New Faustians
(An essay on Spotify and Artificial Intelligence)
(note: the current version of this essay was finished in April, 2026 — before Spotify announced they would finally label ‘human made’ music)
PROLOGUE: A forking path
No one knows what year it was when he walked down the road that led to straight to the Devil, it might have been the late 1920s or the early 1930s, and some even contest that it was the Devil at all, perhaps that interpretation being inherently racist, perhaps the creature standing there was Legba, the Voodoo spirit of the crossroads. The road seemed to evaporate heat on that mysterious day, one could almost see it in the air; it surrounded and obscurred the Mississippi landscape like a dense crystalline fog. Sweat marked Robert’s back as he walked, though somehow he continued to move, his feet in time with his gums as they obliterated an old piece of tobacco.
Already known for his compelling performances, (and just as known for being oddly quiet off stage), Robert Johnson felt a dissatisfaction with his craft. He often practiced guitar in old cemeteries with a close friend, searching for new skills and improvements: but he had run out of ideas. Ambition is a lonely, solitary existence, even with a close friend, and even with the ghosts who listened to their music, night after a night, a ritual that allowed them to step away from their graves.
The sun was already hallucinogenic at this early afternoon hour. When the dust ridden street became a crossroads pointing in every cardinal direction, Robert stopped for a second, unsure whether his eyes were playing tricks on him. The dense vaporous heat seemed to form a silhouette, one which gradually filled in, until a giant creature stood in front of him, arms outstretched, patiently waiting.
Part one: The Playwriter Spy
Hundreds of years earlier, while searching for inspiration, playwriter Christopher Marlowe found a newly translated pamphlet, in old London store. The pamphlet, originally written in German, was a “viral” sensation, before such a term existed. Originally self published, it had now been translated into several languages, including both Polish and English, which is how it came to be in Christopher’s hands, shortly after the unexpected success of The Jew of Malta turned Marlowe into a local celebrity (a title he incidentally, likely despised. Though scholars often disagree about his obscured life, there is large consensus he was a closeted homosexual, and there is a theory, taken very seriously, that he was a spy, tutoring the Queen’s daughter and selling secrets. One of these is likely the reason for his murder at the age of 29) .
The pages he hypnotically devoured were based on the real life of Johann Georg Faust, an alchemist in a small village, who’s eccentric habits annoyed his neighbors so much, that upon his death he found himself to be the star of many satiric and insulting stories, stories which would evolve during later reprintings, this being before the modern age of copyright law. One of the stories in the pamphlet appealed to Marlowe so much that he based his play Dr Faustus around the tale.
Faustus was first performed between 1588-1592. Though it has essentially been remixed by multiple retellings, most follow Marlowe’s template -- a successful and ambitious doctor finds he can go no further with his career and becomes intensely frustrated at the limitations in front of him. An academic, he strains to find an answer to the true mechanisms of reality, one outside of religion or spirituality, convinced science must provide the answer. Perhaps ironically, considering his disdain of religion, he requests a pact with the Devil, who sends an earthly assistant, Mephistopheles, to negotiate terms, which are essentially his soul in exchange for unlimited knowledge. (This tale would later be updated for other desires, but it is always the soul that is traded).
Oddly enough, Mephistopheles warns the doctor against the deal; and even after signing, there are many opportunities and moments for him to turn back. But he remains stubborn. He exchanges his soul for the ability to receive absolute knowledge, the truest answer to any question in his heart or mind. (The only question that is expressly forbidden is on the creation of the universe. One can infer that perhaps not even the Devil knows the answer to this mystery. In any case, and not to spoil the thesis of this essay, neither does Chat GPT) [1]
However one plays with the myth, the moral in it is clear. There comes a point in a person’s life where they must choose ambition or salvation; career or family; knowledge or spirituality. The two paths are in fact in direct opposition to each other, both in content and in reward.
As such, it is hard for me, as a musician, to look at the new inherent negotiations one makes when distributing one’s artwork on the ubiquitous platform, Spotify.
