Real musicians are quietly being replaced by royalty-free fillers.
Spotify is allegedly filling its most popular playlists with low-cost, royalty-free music made by anonymous “ghost artists.”
According to an investigation by Harper’s Magazine, this practice is part of Spotify’s Perfect Fit Content (PFC) program, which partners with production companies to provide these tracks.
The result? Lower royalty payouts for Spotify and fewer opportunities for independent musicians.
Inside Spotify’s Perfect Fit Content (PFC) Program
At the heart of Spotify’s alleged cost-cutting strategy is PFC, a program launched around 2017 to make playlists more profitable.
Not the hand-crafted, music-discovery kind, but the ones built for passive listening (a.k.a. The playlists you throw on while answering emails or zoning out like a character in a moody indie film).
According to Harper’s Magazine, instead of promoting independent artists who depend on per-stream royalties, Spotify reportedly partners with production companies like Epidemic Sound, Firefly Entertainment, and Queenstreet Content AB.
Take Ekfat, for example. Tracks under this pseudonym racked up millions of streams on curated playlists. Ekfat’s story included an Icelandic conservatory, boutique cassette releases, and the air of a reclusive genius. Except… none of it was true.
Overseeing this system is Spotify’s Strategic Programming (StraP) team, which manages PFC tracks across more than 150 playlists. Initially, editors were gently nudged to include these tracks. But soft suggestions turned into firm directives. Internal messages show editors being told to prioritize new PFC providers, track performance, and report back.
Success was measured on internal dashboards tracking skips, saves, repeats, and listener retention. If a track blended in without being noticed—or skipped—it was considered a success. The logic was blunt: if people aren’t paying attention, why pay full royalties?
For production companies, it was a lucrative strategy.
Queenstreet Content AB reportedly earned over $10 million in 2022. But for the musicians behind the tracks, the payout was far less rewarding. Artists typically received modest, one-time fees while production companies reaped the long-term benefits.
Publicly, Spotify denies pressuring editors to favor PFC tracks. But internal records tell another story: a deliberate, coordinated push to flood playlists with low-cost tracks.
How ‘Ghost Artists’ Impact Real Musicians
Spotify’s reliance on PFC tracks isn’t just a financial issue. It’s deeply personal for the musicians involved.
Artists creating these tracks are often paid modest, one-time fees, sometimes as little as $1,700 per track, while signing away ownership and future royalties.
Even worse, Spotify doesn’t exactly pay a fixed rate per stream. Instead, it uses a streamshare model to calculate royalties. It pools the net revenue and distributes it to rights holders based on their share of total streams.
The financial disparity is hard to ignore. A typical independent artist earns about $0.0029 per stream on Spotify, which means it takes 312,500 streams just to make $1,000.
At the same time, Spotify’s CEO, Daniel Ek, has built a net worth exceeding $7.3 billion.
But the impact stretches beyond financials. Playlists, once powerful tools for discovery and exposure, are now crowded with anonymous tracks engineered to fade into the background. Independent musicians are getting squeezed out, their songs buried under layers of generic filler.
Listeners are affected, too.
Playlists that once felt like vibrant entry points into niche genres are starting to sound dull and interchangeable. The personal connection between listener and artist—something that once felt central to streaming—fades into a haze of anonymous background noise.
AI, Industry Trends, and the Future of Streaming Royalties
Spotify CEO Daniel Ek calls AI-generated music a “great cultural opportunity.”
Sure, it sounds optimistic, but it’s hard to ignore the real implication: more music, made faster and cheaper, without the headache of paying traditional royalties.
Investigations have already found AI-generated tracks sneaking onto playlists, disguised as human-made songs. These tracks rack up millions of streams, often hidden under vague artist names, blending seamlessly with Perfect Fit Content (PFC) tracks. It’s efficient, but it sidesteps the royalty system entirely.
And how do you connect with an artist if the artist doesn’t even exist?
Then there’s the payout problem.
Spotify’s per-stream payment has dropped 10.9% in the past year and by more than 50% over the past decade. Adjusted for inflation, the decline is even steeper.
Platforms like Tidal and Qobuz offer better rates to artists, but their smaller audiences make them less viable alternatives for musicians trying to make a living.
This isn’t just about money, though. It’s about what streaming has become. Music discovery used to feel like stumbling across a treasure. But the treasure map looks different now. Playlists are increasingly filled with algorithmic filler, music designed to blend in rather than stand out.
If this trend continues, streaming might stop being about connecting with music at all. It could just become background noise… something tolerated, not enjoyed.