The music streaming giant faced an unprecedented crisis Thursday when junior accountant Marcus Lindström discovered a catastrophic error while debugging the company's Creative Suppression Algorithm™. Millions in royalties had been mistakenly paid to legitimate musicians instead of their vast network of contracted Swedish cover artists.
"This is worse than that time we accidentally included songs with chord progressions," said one executive, speaking anonymously. "Do you understand what this means? These people might start expecting fair compensation going forward. Like some kind of... artists!"
In response, Spotify has launched their emergency "Artist Reality Check Program," offering real musicians lucrative contracts to legally change their names to strings of random characters. "We're offering up to $50 to any musician willing to become 'xJ4zz_ambient_1994_chill,'" explained VP of Creative Depreciation Henrik Larsson.
The company quickly contained the damage by having their core artist – a man known only as "Stockholm Steve" – re-record every affected playlist in a single afternoon using his trusted MIDI keyboard and a YouTube tutorial on jazz scales.
New safeguards have been implemented, including a strict "No Live Performance" verification process. "If we discover you've ever played music in front of actual humans, you're out," stated Head of Authenticity Prevention Maria Andersson.
The company is also retroactively updating all artist biographies to read "Proud graduate of the Stockholm School of Revenue Optimization (Class of Yesterday)." When asked about the school's accreditation status, executives quickly changed the subject to their Q1 earnings forecast.
At press time, Spotify's stock had surged 12% after investors learned about the company's swift action in "mitigating the risk of musical integrity." The company announced plans to prevent future incidents by replacing their entire jazz catalog with a single MIDI file played at different speeds.
