Spotify cover Song playlists

If you look through Spotify's community forums, you'll see a lot of users complaining about these tracks. "The biggest problem with Spotify is those cover songs." "Many of these are much worse than the originals, or at least not the same." "Too many cover bands."

Spotify will probably never do anything about these complaints, in part because it rarely interacts with artists directly, and the dynamics of the platform make covering other artists extremely attractive. Spotify and, to a lesser degree, other streaming platforms have paved the way for hundreds of musicians to make businesses out of covering popular songs. These artists arent all as well known as the kids from Glee or Weird Al; in fact, you probably wouldnt recognize any of them even if you saw them standing on a stage. Some hope covers will help them stand out in the endless landscape of hopefuls trying to carve out a space online, and that the millions of Spotify users searching for a big hit will find them instead. Others are singer-songwriters who tried to hack it as original solo artists only to find out that its way easier to make a living reimagining songs people already know. No matter what they hope to gain, theyve found a niche in large streaming platforms, capitalizing on the intersection of huge audiences, broad search algorithms, and limited distribution deals that can leave fans searching in vain for high wattage stars.

COVER songs can lead to a far larger audience than original material

The idea of covers as a career-booster isn't new. In the late 1960s, when a poorly aging Elvis Presley began performing live again following an eight-year hiatus, he began to incorporate Beatles covers into his shows in an attempt to attract a wider (read: younger) audience. Earlier this year, Korn reminded everyone that they were still around by covering a Rihanna song.

But cover songs aren't just a way to prove your commitment to novelty or vary the setlist of live shows anymore. On platforms like Spotify, playing riffs on popular songs can lead to a far larger audience than recording original material all you need is a song people are already searching for. Any popular artist should do Katy Perry, Justin Bieber, John Legend but timing is important. The song should be fresh, but with enough mainstream appeal that large numbers of people will be looking for it. Then, with a little creative track name optimization and a halfway decent recording, you could be looking at a potentially huge audience.

Jonathan Young begins each day by combing through the iTunes charts. If he sees a new song climbing the ranks, he'll listen and see if it's something he can work with. It helps if the song is simple, without complex harmonies or difficult chord progressions. He says most pop songs will take him only a few hours to record, because of their repetitive structure. "I can usually record the guitar parts and the chorus once, and then copy and paste that three times," he says.

Young is a professionally trained musician who posts mostly covers and parodies of popular songs on YouTube. He tries to upload a new song to his channel every five days; his previous "hits" include a pop-punk version of The Little Mermaid's "Under the Sea" (205,757 YouTube views) and a parody of Meghan Trainor's "All About That Bass" (640,419 views). Young considers himself a YouTube artist first, but he uses Spotify as an additional platform for his work. In the nearly two years that he's been making videos, he's gained around 60,000 followers. His Spotify follower count pales in comparison, around 2,500. Spotify, Young says, is less interactive and more anonymous, but that hasn't prevented him from racking up 73,000 listens on his most popular Spotify cover: a heavy metal version of Big Sean's "I Don't Fuck with You."

When the Led Zeppelin cover band Lez Zeppelin joined Spotify in 2009, the real Led Zeppelin was still holding out. Zeppelin was among a group of musicians like AC/DC and Neil Young who reacted to the emergence of streaming services with immediate and continued disdain, and initially refused to join at all. Led didn't arrive on Spotify until the very end of 2013, which means Lez had several years to fill in the gap they left.

But Led Zeppelin's absence didn't boost Lez Zeppelin's stream numbers the way Adele's boosted Scofield's. That's at least in part because of the volume of Led Zeppelin tribute bands already on Spotify. Scofield and Young gamed Spotify's system by hand-picking popular tracks from different artists; their catalogs are diverse enough that any number of searches could lead to one of their songs. "Led Zeppelin" is the only search that might accidentally lead you to Lez Zeppelin. After more than 11 years as a band, Lez Zep joined Spotify and were suddenly, literally, stacked up against other Led Zeppelin cover bands. A Spotify search in 2010 would've directed you to much more popular Zeppelin tributes like Great White (21,376 followers) and Led Zepagain (65,786) before it would've brought you to Lez Zeppelin (4,640 followers). Led Zeppelin's absence did help some cover bands (it made big bands bigger), but smaller tribute bands were pushed to the bottom of the list.

Traditional cover bands like Lez Zep focus on one artist, but Spotify makes it more appealing to cover artists who latch onto of-the-moment popular songs from any artist. Spotifys search algorithms favor already-popular streams, and the gap left by big-name artists can only house so many alternatives. While Young and Scofield entered a Spotify community composed of artists about as popular as they were (that is to say, not very), Lez Zeppelin found Spotifys crowded arena made self-promotion difficult.

getting millions of listeners isnt the same as getting discovered

Each of these artists has different goals Scofield wants to write her own music, Young sees Spotify as a complement to his more impressive YouTube channel, and Lez Zeppelin want to promote their shows but they all end up doing basically the same thing: reinventing songs that someone else wrote. Stories like these highlight the sameness that services like Spotify can exacerbate. Search for Taylor Swift, and youll get dozens of songs, many of which are indistinguishable, and none of which are the one you actually want. On the surface, this makes it seem like Spotify is creating a level playing field, but what its really creating are plateaus; between signed and unsigned artists, original musicians and cover bands. And the easiest way for a lower-plateau artist to reach a higher plateau is to try and mimic what someone up there has already done.

But getting millions of listeners this way isnt the same as getting discovered, so these musicians are stuck in a bind created by Spotifys design. Original music is what gets rewarded with obsessive fandom and a secure space in pop culture, but the best way to get listened to as a newcomer is to copy it. If streaming services are in fact the music-listening platforms of the future, expect a world with a few originals surrounded by dozens of copy and pastes.