Journal · 6 articles

Industry

What changed, what it means for independent artists, and what to actually do about it.

News and argument, written for artists rather than for the trade press. When Spotify publishes numbers or removes seventy-five million tracks, the useful question isn’t what happened but what it changes about your week.

These pieces are dated by nature. The ones that hold up are the ones about incentives rather than announcements.

July 2026

Spotify Deleted 75 Million AI Slop Tracks. Here's What Actually Changed.

Spotify says it removed 75 million spammy AI tracks in a year. Here's how the scams worked, what the new spam filter and disclosure rules actually do, and what they don't fix.

July 2026

The AI Music War Is Over. Now Comes the Royalty War.

The debate over whether AI can make music is settled. The fight now is economic: training data, royalty dilution, and fraud. Here's where value moves when songs are free.

June 2026

What to Do When AI Tracks Get Uploaded to Your Spotify Profile

AI tracks are turning up on artist Spotify profiles without consent. Here's how the hijacking happens, how to get a track removed, and how to lock the profile down.

June 2026

What Spotify's 2026 Loud & Clear Numbers Actually Mean

More artists than ever crossed $100K on Spotify in 2026. Here's what the Loud and Clear numbers actually show, and what they hide about where the money is concentrating.

May 2026

The Death of Sincerity in the Streaming Era

Streaming didn't kill sincerity in music — it industrialised it. How platform incentives turned genuine vulnerability into content, and why real expression still survives.

April 2026

AI Music Is About to Flood the Internet (Here's What Happens Next)

AI won't kill music — it will drown it in average. Here's what the coming flood means for independent artists and why taste, identity, and signal are the new advantages.

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Occasional writing on song structure, lyric craft, and what actually lands. No spam; leave whenever.