotify]系統會很愚蠢，那麼人們只是在玩這個系統。 我可以代表出版界的精明運營商說：“我擁有所有這些內容。 我將針對遊戲進行優化。 他們在做正確的事！”