He found DistroKid wasn’t helpful, sending only one email to say that it wasn’t involved in the takedown and that it has “not been given any additional information from Spotify.”ĭistroKid also recommended that Mann “reach out to any fans/friends/family who have played releases an inordinate number of times to let them know they’re actually causing stores to remove your releases.” It warned Mann that if any of the band’s “other releases are flagged, it could ultimately result in the closure” of their DistroKid account and “the removal of all releases from stores.” DistroKid also wrote that all its peer distributors were affected, and that they “have no way to help or appeal Spotify’s decision.” Spotify told Mann it understood the situation was “frustrating” and that it takes “the integrity of our platform very seriously.” Mann says no one in Heavy Salad used a paid service to boost the band’s streams. “Who fucked up?” he demanded of his bandmates when Spotify removed his band’s 2020 debut Cult Casual. Lee Mann, the bassist of the Manchester, U.K., psychedelic rock trio Heavy Salad, has a mirror-image story of frustration. “Yummy” wasn’t removed from streaming - and other fan groups of acts like Harry Styles and BTS have encouraged the practice, egging one another on to help get their favorite stars better chart placement. Young points out that in a now-deleted Instagram post Justin Bieber made in January 2020, the mega-hit singer directly asked fans to help boost the streaming numbers of his single “Yummy” by putting it on loop or downloading VPNs.
Young suspects the particular track of “Problematic,” though it was not her biggest song, was flagged as suspicious because she had asked her friends, fans, and family - many of who reside in the Phoenix, Arizona area, miles out of her Californian demographic - to stream it overnight.īut if that’s the case, then the abrupt removal exposes a double standard in Spotify’s policy. A petition asking for Spotify to restore the music garnered 7,000 signatures - but Spotify has not made a public move besides writing in its FAQ that “paid third-party promotional services that advertise streams in return for payment violate our terms and conditions, and using them could result in your music being removed from Spotify.” Spotify did not respond to Rolling Stone’s requests for comment. Some shared extensive screenshots of their efforts to get their songs back on the service. Several artists, including Young, made frustrated tweets about the wrongful deletions, tagging Spotify and using the hashtags #spotifytakedown and #restoreourmusic.
#Spotify down. download
“Fans aren’t going to download another app just to listen to a song,” says Young. And while the income that middle-tier musicians receive from Spotify is paltry, it’s still crucial for fledgling artists to have their music available on the world’s foremost music streaming service. Many of the artists affected were taken by surprise, alerted to the news by fans instead of by Spotify or their business teams - and it was yet another problem to deal with on top of a brutal pandemic year that halted nearly all touring revenue. There’s no official tally, but music attorney Wallace Collins wrote in a widely circulated blog post that, based on discussions with his clients, it seems as many as 750,000 tracks may’ve been wiped.
“Problematic” was one of a plethora of tracks quietly purged from the service on January 1st, 2021. But Young says she has never paid for third-party streaming boosts. when a paid marketing service, manager, or agency uses bots to artificially boost play numbers and increase an artist’s revenue, which is a practice banned under Spotify’s terms of service. He explained Spotify often performs a sweep of songs they suspect have fake streaming activity - a.k.a. “ didn’t give me a warning or reach out to me to ask about the issue,” she says. Her distributor DistroKid emailed later that day to confirm the track was removed, with no explanation as to why. Young reached out to the streaming service, but to no avail. But that’s what happened in the late hours of January 2nd when a fan frantically messaged the Los Angeles-based pop singer to ask why her song “Problematic” had vanished from Spotify the day before. Furiously writing emails wasn’t how Callie Young wanted to start her 2021.
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