Part 2: “Separating the Man from the Art or Yourself from the Man?”
A Two-Part Series on the Sexual Misconduct of Acid Ghost
Three years after the uncovering of the sexual misconduct cases against indie-rock musician Ayce Barcelon, professionally known as Acid Ghost, no active trace of the artist seems to exist, yet his presence continues to linger across the multiple streaming platforms that still feature his music. And amidst the strangeness of the circumstances, fans are left with a crucial decision of how to move forward.
If you missed part one of this two-part series, please find the link to that article below, where we discussed the details and chronology of the events that unraveled.
To Support or Not to Support
Issues of sexual misconduct and violence have always borne with them extreme sensitivity when it comes to third-party opinion.
Often, the situation becomes a war zone-like territory in which people are forced to choose a side, either in favor of victims or of the accused.
Barcelon’s fan base is not immune to such divisiveness.
Since the emergence of the Twitter account @acidghostfans, dedicated to spreading awareness of Barcelon’s abuse, fans of Acid Ghost have been splitting themselves into one of two broad categories: those who support the women involved and those who continue to support the artist.
Responses
A large portion of Barcelon’s fans responded with full support for the women, pledging immediate abstinence from any affiliation with his music.
Even professional colleagues and collaborators have demonstrated such categorization, with some publicly castigating Barcelon for his actions.
However, other fans, despite recognizing the unethical nature of Barcelon’s actions, could not separate themselves from his music.
A handful even suggested that as a consumer, it is unfair to pass judgment on Barcelon’s music, arguing that personal matters should not hold a connection to the artist’s professional career.
The above comments bring up two interesting points regarding the ethical implications of such a choice, but before we delve into that, let’s discuss precisely what it means to listen to an artist’s music.
How Independent Musicians Generate Revenue
In the digital age, innovations in music technology and the advancement of the internet have made it possible for independent artists to accomplish much of the same goals of a record-signed artist’s career, including the methods with which they generate revenue.
Ticket sales to live shows, digital and physical merchandise, and the consumption of music all converge make up an artist’s income and can be easily promoted through internet advertisements, mailing lists, and posts on various social media platforms.
But the consumption of music is perhaps the largest way in which an artist generates income, selling CD’s vinyl records, and cassette tapes, and–in the digital age–mp3 downloads and streaming.
Streaming: Revenue & Analytics
In the case of mp3 downloads–much like CDs, vinyl records, and cassette tapes–the initial purchase has already been made, and thus, the number of listens afterward will not generate revenue for the artist.
Streaming, on the other hand, will continuously generate a small amount of money per user listen of each song. However, the revenue collected from pay-per-stream is much too insignificant to contribute to a large percentage of an artist’s total income. In fact, many artists have issued complaints about the staggeringly low payouts that most music streaming services provide, most notably, Spotify.
Anyhow, it is an overstatement to say that Barcelon is “living off” these payments, but nevertheless, any amount of money, regardless of size, indeed supports the artist financially, and thus enables them to continue in their careers.
But perhaps the most important aspect of streaming that the digital age has introduced to the world of music creation–especially for independent artists– is the significance of statistical data.
Since the establishment of the modern internet, it has become societally common knowledge that nearly all internet platforms can track the data metrics of its users for statistical purposes.
Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok are notorious for using such tracking to generate specific algorithms that tailor content based on the user’s demonstrated preferences, oftentimes to an eerily narrow selection.
Music streaming services are no different.
The major music streaming platforms in the United States include Apple Music, Spotify, YouTube Music, Tidal, Soundcloud, Pandora, iTunes, and Google Play. Many of these service platforms track user behavior in the same way as the aforementioned social networking websites, collecting data on an artist’s listener demographics, downloads, streams, and saves.
These listener metrics form the basis of information that the system algorithms will interpret and use to create an “optimum user experience.”
Spotify is perhaps the epitomized model of this process out of all the streaming services mentioned above, flaunting its ability to curate music in the form of unique “personalization” features that shape the platform’s primary appeal for users.
As a listener uses Spotify over time, the system tracks the data of their behavior and uses the information to predict other songs, artists, albums, etc. that the user might like. There are multiple ways that Spotify presents its recommendations.
Recommended Songs
The first, most elementary method, is the “recommended songs” feature. At the end of any playlist you make, Spotify queues a set of related songs that can be set to automatically play after a playlist ends.
This feature is also present when building a playlist; recommendations based on the songs the user already added to the playlist, based on similarities to genre and artist.
A user can also “like” and “dislike” songs as they listen to give specific feedback that will help direct system algorithms.
