Anonymous publishers publish white noise on Spotify and make $ 1 million a year

 

 

OneZero has published an investigation into companies that publish white noise on Spotify and earn thousands of dollars a day from it. In doing so, they violate Spotify's policy but continue to operate successfully.
A publisher that doesn't exist

British record company Ameritz is publishing thousands of white noise tracks under Peak Records. 

 

This label only exists on Spotify and is not mentioned in the Ameritz portfolio. Nevertheless, it brings a good income for the company - users actively consume monotonous soothing recordings to relax or fall asleep.

    “You have no idea how much time I spent on recording tracks: the hum of the computer, the microwave, the fan. Everything you can imagine, ”an Ameritz employee told the publication on condition of anonymity.

Artist pages have overtly SEO-optimized titles like White Noise Baby Sleep or Relaxing Music Therapy, some with hundreds of thousands or even millions of streams. Considering that Spotify pays an artist about $ 0.003 for one listen, the top publishers of white noise can reach $ 1 million in revenue per year.
Screenshot: OneZero

That being said, Spotify bans SEO album and track titles. For example, the 2017 rules say that titles like “Christmas hits”, “Soothing music”, “Relaxing music”, etc. cannot be used. Nonetheless, Ameritz continues to populate the streaming service with playlists whose titles are almost entirely derived from keywords.
Business on sounds

Ameritz isn't the only white noise publisher on Spotify, it's just one of the largest with dozens of employees. But there are others, smaller, like Lullify, which consists of only two people.

There are hundreds of such accounts, and they have a fairly large loyal audience.

    The Top 3 White Noise “Performers” - White Noise Baby Sleep, Rain Sounds and Deep Sleep Music Collective - generated over a million plays per day in 2020. Thus, they were earning roughly $ 3,000 a day - which adds up to over $ 1 million a year.

    It is noteworthy that almost all of these labels, except for Lullify, do not exist in nature. They can only be found on Spotify.

Real competition

White Noise publishers are doing their best to stay on top of Spotify. For example, Ameritz is constantly re-releasing the same content under different names, showing wonders of ingenuity in creating new and new SEO-optimized playlist titles.

    “I am aware that Ameritz is re-releasing these albums on Spotify dozens of times, changing their titles, track order and artwork to keep their albums in the 'New Releases' top. And it's really the job of a 10-person team to just release the same tracks over and over again, ”says a former Ameritz employee.