Part Two: Velvet Sundown
In June of 2025, a new indie band appeared in users’ “Discover Weekly” playlists (an algorithmic playlist that generates differently to each listener). Though I didn’t personally hear it at the time, I can imagine there was no reason to be suspicious of the band. They have a sound similar to many of the vaguely neo-psychedelic indie acts, acts that followed in the footsteps of Tame Impala, MGMT, and the like. The music isn’t amazing, but it’s not bad, either. Its very passable. No reason to skip a 3 minute song of theirs. The album artwork matched the sort of Coachella wanna-be vibes as well, looking vaguely like Salvador Dali, both a throwback, but also modern in its nostalgia for a time most of the fans wouldn’t know. But it didn’t take long for people to notice the incongruencies. The lack of live shows or interviews, the unreasonably large number of songs released in quick succession; but most telling, the band photo, which looked very manipulated, verging into the “uncanny valley.”[2]
It took a month of online controversy for the “band” to admit they were fully AI generated, an admission they did over Instagram, and though a fully AI band seems almost normal less than one year later, at the time it was a shock. Before then, AI music tended to be instrumental. The stuff that had vocals was either comedic or “slop”. There was a time when no one thought the technology could fool listeners.
Though Spotify denied knowing the band is AI, they had developed a track record in the last couple years of promoting AI generated music, likely in order to save money on royalties. Initially referred to as “ghost music”, the investigations of music journalist Liz Pelly revealed how widespread the practice was. The first playlist insertions happened in 2018, in instrumental lists made to be listened to in the background while studying or working (and therefor, not paying attention to the artist). Pelly noticed an increase in artist names that didn’t correspond to real people, that were hard to track down, that often came from similar geo locations; and that were replacing the more “popular” people of the instrumental genre. (For example, Brian Eno having less music on the official ambient playlist, despite having both coined the term and popularizing the genre).
Spotify denied knowledge of this until it was exposed in a Harper’s essay, and later a full length book. They finally apologized in 2023, only to do the same a couple years later.
They still to this day do not label AI generated music, nor do any major streaming services[3].
Part Three: Autofiction
Since releasing close to 100 songs over a period of a half dozen bands and a full dozen years, my streaming numbers are mostly modest, with a couple outliers. My highest streamed song, “Sunsets”, has over 14,000 plays, but this is the exception, and anyway, its mostly from one playlist inclusion, which I sadly learned does not noticeably increase fans. I do get a burst of serotonin when I see those numbers though; and also when I notice the other four or five songs that have above 5,000. (These are also the only songs that earn royalties under Spotify’s new terms, which only gives payouts to tracks with more than 1,000 listens). It’s a nice enough sensation to provoke a smile. But these numbers are small in comparison to other artists. My brother, for example, played guitar with someone who had a million streams for one of their songs. They would still be considered widely obscure to most people. Often I’ll go to an indie show with 50 or so people in the audience, and later find out the band has hundreds of thousands of listens.
For my most recent songs, I’ve decided, rather quietly, not to release on Spotify. The timing is strange, considering that I want to share what I labored so intensely over, and since creativity is a such a strong remedy to the ambient anxiety that surrounds us, at the moment. Denying Spotify listeners easy access to the music I spent hundreds of hours on (longer, if you consider the years of practice that got me here) does substantially cut the number of people hearing my songs. Despite my low ish play count, there still are listeners. Releasing these songs solely on niche sites like Bandcamp drastically reduces those who will hear what I toiled over, and what I’m proud to share.
For everyone who’s creative, apart from maybe a very slim fraction, creates for an audience. Even if the audience is the creator themself, the art does not exist in a vacuum. Like the zen koan of the tree, it is a collaboration between songwriter and listener (or writer and reader, filmmaker and viewer, etc).
At the moment, the majority of listeners find music on either YouTube or Spotify. Passionate listeners seek out physical media, but for someone like myself who doesn’t create physical versions of each song, there are not a lot of options.
Aside from listeners, Spotify offers musicians two other things: authenticity (or the illusion of), and a sustained daydream. There’s an idea most musicians have, that we might still be “discovered” by the right person and therefore obtain the dream of artistic success. Each song feels as if it could be “the hit” that gets noticed, that someone puts into an HBO series, or the end credits of a film, or a touring promoter hears and instantly loves. These hits have little to no chance of being found without Spotify and other majors. Can you imagine a huge celebrity removing all their music from the service? It feels impossible.
At this moment in musical history, Spotify is perceived to be a needed promotional tool to obtain music licensing, bigger live shows, more “fans”, song recognition, anything that leads to a career in creativity. The royalties it pays are dismal, when they exist at all, but the chance for exposure appears limitless, even if highly unlikely.[4] It is like a lotto ticket, and I always thought it was essentially a free one.
