Across several days at the end of June, several musicians, including TV Girl, Her’s, Teen Suicide, and SBTKRT, had new singles posted to their profiles on Spotify, Apple Music, and Youtube. These EDM songs sounded nothing like the usual works of the artists they were credited to, none of whom had promoted the songs in any fashion.
Members of the indieheads subreddit were quick to catch on to the trend. Reddit user kappyko wrote “guessing this is just someone who wanted some money by submitting songs under indie artist’s page somehow (it’s happened before) with vague enough titles and album arts to look legit. clever but it’ll get taken down sooner or later”. They also linked a TV Girl tweet addressing “Grasp”, a song that was uploaded to their profiles.
Sam Ray of American Pleasure Club (fka Teen Suicide) would also confirm that “Captivate” was not the work of his band.
It isn’t uncommon for songs to get posted to the wrong profile on streaming services. On the Spotify Community website, there is a 114 page thread of reports of releases on incorrect artist pages. The thread was closed in 2018, ending with the following message being shared by a Spotify staff member.
With the responsibility being placed on the artist to report the issue first, it suggests a refusal by Spotify to make changes and create a system that prevent metadata issues from occurring. If it’s easy to for music to end up on the wrong profile accidentally, it stands to reason that it’s also easy for music to end up on the wrong profile on purpose.
When looking at the list of tracks in question on their uploaded videos on auto-generated artist YouTube channels, we can see that all of them were provided by La Cupula Music. According to their website, La Cupula Music is a company based in Spain that offers a variety of services including digital distribution, CD and vinyl manufacturing, mastering, and graphic design. They advertise a one-time payment € 2.99 to distribute a track through their services, with the artist receiving 95% of any royalties. With a rate that is lower than competitors like Distrokid and CDBaby, in addition to the other services they offer, La Cupula Music may seem almost too good to be true.
I want to acknowledge that some things may be lost in translation from English to Spanish, but there are some things on the site that suggest La Cupula Music is not to be trusted. A testimony attributed to Sergio Makaroff states “I can and do affirm that the management of my songs on YouTube carried out by the specialized team of La Cupula Music has been carried out to my satisfaction. For the record.”
For the record, none of the four albums on Makaroff’s auto-generated artist profile were provided to Youtube by La Cupula Music.
Even more telling are the negative Google reviews of the company, made by many who were unhappy with the company’s business practices and lack of customer service.
Also worth noting are the following clauses that appear in the legal conditions that artists must agree to when signing up for a distribution account.
“4.4 Therefore, you expressly and irrevocably authorize us to collect all income from the exploitation of your content through the platform, including, among others, copyrights, interpretation and recording rights, rights related to the phonographic producer, any tax established by law for private copies, or for any other concept, without limitation. To this end, we may ask you to sign a specific authorization letter requested by the corresponding Representation Rights Organization, which you agree to provide to us as soon as requested.”
“6.2 When you upload or upload any of your content to our servers through the platform, you acknowledge the following:
That we are authorized to manage, directly or through third parties, your content (including recordings, videos, compositions, covers, etc.) through the digital music services selected by you, throughout the world and for the duration of our relationship”
Clauses like these appear to suggest that artists are required to give up a lot of control over their music after entering into agreements with the company. Considering the lack of autonomy suggested by 6.2, it appears especially problematic when looked alongside the difficulty artists report in communicating and hearing back from the company in a timely fashion regarding their concerns.
4.4 also draws up some red flags with its authorization for exploitation without limitation. It is important to consider the definition of exploitation and what that may mean or suggest in the context of this agreement. We can look at the definition of exploitation as making the full use of an deriving benefit from a resource. For some artists this may include having their music available on as many platforms as possible, promoting it through multiple lanes, and having both digital and physical formats available for sale, services that all appear to be offered through the company.
But we can also look at exploitation being defined as the use of a situation or person in an unfair or selfish way, and there are things that suggest that the company is guilty of this.
“Suspended” is a song claiming to be a collaboration by SBTRKT and Lone that was provided by La Cupula Music to official SBTRKT artist pages on streaming services. Currently, on Spotify, SBTRKT has 880,291 monthly listeners and Lone has 336 406 monthly listeners. On one platform alone, there is an audience of around 1 million listeners who may be deceived into thinking this is an official release. Without knowing anything about the song itself and who actually made it, we can already see that the company appears to be taking advantage of a system that in which they can add a track to a profile that isn’t theirs and profit from streams coming from that artist’s fanbase.
But who actually made these songs? Is it an artist in an official agreement with the company? In this case it is not. “Suspended” is actually the work of Evn, a 13 year old musician who originally released the song on June 14th under the title “Flight”. Evn claims that they have never been in contact with La Cupula Music and that they found out about “Suspended” after learning that the company had filed a copyright claim on their uploaded Youtube video for “Flight”. Evn would go on to note two other instances of La Cupula Music providing their songs to other artist profiles. “Reflection”, original released by Evn on May 17, would appear on the RJD2 Youtube channel as “Shattered Blossoms” on June 23rd, while “Discovery”, uploaded on June 21st, would be provided by La Cupula Music to the Blackmill channel as “Wilted Colors” on June 26th.
Not only is the company fraudulently posing as established artists to take advantage of their fan bases and platforms, they are also claiming ownership over artistic works they do not own, including those made by kids, who receive no credit or financial compensation as their works are stolen and exploited by the company.
Despite multiple requests, La Cupula Music did not provide any comment on the uploaded songs in question.
Although it’s very easy to sum this up as a series of acts carried out by one problematic entity, the reality is that the giants of the streaming economy have created conditions that enable profitable fraud on their platforms . Why is it the artist or the record label’s responsiblity to detect a incorrect or fake release and flag it for removal? Does it not matter to Spotify since they receive a chunk of the revenue regardless of whose name is attached to the song and who gets paid from it?
Not only music streaming platforms exploit creators by providing incredibly meagre royalty payments, they enable further exploitation at the hands of outside agencies like La Cupula Music. It’s unfortunately yet another one of the many, many problems that exist within the music streaming economy.
If you want to learn more about the music streaming economy and how it affects Independent artists, I suggest following the works of:
- Cherie Hu, and her Music and Water newsletter and podcast
- Liz Pelly, who has written many critical pieces on streaming/online platforms
- David Turner, and his newsletter Penny Fractions
- Mat Dryhurst, and his collaborative Interdependence podcast with Holly Herndon