Matt Farley writes 20 songs a day and has digitally distributed more than 14,000 in six years. We need creative outliers like him and a neutral internet to support them

Spotify, the music streaming service, recently announced a high-tech plan to tailor tracks to listeners' heartbeats. Matt Farley's lo-fi songs are available on the very same site and boast no such bells and whistles. However, the music and its 35-year-old writer are astonishing for a number of other reasons.

Back in 2008, Farley noticed a gap in the digital distribution market. Alongside algorithmically generated recommendations that sites such as Spotify pride themselves on, he spotted that "people were searching for unique words – words that aren't usually in song titles." He told me via email how his old band sold more downloads of songs with silly titles that included words like "monkey".

Farley had an epiphany and decided to supply this demand for noun-based music. As his website explains: "If someone might search for it, Farley will have a song about it."

Over the past six years he has composed and digitally released over 14,000 songs. In a single day, he says, he records between five and 100 tracks, though he averages 20.

His output is spread across more than 200 albums, each of which is released under a relevant band name - so far there have been 65. These include specific bands for the sporting teams of each major US city, a band for the hardest word (The Sorry Apology Song Person) and a band for the haunted (The Paranormal Song Warrior).

Playlist of songs about Australia

The bands stand in for the man himself, whose name seldom appears alongside his music. Working alone from a keyboard in the basement of his suburban Massachusetts home, Farley is not seeking glory – he wants to fill people's search queries. Why? Because he wants the results to be genuinely entertaining.

For instance, a lot of people search Spotify for celebrities. So, he invented a band called Papa Razzi and the Photogs, which has so far released 22 albums. Each consists of 20 to 40 tracks about every kind of star imaginable, from classical literature to Hollywood. There is an album called The Life of This Legendary American Music Man Is Quite Good, Yes, which includes tracks dedicated to Jon Hamm, Donald Trump's sons and ex-first lady Laura Bush. One album, called simply Celebrities!, includes the track The Susan Boyle Saga.

In addition to Spotify, iTunes and Amazon, if you Google "Papa Razzi and the Photogs", the first page of results comprises relevant pages on Facebook, last.fm, Tumblr, YouTube and myspace. Farley has nailed his SEO.

He's able to indulge this passion three days a week, while working another three days as a carer, because in 2013 alone his back catalogue returned an income of $23,000 (£13,800). Some 60% of his sales come from MP3 downloads and the rest from streaming.



He isn't driven by the money, however, as much as by a love of the concept and the process. It is hard to imagine anybody else taking novelty songs so seriously. And then you realise, all the elements here represent a perfect storm: Farley's willpower and average musical ability, his generation's inherent understanding of technology and online life, and the current state of the internet – where broad freedoms persist (just about) alongside sophisticated media distribution and communications networks. Without the so-called neutral net that is currently under threat from telecoms companies, there would be no Birthday Band For Old People.

Papa Razzi and the Photogs song

It may not be Mozart. In fact, it may start to grate quite quickly unless you expressly require a song about mayonnaise (The Hungry Food Band) or needle exchanges (The Extreme Left Wing Liberals). But Farley's success proves he is providing a valuable service and, more than that, he represents a joyous, humble triumph over several banal measures of success; professional, musical and commercial to name a few.

This unlikely enterprise epitomises the ideals of Tim Berners-Lee's egalitarian internet. If it can happen and is essentially good, it will and must be allowed to. In other words, it illustrates how closely the principle of a free internet mirrors that of free speech and should therefore be given serious if not equal value: I do not want to listen to your song about earwax, but I will defend to the death your right to produce it in your basement and distribute it freely online for a return of approximately $2 per annum.

Farley does not have lofty ambitions beyond maintaining his colossal output and admirable income. "I just want to keep doing what I'm doing," he says. "I love recording songs." He and his wife are also expecting their first child, so there are other, more conventional aspects of life to focus on.

As for Spotify naysayers such as Radiohead and Atoms for Peace musician, Thom Yorke, who bemoan the site's relationship with major labels that hold rights to older content, Farley thinks this misses the point. The point is the little guys like him: those who win – relatively speaking – on an equal playing field.

"I think Spotify and all digital distribution stores are great," he says. "Without them, no one would hear my music, and I wouldn't be earning anything. Overpaid, elitist, out-of-touch musicians are the only ones who are complaining."