And until now it seemed a more than fair trade to me. After all, until very recently, online songs were not scrubbed by robots, so that someone can spend ten minutes on a creation that takes other musicians their entire lives. The years of being bullied or alienated, of love and romance and break ups and arguments, of friendship and confusion, of blissful feelings and bleak ones, those things buried deep within that always look for ways out, in short, life and our sensitivity to it; not to mention the years or decades spent learning skills to express these emotions, perfecting the art of an instrument, or a microphone placement, learning how to create without the gear you wanted, how to troubleshoot malfunctioning equipment, the money spent on instruments, the hours spent away from friends or loved ones to rehearse, the mental toil of wondering if the lyric line is right or wrong, the career decisions one makes, the city one lives in, our relationships, in other words, the blood flowing through us, that rushes through every part of our body and which we then release into something new, something part of us and yet brand new. The opposite of destruction. All being scrubbed by code forced on to us by the elite. All being scrubbed so it can be created without human biology, pain, or freedom. It seems that the lottery ticket which allows us to dream of success now does come with a price attached to it.
Which is even more ironic, considering that my creative process has become so nourishing as to shield my spirit from the pains we see in the news each day, including those brought on by AI and the elite. Creativity shields and protects me from the depths any sensitive person encounters when they look onto the world. It stops me from drowning.
It feels nearly sacred, like the soul.
And so I find it less and less appealing to hand my inner feelings to a platform that stands in direct opposition to my beliefs.
Part Four: Inventory
2018: Spotify starts secretly including AI generated music into various instrumental playlists, in order to avoid royalty pay outs. These are eventually known as “ghost playlists.”
2022: Meta (facebook, Instagram, whatsapp) introduces “Meta AI” into its apps.
2023: Liz Pelly publishes her full length book “Mood Music” on the topic of ghost playlists. After years of denial, Spotify apologizes.
2023: Geoffrey Hinton, a prominent AI researcher, who would later win the Nobel Prize in physics, often nicknamed “the Godfather of AI,” leaves Google, to speak freely of the dangers of the technology, which he considers an existential threat. His departure is only the first from the initial believers and architects. Since then, at least five researchers from Open AI, and one from Anthropic left, citing safety and ethical concerns. 12 co-founders of Grok’s partent company would also leave.
November 2024: Donald Trump is elected president, with significant financial help from Elon Musk, who donated between 250-295 million dollars. Though a former critic of AI, who said it would destroy humanity, Musk now owns one of the leading chatbots, Grok.
January 2025: At Trump’s inauguration, tech CEOs including Mark Zuckerberg (Meta), Jeff Bezos (Amazon), Tim Cook (Apple), Sundar Pichai (Google) , and Elon Musk could be seen standing behind him, smiling and clapping. The combined wealth of them, along with two other non tech CEOs present, is 1.2 trillion dollars.
Jan 2025: On a podcast, Mark Zuckerburg says workplaces “need to be more masculine.”
May 2025: Google announces a “large-scale rollout of AI mode”, after slowly integrating AI into its searches beginning 2023. The mode replaces traditional search engine, is automatic, and hard to opt out of, by design.[5]
April 2025: Pew and Quinnipac polls continue showing widespread dislike of AI technology, with majorities saying AI “will do more harm than good.” In response to some of the questions, 73% of Americans “think that businesses are not doing enough to be transparent about their use of AI.” 69% “think that the government is not doing enough to regulate the use of AI.” Unlike other polling topics, the dislike of AI lines up across all party spectrums. (For example, there is only a 4% difference in Democrats and Republicans thinking AI will do more harm than good.)[6] This is highly unusual, as are the high numbers of opposition. (Most majorities are formed by less than 60%. Donald Trump won with 49.8% of voters, which accounts for approximately 28% of all eligible voters).
June 2025: The first full AI generated tv ad premiers during an NBA game. The company, Kalashi, claims they only spent $500 making the ad. Much of the cost savings come from crew/labor losing jobs.
June 2025: Velvet Sundown, a fully AI generated band, is widely promoted on Spotify playlists.
June 2025: The CEO of Spotify, Daniel Ek, heavily invests in an AI startup that manufactures war technology. (In other words: AI weapons). His investment into Helsing, starts at 694 million dollars.[7]
July, 2025: Velvet Sundown confirms they are AI generated.
Oct 2025: Meta announces AI will be in charge of all their advertising.
Oct 2025: Spotify airs recruitment ads for ICE on its platform.[8]
Jan 2026: ICE kills protesters on the streets of Minneapolis. (Including these due to the next note)
Feb 2026: Meta introduces facial recognition surveillance technology to its glasses, intentionally timed with the chaos from ICE and Trump. An internal memo, obtained by the New York Times, suggested to employees that “the political tumult in the United States would distract critics from the feature’s release.”[9]
Feb 2026: Amazon Ring premieres a super bowl ad which highlights its AI facial recognition technology. (Ring has also been accused of providing services for ICE, though denies it).