Daily Mixes
Under the “Made for You” category of Spotify, daily mixes are playlists that update every day to a selection of music based around a group of artists that you follow.
These playlists also include songs that you haven’t heard of, which are related to the group of artists that the playlist is centered around.
Opening up Daily Mix 5, you can see in the description the names of artists that have been selected to base the playlist: Hammock, Slow Meadow, and Lambert.
Tracks one, two, and three, reflect the foundation artists, but as you continue down the page, you will see that the fourth and fifth tracks are from other artists that system algorithms have selected for their similarity to the first three artists.
Also, note that the playlist is 50 songs total.
This is only one Daily Mix playlist of six.
That’s 300 songs.
Browse Page
But perhaps Spotify’s most impressive feature is the Browse page.
The Browse page is home base for music discovery. As you can see above, the top of the page presents a number of major categories: genres & moods, podcasts, charts, new releases, discover, and concerts, where users can find new material.
Genres & Moods; Charts; and New Releases
These three major categories are updated regularly to reflect the wants of consumers in the music market.
The playlists within these categories are always built based upon (inter)national trending data. This means that the artists, songs, albums, etc., with more listens and streams will more likely be included in these official discover playlists as opposed to lesser trafficked works.
This is highly beneficial for artists who are trending at the top of the music charts or for those who are particularly well-known figures within their genre, as they will continue to enjoy promotion among listeners.
But for smaller scale and independent artists, Spotify has a few valuable features that assist in delivering their music to more audiences.
Artist Radios
Spotify radio is a feature that uses the same algorithms that the system uses to generate Discover Weekly and other personalized playlists, in order to create an endless supply of songs that are related to the selected artist/song.
Spotify advertises this feature, describing it as fitting the needs of a listener who isn’t sure specifically what they want to listen to but does know the general mood of the music they want.
For this reason, the subsequent songs that the system selects will always be of similar genre and sonic palette.
This is important for small or independent artists because as long as their music is classified as having similar sonic characteristics to the fundamental artist/song, their music has a chance to be included on the radio playlist, and thus a chance to be found by listeners who would otherwise never seek them out.
Discover Section
Like the Daily Mixes and Artist Radios, the Discover section of the Browse page is another personalized method of presenting new music based on your individual data.
I will show you my pictures from my account to illustrate the vast recommendations that Spotify has curated for me.
At the top of the page, you can already see the Discover Weekly and Release Radar playlists that the system has generated for me.
Below them, Spotify lists its top recommendations based on my listening.
You can’t see them displayed fully, but if you were to scroll horizontally, you would find that there are 20 total recommendations.
As you scroll downwards, you will begin to see the artist-specific recommendations that Spotify has compiled for me.
In the below example, I’m using AK, one of many artists that I have listened to since I established my account.
Spotify has provided 17 other works by other artists that are similar to him.
I’ve repeated the process with other artists that I follow to show you how expansive Spotify’s recommendation network is.
Spotify will compile 15–20 recommendations for at least 10 of the artists that you follow who you’ve been listening to the most during the month.
Based on Recent Listening
Spotify is constantly readjusting its algorithms, keeping itself up to date with your most recent behavior.
Using data within the past few months or weeks, depending on how often you use the platform, the system will advertise a selection of its official playlists based on its predictions of what is similar to your current taste.
Again, these playlists are built upon trends of larger data sets that reflect the preferences of much larger fan bases.
For the example below, this means that the songs contained in the Dreampop playlist will be popular favorites–new or all-time–of enthusiasts of the genre.
Fans Also Like
In addition to tracking your listening habits, Spotify will cross-reference your data with that of other people listening to the same thing. From here, the system will find artists and songs that overlap between users and organizes them in their own category which users can easily access from an artist’s profile.
If I were hypothetically a fan of Blonde Tongues for the below example, and I click on the Fans Also Like page, I will find that Acid Ghost is one of a few other artists that other Blonde Tongues fans listen to.
You can think of this feature as being similar to Artist Radios, except the data used to make the selections is based on the behavior of actual users, not strict index classifications of genre or sonic landscape.
Spotify also tracks the demographic characteristics of the audiences that are finding your music, details such as gender, age, and even geographic location, both country and city.
The detailed insight into these types of analytics can then be used, as an artist, to navigate the complexities of the digital consumer market, and to build your career at your own discretion.
Additionally, follower counts and stream numbers can help prove an artist’s legitimacy, and thus assist them in being spotted by companies that might hire, sponsor, book, and in other forms, endorse the artist to continue and advance their career.
Alright, so after an exhaustive list of Spotify’s features, why is any of that important?
