SZA, Beyoncé and now Rihanna. Yes, the ‘fake album’ scam hasn’t been wiped out just yet: fans got overexcited this weekend at the surprise release of an album called ‘Angel’ released by an artist called ‘Fenty Fantasia’. Fenty, of course, being Rihanna’s own fashion and beauty brand.
“While Rihanna was indeed the singer on the record, Angel seemed to comprise demos and some unreleased songs that have, according to Rihanna fans, been floating around the Internet in some fashion since 2009,” reported Rolling Stone, while noting that the album had managed to climb to number 67 in Apple’s iTunes albums chart before it was whipped off the store and Apple Music.
In the previous examples, the fake albums were uploaded through independent distribution services, and weren’t picked up before release. We await further details of which distributor was the unwitting pipeline for ‘Angel’ – and how they and the digital-music services they supply are going to ramp up efforts to prevent this kind of thing.
Tools: platforms to help you reach new audiences
Tools: Kaiber
In the year or so since its launch, AI startup Kaiber has been making waves,…