Hello Friend!

Last night I got an email saying our album was being removed from Spotify because one of the songs had artifical streams.

This morning - when I checked Spotify - the album was gone.

Did the song have artificial streams? No shit it did.

A couple years ago, when I used to check Spotify for Artists on a daily basis*, I had noticed one of my songs had gained a seemingly enourmous** amount of streams - seemingly out of nowhere. The initial dopamine hit gave way to incredulation when I realised there was no way the streams had come from real people.

This is something I reported to Spotify. But the process was oblique, and they didn’t seem to give a shit.

So when it happened again, I didn’t give a shit. And I didn’t report it.

Now - without any consultation - the album is gone from Spotify. And I don’t know if it will be easy or hard to get it back. Though I don’t know if I should even bother putting it back.

Just this week, Deerhoof pulled all their music from Spotify after Daniel Ek - Spotify’s CEO - invested 600 million euros into an AI military startup. Also this week, an entirely AI generated band that’s blown up on Spotify is all anyones talking about. What is Spotify doing about them?

I also found this article on the Guardian - AI, bot farms and innocent indie victims. It interviews multiple artists who’ve had their music removed from Spotify due to its shitty bot detection system. It says:

systems elsewhere for taking down tracks often presume guilt and the appeals system is so arduous that small acts, already struggling, just give up

We’re one of those small acts. And I don’t know how succesful any appeal we make will be. Should we even try?

For now, I don’t know.

Speak to all of you soon,

Rowan.

*not good for your mental well being btw

**enourmous for us - a band with 41 people on our mailing list

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In light of this, I’ve made Rock N Roll Super Powers pay as you feel on Bandcamp. If you would like to download it for £5, 50p, or nothing - nows your chance. I’d rather this was the way you listened to our album. And it’s not possible to listen to the album on Spotify right now anyway.

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Short bonus poem for making it to the bottom:

Spot-this-fy

I’m going to get

A dart board with

Daniel Ek’s

Face on it