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Glenn McDonald is a former employee of Spotify who was responsible for grouping and naming genres at the company. Often described by media as a "data alchemist", he created the music discovery website Every Noise at Once, and is credited for naming the genre of hyperpop.
Biography
[edit]McDonald worked for a time at the music intelligence firm The Echo Nest. This company was acquired by Spotify in 2013, and the genre mapping data created by McDonald was built into various Spotify features, including its "Daily Mix" and "Fans also like" recommendation functions. He created the Every Noise at Once website that year.[1] Under Spotify, he continued to work as part of a team to categorize tracks from about one million artists into 6,291 named genres, including 56 kinds of reggae, 202 kinds of folk and 230 kinds of hip hop.[2][3]
On December 4, 2023,[2] McDonald was one of the 1,500 employees, or 17% of its workforce, laid off by Spotify.[4][1] As a result, he lost access to the data needed to maintain and update his website's database, as well as the ability to fix any errors caused by possible changes on Spotify's end.[1] A spokesperson for Spotify stated that the current status of Every Noise was likely to remain for the foreseeable future.[2]
In 2024, McDonald's book You Have Not Yet Heard Your Favourite Song, about the increasing reliance of the music industry upon streaming, was published. In the book, he describes Spotify as "surveillance capitalism" that makes use of name, age, gender, location and existing tastes, but is limited in its knowledge.[3]
References
[edit]- ^ a b c Weatherbed, Jess (2024-02-13). "Spotify's layoffs doomed its best (unofficial) music discovery resource". The Verge. Retrieved 2024-07-30.
- ^ a b c Teplitsky, Ariel. "Spotify's Former Data Alchemist Gives Every Song a Genre | Billboard Canada". Billboard Canada. Retrieved 2024-07-30.
- ^ a b Platt, Poppie (2024-06-04). "How Spotify is insidiously changing your taste in music". The Daily Telegraph. ISSN 0307-1235. Retrieved 2024-07-31.
- ^ Silberling, Amanda (2024-02-12). "Spotify's layoffs put an end to a musical encyclopedia, and fans are pissed". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2024-08-01.