Oliver Scarlin

Photo of James Baldwin with the text "Artists are here to disturb the peace. They have to disturb the peace. Otherwise, chaos. / James Baldwin, An Interview with James Baldwin, 1961"

“It’s just a tool! People used to hate on photoshop too.”

Take away my photoshop, take away my tablets, I can still draw. Take away your plagiarism machine and what are you gonna do? Shout prompts at me?

There is a game like that btw it's called Arthurian Legends on Steam and it's rad as hell

Sorry but personally if a miniature horse woke me up from anesthesia by banging out nonsense on a miniature keyboard it would send me into a liminal space between life and death from which I would never return

At the level of stoned where I'm strangely moved by vintage gay porn

Straight people will just unironically post this to the group chat huh

Frida Kahlo wearing a plaster cast decorated with a hammer and sickle

“It is terrifying to see the rich having parties day and night while thousands and thousands are dying of hunger.“ —Frida Kahlo on the United States, c. 1930s

(Photo of Frida by Florence Arquin, c. 1950)

Hi bluesky it's been a while here's a picture of me and Harry and Shakil looking cute

There was an old tweet that stuck with me: "If you can easily walk to the coffee shop but your barista has a one hour commute, you don't live in a walkable 15 minute city; you live in a theme park"

Drag name idea: Semi Moore

That's a cute fuckin pic!!!

Need this lunch asap

Her beauty and confidence in AS6 legit made me tear up. What a singular queen

Hermit crab real estate

saying Trump won because he cheated also absolves Democrats of their dogshit policies that utterly failed to generate enough enthusiasm to beat the worst candidate in history. “they cheated” is a lot easier to swallow than “we need to fix our entire broken political system”

SPOTIFY SUCKS and how you can better support your favorite artists Lineal by Frank Adebiaye, with the contribution of Anton Moglia, Ariel Martín Pérez. Distributed by velvetyne.fr. Karrik by Jean-Baptiste Morizot, Lucas Le Bihan. Distributed by velvetyne.fr. SOURCES: Herstand, Ari. “Takedown Fails: Artists Are Seeing Their Music Removed From DSPs for Streaming Fraud They Didn’t Commit.” Variety, 12 Apr. 2024. Krukowski, Damon. “Solidarity.” Dada Drummer Almanach, 3 Oct. 2023, Krukowski, Damon. ”Spotify made £56m profit, but has decided not to pay smaller artists like me.” The Gaurdian, 30 Nov 2023. Lopatto, Elizabeth. “Not Even Spotify Is Safe From AI Slop.” The Verge, 14 Nov. 2024 Maddaus, Gene. “Variety.” Variety, 4 Sept. 2024. Omarji, Sophia. “I Was Laid off From Spotify After Moving to Sweden for the Job. I Had to Leave the Entire Life I Built Behind and Am Still Looking for Work.” Business Insider, 31 Jan. 2025 Pelly, Liz. “The Ghosts in the Machine.” Harper’s Magazine. Starvos, Jennifer . “How Spotify Is Quietly Supporting the Military-Industrial Complex.” In These Times, 10 Mar. 2022. Willings, Sam. “Daniel Ek Earned More From Spotify in the Past 12 Months Than Any Artist Has Ever Earned on the Platform.” MusicTech, 5 Aug. 2024

SPOTIFY PAYS VERY LITTLE (if at all) Spotify pays a measly $0.003 per stream! You’d need 406,000 plays/month just to make the national minimum wage—assuming you publish your own music and don’t have a record label to do that for you, because labels typically take 50-90% of your royalties! Besides, minimum wage is still TOO LOW to live comfortably! For smaller artists, any music that does not achieve 1,000 streams in a year will not receive any royalties at all (Krukowski). FAKE ARTISTS Most Spotify users rely on Spotify’s curated mood playlists (e.g.“Ambient Relaxation” and “Bossa Nova Dinner”) as background music. So Spotify figured users wouldn’t notice if they replaced the REAL music by REAL musicians in those playlists with FILLER music under FAKE artists’ profiles, so they don’t have to pay royalties to the real artists. This filler music, called “Perfect Fit Content,” consists of mass-produced stock music commissioned from a handful of anonymous musicians that Spotify completely owns and profits off of. These tracks receive millions of plays that could have gone to real, working musicians (Pelly).

