printWhy Is The Obscure B-Side “Harness Your Hopes” Pavement’s Top Song On Spotify? It’s Complicated.
by ButterflyEffect
Krukowski, who is one of the organizers of Justice At Spotify — a new protest campaign demanding a higher artist royalty rate, among other things — isn’t all that concerned with the Autoplay situation, at least in the ways that it might be screwing with artists’ top songs. But he is concerned with the ways that incidental algorithmic designs have industry-wide power: “It’s just kind of stifling to have that amount of control, and have it in one company,” he says. “And then not only that, but to have it made by engineering decisions. This is very consistent with a lot of our culture right now, that we’re willing to surrender to Facebook and Google engineers very important decisions.”