Spotify: https://spoti.fi/41tMcR3

YouTube: https://bit.ly/42wWwce

I subscribe to this newsletter from Ashley Carman at Bloomberg. It’s entitled “Soundbite,” but mostly it’s about podcasting, which has been in flux recently. Seems that everybody with a big name who’s been given a podcast is having an extremely hard time gaining traction. Turns out being a star is not enough. It’s tougher than ever to build an audience.

But this week’s newsletter was mostly about the music business, streaming. And fraud. You can read it here:

“Why Warner Music Operates a Covert Spotify Remix Account – Artists and labels are quietly releasing multiple versions of their own songs on streaming platforms to box out the unauthorized competition”: https://bloom.bg/3MkCMSD

The headline story is interesting, how the majors have playlists of sped-up songs as a kind of subterfuge, to look cool… There’s more to it, you can read the details.

The other story is about outright fraud. Acts piggy-backing on others’ hits and getting the royalties.

I’ve got to tell you, I can’t say I’m overly moved by fraud. It is disillusioning, that so many are scamsters, that deception is rampant, but fraud has always permeated the recorded music business. That does not mean it shouldn’t be addressed, shouldn’t be stamped out, I’m just saying the issue punches above its weight because after years of turmoil in music distribution it’s been figured out, streaming has won, now it’s all about software, i.e. the music. But creating hit music is much more difficult than addressing distribution problems. Then again, if you create a hit will it become one, if it’s “in the grooves,” will it blow up?

The story about this outright fraud, linked in the above newsletter, is here:

“Music Streaming Has a $2 Billion Fraud Problem That Goes Beyond AI – With user-generated content surging on music services, bogus tracks may now account for 10% of all streams”: https://bloom.bg/3pw2889

(If this link doesn’t work, load the newsletter from the first link and click through from there and it will appear.)

The track being ripped-off in the article was “Hey Kids,” by Molina, who they said was a a Danish-Chilean singer. It was released by the label Tambourhinoceros. Household names, right? The Chilean-Danes are buzzing up the chart, thank god for the independent labels. Huh?

The track was released in 2018. In 2022 it started to get 100,000 streams a day. What was driving the action all these years later?

I DON’T KNOW!

But I was fascinated, so I clicked the embedded video of “Hey Kids” and I was stunned, from the very beginning I was hooked, IT WAS GOOD! Do you know how often I find a track that I get from the beginning, that I want to continue to listen to? ALMOST NEVER! A lot of what is successful is mediocre and pushed down our throats by the machine, which is why you can listen to these playlists of new music and your eyes will roll up into your head. HOW COULD THIS BE?

I mean I instantly knew “Hey Kids” had something. It deserved its success. But why did it take so long, and what made it finally gain traction?

Was the cut blown up by TikTok or vice versa?

So I went to Molina’s TikTok page, filled with user-generated videos: https://bit.ly/42Peg2h The song worked perfectly. Sure, it wasn’t the entire song, but the parts used worked. Furthermore, if you listen to the whole song it’s more than the excerpt, much more! How did these people know to use this song?

And supposedly people are using it on YouTube too and…

Let me be clear, “Hey Kids” is not the usual Spotify Top 50 fare. But that’s very narrow, and that’s not where barriers are broken, where envelopes are pushed. Not that “Hey Kids” is revolutionary, but if you’re listening at home, boy does it resonate.

Maybe not for you. But that’s fine.

BUT HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?

P.S. “Hey Kids” has 76,224,123 streams on Spotify

P.P.S. You can sign up for Ashley Carman’s newsletter here: https://www.bloomberg.com/account/newsletters/soundbite