Your mood is for sale. Last night in Rimini, my laptop fan hissed while the sea outside breathed salt through the cracked window, and I queued up a soft piano playlist to finish an article. The keys clacked, the espresso smelled burnt-sweet, and the screen’s cold light kept my eyes awake long past kindness.
I’m Gerd—writer, wheelchair wheels humming on tiled floors, President of Free Astroscience—and I’ve fallen for the soothing veneer of platforms more times than I care to admit. I’m simplifying heavy ideas here on purpose so they’re easy to follow, the way a warm hand simplifies a cold door handle. The sound of that piano, buttery and thin, nudged me into a tunnel I didn’t plan to enter.
Let’s talk about the tunnel.
Three Myths I Swallowed
I used to think Spotify sold music, like a good record shop with neon glow and dust on sleeves; turns out it sells calibrated feelings, like scented air pumped into a mall at just the right volume to make you stay longer . The pianos are satin-smooth, the strings airy, the rhythm politely dull—exactly the texture that doesn’t snag your attention but oils your day.
I assumed playlists were neutral shelves, the way a quiet library smells of paper and not policy; in truth, those labels—“Chill,” “Focus,” “Workout,” “Sleep”—steer your inner weather so you produce, consume, and reset on schedule. The click on your phone is small, but the nudge is heavy.
I believed the algorithm was a friendly clerk with headphones on; it’s closer to a maître d’ deciding who even gets into the room, while the sub-bass hum of commerce shakes the floorboards. Taste feels personal, yet the hands guiding it wear corporate cologne.
One Story That Broke The Spell
A few years back, journalists found a name: Enno Aare. It sounded like rain on glass—clean, anonymous, soothing—and it racked up 17 million streams, with zero interviews, zero photos, zero human traces outside the app . Picture a smooth piano loop, the kind that slips past your skin like silk, yet the artist… wasn’t really an artist as we imagine one.
Behind Enno Aare was a pattern: a flock of “ghost artists” filling top playlists like Deep Sleep, “Concentrazione profonda,” and Peaceful Piano, many linked to a small cluster of producers tied to companies with business ties to Spotify itself . That’s not just background music—it’s background economics.
Here’s the part that tastes metallic. Instead of paying royalties as those tracks stream, Spotify can commission buy‑out tracks—like paying around €1,000 for ten songs—then own and place them endlessly, while the per‑stream cost flatlines . The music comes out smooth as polished wood; the money flows like a hidden pipe.
And the math gets colder. With a pro‑rata model, all subscription and ad money goes into one pot that’s divided by share of total streams, so flooding the system with low‑cost mood tracks dilutes what every other stream is worth . Imagine the numbers as a crowded bar where the smell of beer and cheap perfume thickens—your band pulls 1,000,000 streams in a month with 100,000,000 total; that’s 1%. Add 400,000,000 of ghostly streams and your same million is now 0.2% . Same song. Different air.
One story, a few numbers, and the piano didn’t sound soft anymore—it sounded engineered.
The Common Craft, Bottled And Sold
There’s a simple, spicy idea here from old books I love on rainy afternoons: the “general intellect”—shorthand for our shared knowledge, the collective craft built by millions of hands and ears—gets mined, templated, and sold back to us . I’m flattening the philosophy on purpose so it fits in your pocket like a smooth stone.
Algorithms learn what works by chewing through millions of tracks—what tempo keeps you locked in, which keys calm you, which structures reduce skips—then spin out industrial mood loops that compete with the people who taught the system in the first place . The screens glow cold while your fingertips warm the phone glass; it’s intimate and extractive at once.
When shared craft becomes private template, the room smells less like a studio and more like a factory floor. Tomorrow’s model is even cleaner, and even emptier, unless we change the air.
From Culture To Control, One Playlist At A Time
When the app sorts life by states—Chill, Focus, Workout, Sleep—it isn’t just organising songs; it’s organising us . The effect lands softly, like felt on piano hammers, but it’s a steering wheel on your mood.
This isn’t chains and batons; it’s what some thinkers call governance by vibes—tuning populations through inner weather rather than outer force . The headphones seal warm around your ears while the world gets managed at the level of breath and heartbeat.
If music becomes scented wallpaper, it stops challenging you. Next time you feel the bass purr under your ribs, ask what it’s asking of you—today and the day after.
The New Crown: Symbolic Power With A Green Logo
Here’s the twist—what counts isn’t just cash. It’s the power to decide what counts as valuable in the first place, the hush in a gallery that tells you which painting matters . I’m simplifying the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu’s point because you deserve clarity, not a lecture.
Spotify isn’t merely selling access; it’s become the listening infrastructure, the quiet ruler that decides what is “good,” who floats to the surface, and which feelings fit at which hours . When a song fits Chill Vibes but not “Top Hits,” that judgment smells like incense but spends like rent money . Think Amazon as internet’s plumbing via AWS, and Meta as the channel for messaging—same vibe, different scent .
Once a platform gets to define the map, artists and listeners just learn the traffic lights. Tomorrow’s lanes can still be redrawn, but only if we hold the pen.
What This Does To Artists (And To Us)
For artists, the game morphs from craft to compliance—tweak metadata, aim for the right tags, shave intros, polish tones to match algorithmic taste, or vanish into the hiss . It feels like sanding a rough oak table until it’s bland laminate.
For listeners, discovery shrinks to a mood dial, not a messy walk through a record shop that smells of cardboard and dust motes . Desire stops bubbling up and starts getting poured in.
If our ears become data funnels, our days start sounding the same. We can make tomorrow louder, stranger, more human.
A Few Roads Out Of The Loop
There are living alternatives. Bandcamp proved that direct support can carry real weight, and cooperative marketplaces like Subvert.fm aim to put ownership and decisions back in artists’ hands, with revenues flowing to creators and governance done by the community itself . Picture that as a kitchen table with coffee steam, not a glass tower with recycled air.
Policy isn’t a dirty word here. Mandatory transparency on algorithms and royalty flows, data portability, interoperability, and bans on predatory practices are boring‑sounding but life‑changing tools—like oiling a squeaky wheel until it glides . Regulation smells like paper and ink, but it feels like sunlight.
Platforms aren’t nature; they’re choices stacked over decades of deregulation, and choices can be remade . If we start now, the next season could sound different.
One Quiet Practice That Helps
I’ve started keeping a tiny ritual: once a day, I choose music on purpose. I grab a record, breathe in the cardboard, feel the sleeve’s grain under my fingers, and let the needle thump once before the room fills with air.
Some days I buy from an artist page directly. Some nights I sit in silence and let the radiator tick and the Adriatic wash faintly through the open window. The world needs contrast to stay awake.
Small habits don’t fix a system, but they remind your nervous system what it’s for.
If You Want A Single Takeaway
The piano loop that oils your workday isn’t neutral—it’s part of a machine that engineers mood for profit, thins everyone’s pay through a flood of ghostly, buy‑out tracks, and crowns itself the arbiter of taste . The melody floats like mist; the ledger clinks like coins.
We don’t have to smash our headphones to change this. We can push for co‑ops, transparency, portability, and actual ownership—all tangible, all doable—until the air in the room smells like wood and not plastic . Tomorrow’s playlists can serve people, not just pipelines.
Why I Care
As a guy in a chair who times his shoulders to a rhythm to get up a curb, I feel music in my bones first. When a platform flattens it into a productivity scent, something in me flattens too.
I want you to hear friction again—the scuff of a pick on strings, the breath before a verse, the human squeak in the corner of the room. I want the future to creak a little, like an old studio door that opens to a messy, honest session.
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