We’ve seen stories in the past where music from hugely popular artists has been uploaded to streaming services as ‘fake albums’ without their permission, and under other artists’ names. But it seems this can also affect musicians at the other end of the industry pyramid.
British metal band Assimilate have 130 monthly listeners on Spotify, yet they recently saw their 2021 album ‘Suffer in Silence’ re-uploaded to Spotify and other streaming services “under a different artist name, with slightly altered song titles and the tracks slowed down”.
After posting about the issue on Facebook, the band were put in touch with Spotify, and the fake version was removed – although their local newspaper the Watford Observer reported that it remains available on rival services.
It begs the question: if this sort of thing happened to a band at this level, how many other artists is it also happening to – and what more can DSPs and distributors do to nip this in the bud at scale?
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