Stefan Hegerat's Bet Against Algorithmic Music

Stefan Hegerat reached his breaking point with Spotify. Last year, the Toronto drummer and composer made a decision that's becoming more common among independent musicians: he began the process of removing his music from the streaming giant.

"I recently read Liz Pelly's book about the evolution of Spotify and that really sealed the deal for me," Hegerat says, referring to the journalist's critique Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist (Simon & Schuster, 2025). "Streaming is an amazing service for the listener. It's amazing to be able to look up any song you want to listen to and hear it instantly, but it comes at such enormous cost."

For Hegerat, that cost goes beyond Spotify's notoriously low payouts to artists. The deeper problem lies in how streaming platforms force musicians into algorithmic boxes, reducing complex artistic identities to metadata tags.

His latest album Icterus II (Barnyard Records, 2025), released under the project name stef.in, turns experimental rock, jazz improvisation, and ambient soundscapes into something that sidesteps playlist algorithms. Written during pandemic lockdown, the album grapples with climate crisis, economic warfare, and governmental failure while consciously weaving hope throughout its darker passages.

"My default quite often is to veer away from that darkness as much as I can because I think it makes for depressing music if you're just leaning on that entirely," he explains. "So I'm also trying to really consciously put as much joy as I can into the music."

Genre fluidity has become survival strategy for Hegerat. He leads stef.in's experimental explorations, plays in the punk band Chinese Medicine, and fronts the experimental pop project Parade. Each requires different approaches, which is something he learned during jazz studies at university, where his horizons broadened beyond his early rock influences like John Bonham and Tool.

"Sometimes people just assume if you play jazz, complex music, you can play anything, like rock music's easy," he notes. "But it's a completely different mindset. It's different skills, different approaches."

This musical diversity isn't just creative. It is an economic necessity in a system that undervalues artistic labor. Like many Canadian musicians, Hegerat cobbles together a living through teaching, freelance work, and multiple projects.

"Capitalism forces us to categorize music by genre," Hegerat observes. "You're uploading your music on [digital distribution platform] DistroKid or something and you have to pick from the [genre] options that they're giving you. So it wants us to funnel and commodify our art in very specific ways."

The pandemic accelerated these pressures while transforming creative processes. Unable to rehearse with bandmates Patrick O'Reilly, Robyn Gray, and Mark Godfrey, Hegerat wrote most of Icterus II in isolation, trusting compositions would translate when they finally reconvened.

"I wrote the majority of the record without us ever having played any of that stuff together," he recalls. The approach worked but represented a fundamental shift from his usual method of road-testing material before recording.

Toronto's music scene faces its own economic squeeze. "It's a difficult time in Toronto," Hegerat says, reflecting on a city where rising costs have shuttered venues and forced countless artists to abandon their creative pursuits. "Everyone is feeling like the city is untenable."

While Hegerat notes his millennial generation seems to be "waving the white flag a little bit," he's encouraged by younger artists embracing DIY approaches and creating their own venues and opportunities.

Regional challenges add another layer. Despite growing international recognition, stef.in has never toured the United States, partly due to logistical challenges and reflecting wariness about American cultural dominance. "We'll see in the current climate. I'm not sure if we'll be there anytime soon," Hegerat says about potential U.S. dates.

His focus remains on building sustainable creative communities closer to home. The band's preference for "grungier clubs" over traditional listening rooms reflects a desire to connect with audiences seeking authentic, uncompromising art rather than background music.

Hegerat is exploring alternatives to the streaming economy through platforms like Nina Protocol and Subvert, a music co-op launching this year. These promise more equitable distribution models, though they lack Spotify's massive reach. The challenge is building audience without algorithmic amplification. Success requires rebuilding direct relationships between artists and listeners, something streaming platforms have systematically dismantled in favor of data-driven recommendation systems.

The name "Icterus" refers to the bird family that includes Baltimore orioles, hinting at Hegerat's broader interests beyond music. His fandom for the struggling baseball team serves as apt metaphor for artistic persistence: "Unfortunately, this is actually a really dark time to be one," he said during our interview, "but I'm a fan of the Baltimore Orioles. And they're having a horrendous start." The team's 19-34 record at the time of this writing confirms his assessment.

Like his beloved team, Hegerat keeps showing up, keeps creating, keeps fighting for space in an increasingly hostile environment. Icterus II shows what's possible when artists refuse to compromise their vision.

When streaming algorithms reward conformity and rising costs push out non-commercial art, Stefan Hegerat represents something increasingly rare: an artist committed to complexity, community, and the radical act of imagining alternatives.