Radio station full of cover songs instead of originals

[wlbryant]

Seems like anytime I turn on an oldies station, I get songs that say they are by a particular artist, but are actually "tribute" bands or fun "60s collections". The split between original songs and fake ones are about 50/50, it's very very bad.

#1, many of these are much worse than the originals, or at least not the same.

#2, this takes plays from the original artists and gives it to people who then exploit the system to create more of the same

#3, I hit thumbs down on a song to stop playing it and it records that I don't like that song by that artist, which sucks because I just want to hear the actual song by the actual artist.

Can you guys do some cleanup on this? Just a quick listen to just about any generated 60s radio station will show this problem. Or, alternatively, would you recommend that I record a collection of my own so I can get listens from people trying to hear other bands so at least I can profit from this issue?

Actually, I can give a concrete example. I just got "The Diamond Ring" by "Gary Lewis & the Play Boys", which was a fake version of "This Diamond Ring" by "Gary Lewis & the Playboys", which exists on Spotify but didn't come up during radio play.

[Peter__]

I guess this sort of comes under this ideas topic about giving priority to originals. 

Although, I have found a few epic cover bands from radio so can't complain!

Peter

[wlbryant]

There are some good ones, but when an original song is on Spotify and the radio plays a version intended to sound exactly like the original to trick people into listening so they can collect royalties, that's the equivalent of the pages in Google that just have a bunch of keyword links and advertising.

When I tried turning on a radio station just now from one of the original tracks, the first thing that came up was a cover version of the song I just started the radio station on. That's a seriously junked up system.

[modder]

you're right, that is sooo annoying. A Song you haven't heard in ages starts, you're all exited and then they start singing and its a crappy cover. My 'Fools Garden - Lemon Tree' Station is like at least 75% Cover. In this matter Spotify could definitely learn a thing or two from Pandora!

[Giu616]

Well, they don't really collect the royalties, they have to pay a one time fee of usually 13.75$ to 15$ depending on the service to get the license for the lyrics and the core melody, on top of that, when their album gets bought on iTunes or Amazon Music, the Distribution Service takes a small amount of the revenue to pay the original writers, but I can understand that bad covers are just not worth hearing, keep in mind that also they put time into the production and performance and are doing their best.