What Spotify doesn't tell you about an artist

I like Spotify. I'm saying that up front so this doesn't read like settling scores. My music is there, just as it's on Deezer and YouTube, and every song on my website links straight to Spotify. Lots of people listen to me there and I think that's great. But from staring at my own profile so much, I've reached a conclusion: what a platform shows of an artist is a very shrunken version, almost a police record. And the record isn't the person.

I want to talk about what gets left out, because I think it happens to nearly every artist, not just me.

Five songs out of 273

When you open an artist's profile, the first thing you see is their most-played songs. Five, usually. In my case, that means five songs out of 273. Less than two per cent of what I've released.

I don't pick those five. Usage picks them. And usage has its own laws: a song that took off in a short video climbs, and once it's up there it stays, because people who arrive play it first, which keeps it on top. «Tan Cateto» (Such a bumpkin), the song a lot of people found me through on TikTok, has a head start over songs I consider better, or more representative, or simply different.

I'm not complaining about «Tan Cateto». I owe it a lot. It was the door a lot of people came in through, and I hope some of them stayed on afterwards to hear other things. But anyone who judges me on those five alone walks away with half the picture. And almost everyone judges on those five.

You can't see who writes

On a music platform you see a name, a photo, some songs. You don't see who does what. In my case that matters a great deal, because my work has several layers: I write all the lyrics, I produce the music with artificial intelligence tools that I direct, I direct the music videos, I run the label. I call myself the first AI songwriter. None of that shows up clearly on the profile.

The result is that every listener fills the gap with their own guess. Some picture a performer in front of a microphone, which isn't me. Others think the machine does it all by itself, which isn't true either. The platform isn't to blame; its format isn't built for nuance. But the gap is there.

The whole story doesn't fit

Something else gets lost: the order. My GAYFOLK trilogy is conceived as one story in three acts. «Descubierto un nuevo planeta llamado GAYFOLK», then «Ojalá se pudiera viajar a GAYFOLK» and finally «El día de la liberación». Discovering a place where you can be who you are, longing to get there, and the day you arrive.

On a platform, those albums show up as three more items in a list, and nothing tells you they go in that order, or that together they tell a story. People hop from song to song, on shuffle or following recommendations. I get it; that's often how I listen too. But the story falls apart.

That's why the trilogy is also on my website, free to download with no sign-up, in order.

I write all my lyrics with care, and to me they're half the song, or more. In a music app, if you're lucky, they appear line by line as the track plays. That helps you keep up, but you see the lyric in pieces, never whole. My songs lean heavily on humour and on the twist, and a joke you only get once you see the full verse is lost if all you see is the line playing.

Something similar happens with titles. «Mitad Venezuela, mitad Pakistán» (Half Venezuela, half Pakistan) or «No quiero otro novio cojín» (I don't want another cushion boyfriend) are already half a song, and in a playlist they get chopped off by an ellipsis if the screen is small. The joke is left hanging before it's begun.

That isn't a criticism, it's a limitation of the format. A listening platform is made for listening. Reading is a different activity.

And then there are the numbers. Plays, listeners, followers. They're the most visible part of a profile and the part that tells me least about what matters. A high number doesn't tell you whether someone cried over a song or left it on in the background while doing the dishes. A low number doesn't tell you whether that song is the favourite of ten people who play it every day.

I confess I look at the numbers. We all do; anyone who says otherwise is lying. Some days they get to me more than they should. But I try to remember that they're the measurable part, not the part that counts. And that with 273 singles, any comparison between songs is unfair: some have been out for ages and others just landed, some had a video that travelled and others didn't. The number mashes all that together and presents it like a school grade.

What I do about it

I can't change how a platform works. What I can do is have a place where whatever gets left out is let in. That's why I opened mikesaintlouis.com in October 2026. Every song has its own page with the music video, the full lyrics and the Spotify link. There's a search box, an A to Z lyrics section, a press page and FAQs. It's in Spanish and English.

Competing with Spotify would be absurd. The website complements it, and that's enough for me. Anyone who wants to listen can listen wherever they like. Anyone who wants to know more has somewhere to look.

In the end, an artist is what they make, and also how they make it and why. Platforms tell the first part very well. The rest is ours to tell.

What doesn't fit in a profile is at mikesaintlouis.com.