Well, remember, all of these algorithms work off of trend data, global or personal, that is collected from users of the platform.
In simplest terms, this data is simply a single stream of a song by a single person, multiplied by the number of people also doing the same thing.
It doesn’t matter if you don’t like the song or simply played it by accident, streams are streams, and they tell the system that this is what’s trending, regardless of intentions.
This means that even if you as a listener, denounce Barcelon for his actions and have good intentions for the women that he harmed, but you continue to listen to his music, you are continuing to support the career of an abuser.
But this is where it gets even more difficult.
Statistics aside, is it ethically possible to revere the art even if you’ve rejected the artist?
The Ethics of Supporting an Artist
Going back to one of the tweets from earlier, one of Barcelon’s supporters brings up a point that has been frequently mentioned in similar situations.
The tweet reads:
Here, the fan argues that if Barcelon had not committed such atrocities, the music would be in good standing.
There is truth in this statement.
Behavior, no matter how horrific cannot physically obscure the quality of a piece of art, (even as it is subjective in itself.)
The fan further explains his point with reference to artist Pablo Picasso and Indian lawyer and peace activist Mahatma Gandhi.
In the first case of Picasso, the Spanish artist’s paintings revolutionized the early 20th-century movement of Cubism; however, he was known to unabashedly exercise his misogyny and toxic masculinity on the women in his life and had sexual relations with a girl of 17 years of age, which, in plain language is statutory rape.
Gandhi lead movements of nonviolence against British sovereign in India during his time. But he, too, was a misogynist with deep-rooted vehemence for female sensuality, and was known to force young girls into his bed as a test of his celibacy.
In referencing these two men, the fan begs the question that if an artist has proved themselves to be corrupt, are we no longer allowed to celebrate his achievements and contributions?
Perhaps a more contemporary and ongoing example that would help illustrate the issue with this fan’s point is the scandal that surrounds filmmaker Roman Polanski.
To be brief–in the late 1970s, Polanski fled the United States to avoid prosecution for statutory rape of a young girl, and, over the course of his lifetime, has amassed nearly 12 accusations of abuse against young girls.
At the César Awards this year, actors and filmmakers walked out spontaneously in protest upon Polanski’s recognition for Best Director.
Applying the fan’s logic to Polanski, it would be distasteful to consider Polanski’s past interfere with our judgment of his artistic merit. His past history of abusing young girls has no connection to his creative excellence, so why should we consider it?
But this is precisely the problem.
We have always celebrated artists for their contributions.
Ayce Barcelon can write good music, just as Pablo Picasso can paint a pioneer a cultural movement, just as Gandhi can lead a revolution, just as Roman Polanski can direct award-winning films.
If we continue to blindly celebrate these artists for their achievements and overlook their offenses, we dismiss the destruction they have caused.
We send the message that their trespasses do not matter, and thus the women who were harmed do not matter. That these women were merely par for the course of a man’s career, collateral damage that carries no other meaning than being a hollow sacrifice.
In this way, we have come to revere material over people and have placed emphasis on a man’s talents and not his moral standing.
Since when did one’s success bear more significance than their humanity?
This is why it is necessary that we dismantle this structure of understanding and reframe our approach.
But ultimately, the decision is yours in how you choose to move forward with the knowledge of the information given to you.
Yet, in making personal decisions, it is important to understand the gravity of such a decision. The choice that you ultimately decide to make will lay the moral grounds in which you choose to walk upon.
My Decision
I mentioned in my previous article that I began writing this series because I was a fan of Acid Ghost and was faced with the precise challenge of making the precise decision that I have outlined for you.
For this reason, I am empathetic to the unparalleled grief of discovering that one of your favorite artists is linked to a horrific background.
However, I cannot have compassion for those who continue to demonstrate support for artists like these.
You cannot provide full support for victims of abuse and violence when you continue to endorse their abusers.
Likewise, you cannot support an abusive artist without also supporting their actions.
Violence is a choice and so is supporting it. With whatever decision you make, you must be prepared to reconcile its consequences.
Personally, I will not give my money or my respect to a man who chooses to inflict damage on countless women, which, in doing so, perpetuates the notion that such behavior is permissible.
And while that decision has cost me one artist, I have made peace with the fact that I have since found many others whose music I cherish much to the same degree that I did for Acid Ghost–perhaps even more.
The world of music is vast.
You will surely discover other artists whose music you will fall in love with, without the sacrifice of ethics.
So rather than fretting over whether or not to continue supporting an artist who has already sunken themselves, look for those who create beauty without the use of brutality.
These are the people worth supporting.
And so while I have chosen to separate myself from the man, that will you do?
