A year ago, Apple stirred controversy by striking special deals with some of pop music’s biggest stars. Now Spotify is under fire for dealings with artists who, in a sense, do not exist at all.

For the last week, the music industry has been buzzing over the accusation that Spotify’s playlists are dotted with hundreds of supposedly “fake” artists, with names like Amity Cadet and Lo Mimieux, who are racking up tens of millions of streams yet have no public profile — no Facebook page, no Twitter feed, not even a face.

Spotify has also been accused of secretly controlling the rights to these songs — atmospheric, wordless tracks on mood-focused playlists with titles like “Deep Sleep” and “Peaceful Piano” — an arrangement that, if true, would allow the company to reduce the amount of money it pays in royalties to record labels and “real” artists.

The reality, however, may be more complicated.

Spotify denies that it owns the rights to the music under question, although the company may well pay lower royalty rates for these tracks than it does for more standard pop fare. And the pseudonymous creators of the tracks — real composers and producers, whose work appears under numerous made-up names — do not want to be called fake.