There’s a plethora of problems regarding AI and Fraud on Spotify: Fake AI-generated albums are put under real artists’ profiles, which fraudsters profit off of. The real artists can do little to stop this. (Lopatto) Many artists have been the victims of unwanted artificial plays, including many artists I know: artists’ music is mysteriously flagged for artificial plays, and the artist is forced to remove the song/album or face a fine or even be banned from the platform (Herstand). There’s also nothing stopping people from just uploading AI-generated music (made from huge libraries of copyrighted music) and profiting off it. AI itself has way more problems to unpack, which could be its very own zine… SPOTIFY SUPPORTS THE MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX Prima Materia, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek’s investment company, had invested €100 million ($114 million USD) in Helsing, a German defence tech company that has developed military drones and AI software to aid in military operations. (Starvos).

WHAT YOU CAN DO It’s clear that Spotify does not actually care about the livelihoods of musicians. CEO Daniel Ek infamously tweeted that “the cost of creating content” (i.e. music) is “close to zero.” Sure, I guess the hours, experience, equipment, etc. to make music is worth nothing! Meanwhile, Ek made 345 million dollars last year (Willings), while laying off 17% of their workers in 2023 (Omarji). Support your favorite artists more directly by buying their music on services like Bandcamp and iTunes. Digital albums typically cost $5-10, and your purchase will have a bigger impact than your streams ever will. And can listen to them FOREVER! At $12/mo., if you only use Spotify to stream the same few albums, you’ll save money in the long run if you just buy the albums. Buy CDs, vinyls, and other merch! Support your local music stores! Switch to a better streaming platform like Tidal or Apple Music. Tidal pays the highest, paying an average of $0.013/stream—that’s over 4 times more than Spotify’s average. They can pay up to $0.05/stream ! Apple music falls just behind, paying $0.007-$0.01/stream on average. Musicians cannot strike or organize a boycott on Spotify without being sued under antitrust laws, since the musicians are considered independent contractors, while Spotify is the “customer” (Krukowski). Tell your representatives to support the Protect Working Musicians Act, which would allow independent musicians to organize and fight back! Join/Donate to the United Musicians and Allied Workers who are fighting to regulate streaming, restrict AI, eliminate Ticketmaster and Live Nation, and more!

hey i made an zine about spotify's sins, inspired by @glasse.bsky.social's spotify bio

if you want to print some, DM and i'll send you the file!

Painting of an arched window overlooking a misty seascape, with a selection of seashells and a coin on the windowsill

Arch window and shells, oil on canvas (2024)

“Tanks, Brooklyn” and “Tanks, Rte.9”, studies, 12x12, oil on linen on aluminum.

do you think the Harry Potter show is going to adapt the multiple times Harry saved the day by going to the girls’ bathroom? are they going to do the part where they take a transformation potion in the girls bathroom? or is JK Rowling going to accuse herself of being a pedophile

How.... rustic :)

All gay men are still men and many men are irredeemably fucked up :)

Homosexual knave, stable hand, pond-wench, pigeonfriend

Feeling unreasonably IDGAF 🤷

So beautiful

I had the same sleeping bag 😭

Painting a naked figure holding a sword and wondering how I'm going to explain to my gallery that I'm really into William Blake at the moment and clearly going through something

Bigots love to act like Queers are new and anti-LGBTQ laws are groundbreaking. They are not.

I couldn't get through the first episode. I kept thinking "who is this for?"

Oil painting by Oliver Scarlin

Harry on the beach (2024)