John Williamson and Eric Deines of the Indiana label Ulyssa

April 03, 2024

According to a 2023 report from Luminate, formerly known as Nielsen SoundScan, over 120,000 new tracks are uploaded to the music streaming service Spotify every day. That’s over 36,500,000 tracks per year. According to that same report, over 45 million of those tracks never received a single play. That’s bad news for musicians as Spotify recently announced that it would cease making royalty payments for songs with less than 1,000 annual streams. 

But all hope is not lost, Ulyssa, an Indiana-based record label, is dedicated to discovering and celebrating the vast trove of unheard music on Spotify. This week on Cultural Manifesto, listen to an interview with Ulyssa founders John Williamson and Eric Deines. 

Ulyssa also issues a wide variety of lo-fi, electronic, and experimental music from across the globe. A recent release, titled Contrahouse, features the Grammy-winning pianist and singer-songwriter Bruce Hornsby. Ulyssa has even coined a new genre of music, they call it Toejazz, a reference to the 1991 Sega Genesis video game Toejam and Earl.