March 2026: The Pentagon demands AI contracts with war machines have zero safeguards. This demand happens shortly after the bombing of a school, and prompts Anthropic to dissolve their contract. Open AI signs a new one with the Pentagon. During the transition, Anthropic will still provide services.
April 2026: At the time of writing this essay, 44% of music uploaded to major platforms is now AI generated.[10]
2027: 2027 is the year AI-driven data centers are predicted to consume 1.7 trillion gallons of water.[11]
An interior manifesto
Many artists now find themselves in a dilemma where they are ethically opposed to the galleries that host them. To be told we must contribute to companies that didn’t exist decades ago strikes me as absurd; but our reality and environments have been so shaped by recent technologies, it is often hard to imagine or remember the days before Spotify or Instagram. Artists of all types engage with ubiquitous technologies to either release or promote. I often hear friends lament that “if they could only quit Instagram”, but after all, they need it for their brand, or their job, or their art, whether as a freelance film worker, a retail owner, a graphic designer, a touring band. The list seems unending.
A brave few musicians have left Spotify[12], but most have reluctantly, or even bitterly, accepted their need for it to sustain their career. (There’s a great online post by Sleigh Bells describing their reason for staying). Its not just creatives, consumers find themselves in this moral position as well: people online critique the billionaire class, while at the same time subscribing to Amazon Prime or sharing their frustrations on Tik Tok.[13]
Before AI, tech had already decimated the music industry by the sudden “disruption” of physical media. Artificial Intelligence threatens creative careers in an even more existential way. So called “slop” increasingly invades every platform, from video to writing. The TV industry, where I work, is undergoing a huge crisis. I don’t know many people in that industry who aren’t fearful for their job. (For every AI commercial you see, that is anywhere between 12 and 100 people losing a paycheck).
Whatever one’s moral quandaries with the elite and rich were a few years ago, there is no longer any argument that supporting big tech does not contribute to global suffering. Nor is there any ambiguity about what they politically and morally support.
And there is absolutely no ambiguity that every one of these companies not only benefits from Generative Artificial Intelligence, but are determined for its success regardless of public desire, determined to shove it into our ecosystems, regardless of a large majority not wanting it, and regardless of its effectiveness. After all, it was Google’s CEO who admitted that the new search engine is less accurate than the old one.[14]
I am under no illusion that removing my music would shift event the smallest thing, apart from my personal reach. There is no way the company would suffer, let alone even notice if musicians like myself left the platform. If anything, musicians like myself will only suffer more, on a purely numbers or financial level.
And yet, as much as I want people to hear my music, I find it hard to stomach my art being a part of Spotify’s wholesale support and promotion of AI, going so far as to not letting their listeners know what is and isn’t AI. Delivering pieces of my interior to a company like a complete validation of the technologies designed to destroy the artist.
It is naturally, made even worse, knowing Spotify is complicit in: war technology, environmental devastation, racism (ICE), fascism (Trump), etc etc etc.
**
My argument is simple. Though nothing significant will change from having one less music act on the system, the price for remaining seems disproportionate. Consciously or not, there is a bargain made when validating a huge company. But unlike Dr. Faustus, ours is in exchange for a vague possibility, never a promise.
There is another similarity,: throughout the play, Dr. Faustus is given opportunity again and again to repent, which would end the contract, and save his soul. In other words, he is not only warned at the beginning (by the demon Mephistoles), but is repeatedly allowed salvation. Despite the visits from the good angel, and from an old man near the end of Faustus’s life, he indeed always chooses the trade over his own spirit.
But then again, the play wouldn’t echo as a warning to us if he didn’t.
EPILOGUE : Forking Paths, Part Two
The sun is still shining, though it seems to be setting at an almost schizophrenic pace. Perhaps it appears as it does during eclipse, confusing the animals and birds around. Robert plays a chord on his guitar, seeing if it will affect the giant creature in front of him ; the creature lets out a grunt, perhaps it is simply a sigh. Then a hand stretches out. The arm seems too long for the body, and the fingers on the hand are longer still. They have what look like tiny points on the finger nails, but it’s hard to say. Though the sun is fast setting, it seems to hit Robert directly in the eyes every time he tries to get a closer look at this ... beast ? Or is it simply a figment of his imagination?
With the kind of curiosity that refuses to be suppressed, Robert removes the guitar from his shoulder and holds it forward.
