How “Fake” My Bloody Valentine and Cocteau Twins Lyrics Ended Up on Spotify | Pitchfork

Snafus involving the ethereal ’80s bands illustrate how streaming platforms make an imperfect replacement for old-fashioned album-listening

"One thing that is clear about this willfully inscrutable music is that it transcends the scope of a service like Musixmatch; as Cocteau Twins’ Simon Raymonde tweeted, “If we’d wanted our lyrics put up anywhere we would’ve done it 30 odd years ago.” The affair illustrates tech capitalism’s discombobulation when faced with a key element in art, which is the inexplicable. I think the problem, though, is not Musixmatch and its protocol so much as the service’s unilateral rollout, with quasi-official imprimatur, on platforms already under fire for flattening artistic identity and repackaging music as scaleable content. Having sub-licensed the rights, Musixmatch is perfectly entitled to crowd-source transcriptions and sell them on. But artists should know whose words are being put in their mouths—and that, should they wish, they have the right to opt out."

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How “Fake” My Bloody Valentine and Cocteau Twins Lyrics Ended Up on Spotify | Pitchfork