The mysterious creature slowly shrinks to human size. Becomes quite beautiful, in a way, as its appearance resembles something more human, though it has elements of what in the future will be referred to as the ‘uncanny valley.’
Robert is about to ask for a name, who are you, what are you, but before he speaks the human/creature plays a series of songs. The word beautiful does not do the music justice, they are more like medallions, treasures in the sky. Robert looks up at the vultures. He can no longer hear the sound of their wings or their cries, only the melody in front of him, full of intensity and longing. Likewise, the cicadas all mute their screeches, as if simultaneously. It will only be a matter of time before jackrabbits and buck deer find this soulful music.
The song is both strikingly beautiful and also, strikingly simple. It makes all of Robert Johnson’s earlier studies seem too complex. Why was he wasting his time trying desperately to “improve” his skill, when the answer was right in front of him?
Lost in daydreams, it takes him a second to realize the monster is passing the guitar back to him, it takes him a second to understand he can hear the cicadas once again, screeching in the blistering heat. His body which seems to be internally shaking from the music’s vibrations, settles as his still trembling hand grabs the guitar. His sweat has grown cold, but holding the instrument once again warms him.
The creature looks at him, stares directly into him, then slowly, almost imperceptibly starts to evaporate, taking on the substance of the vaporous mist, until it is once again an outline, resembling something like a curtain, like a fading piece of paper. And then. Like nothing at all.
Unsure if what he saw was real or a product of some form of madness, Robert looks down at the crossroad. It seems to point in both no direction, and somehow also points in every direction at once. It seems to point toward infinity.
**
My cat loudly snores and one of the neighbors’ power tools screech in the distance. There’s been the sound of a jazz instrument accompanying me, but its music on the speakers stops playing, fades out. It is replaced by the unmistakable hum of dust crackling as the needle of a turntable circles around the record’s inner groove.
There is no advertisement over the speaker, nor is there a sudden jump to a different performer, selected out of millions to complement the last one and keep the music going, keep my attention engaged. Instead, I momentarily find myself in a world of silence and stillness, of a distant train and the nearby cat, steam rising from a recently filled cup of coffee.
Perhaps another word for stillness and silence, freedom.
Silence being one thing they have not found a way to monetize.
finis.
[1] I asked Chat GPT this question, to make sure I was not assuming it didn’t know. Its answer was interesting and precise; and I am pasting it here, despite my objections to using generative AI for any form of creativity, even email writing. In full disclosure, this is the only question I asked it for this essay, and I only did so out of worry that someone would read the above statement, ask Chat the meaning of the universe, and show that I was false in saying it does not know. It essentially said it can not answer that question, but here is its interesting response. (I told it I was asking for an essay, but did not disclose the nature of the essay): “I would say something like:
“There is no known or agreed-upon answer to who made the universe.
Different fields offer different frameworks:”
[2] A term used to describe when digital art looks so real as to become unsettling and creepy.
[3] With the exception of Deezer, who added labeling while I was writing this essay. We can only hope more follow.
[4] Its not hard to see this “need” follows us on other platforms. How many people I know who tell me they’d quit Instagram but “need” it for their freelance career, their small business, their photography, their film making, their art, their band, etc. This myth applies to all artists when it says we need profiles on Instagram ; and let me say this applies to all independent filmmakers when it says you need your videos on Tik Tok).
[5] quoted from a google search, which naturally, showed it to me as an AI chat.
[6] https://poll.qu.edu/poll-release?releaseid=3923
[7] https://www.cnbc.com/2025/06/17/spotifys-daniel-ek-leads-investment-in-defense-startup-helsing.html
[8] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jan/09/spotify-no-longer-running-ice-recruitment-ads-after-us-government-campaign-ends … note: this is not an AI generated ad, and it being next to the Meta news is coincidental. Though I am trying to keep this timeline about AI, any other Spotify monstrosities will also appear.
[9] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/technology/meta-facial-recognition-smart-glasses.html
[10] https://newsroom-deezer.com/2026/04/ai-generated-tracks-represent-44-of-new-uploaded-music/
[11] From a google search, unfortunately done with its built in bot, I assume. It cites this article for the statistic: https://www.eesi.org/articles/view/data-centers-and-water-consumption
[12] Deerhoof, Massive Attack, and King Gizzard being most notable
[13] A subscription one doesn’t even need to use their service! And so this topic always baffles me, that people are essentially giving an allowance to a corporation they hate, simply to speed up their shipping.
[14] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8drzv37z4jo